Chicago-based travel guide author and journalist Kate Silver named Iechyd Da Brewing Company in Elkhart, winner of the Critic’s Choice Award in the 2015 Northern Indiana Pizza Wars. She also gave a nod to The Café at The Bowling Alley in Warsaw, awarding it Honorable Mention.

The Critic’s Choice Award is a separate category from the popular vote, which compiled online votes and recognized The Wooden Peel as the winner.

The bracket-style Pizza Wars competition was created by the Northern Indiana Tourism Development Commission, as a way of driving tourism to each of the seven counties it represents. Using the results of the competition the NITDC will create a Pizza Trail map that guides visitors to each of the county winners.

This is the second year NITDC has led a “food war” competition. Last year’s Burger Wars received such a favorable response, the organization decided to make the challenge an annual tradition. Since the Pizza Wars began, pizzeria owners have reported a dramatic uptick in business, and more than 100,000 votes were cast online.

“Just one day after the county pizza winners were announced, we had pizzeria owners nearly running out of supplies, their restaurants were so slammed with business,” says Robby Bearss, marketing manager with NITDC. “It’s incredibly gratifying to see these mom-and-pop businesses flourish across Northern Indiana.”

Bearss says that NITDC decided to bring in a Chicago critic because the organization felt an outsider palate—and professional journalist—would add even more credibility to the competition.

Silver visited eight pizzerias representing seven counties in Northern Indiana. Each owner was asked to serve the pizza that best represented the restaurant. That resulted in a wide array of crusts and toppings, from thick to thin, meat to veggie and everything in between. Silver scored each pizza on the following categories: crust, sauce, cheese, toppings, history/ambiance and execution.

The competition was steep, said Silver, and the decision wasn’t easy.

Silver said that Iechyd Da Brewing’s pizza stood out for its crust, which, she declared “so light it defies gravity,” along with its daring combinations of high quality ingredients (such as chorizo and tomatillo), with a focus on local vegetables and meats.

Silver says that the biggest surprise of the pizza judging came from The Café at The Bowling Alley in Warsaw. “I did a double take on this one. A bowling alley makes the best pizza in the county?” she says.

But she calls her first bite of Bryan Bibler’s Bib’s Smoked BBQ Chicken Pizza “a revelation.”

“It turns out Bryan has run a barbecue catering business for the last 25 years, and he’s a serious contender on the pizza scene,” says Silver. “Served on a thick, focaccia-like crust, slathered in his secret BBQ sauce, piled high with cheese and tender smoked diced chicken and then topped with onion tanglers, it should come as no surprise that this 16-inch pie looks a total gut buster. But somewhere, somehow, the flavors—onion tanglers and all—come across as more of a symphony.”

“If this place were closer to home,” adds Silver, “I’d be in trouble.”

Silver says her favorite part of judging the Pizza Wars was traveling across Northern Indiana and meeting with eight different pizzeria owners. “Every one of them had a colorful story about their passion for pizza, …  about creating their own pizza recipe because they wanted to share their love of pizza with their respective community, as I saw at The Café at The Bowling Alley, Giannetto’s, Duneland and Iechyd Da,” says Silver.