can you tell just by looking what pizza is good and what pizza is bad?
a lot of times, yes. but you will be tempted by the bad. so, there are two types of pizza sellers. the ones where you go in and sit down and eat your own individual round pizza with a carafe of wine and the ones where you stand up and order your pizza by the gram (actually the 100 gram increment) and then either stand there eating the pizza or you walk away eating your pizza.
with the second kind, it's usually pretty easy to tell. if it's a normal eating time, and there aren't a lot of people waiting to buy pizza, it probably isn't very good. they should definitely be bringing fresh pizzas out constantly to cut and sell. not standing by a couple of cold pizzas that they'll heat up for you. and they should either be selling mostly red pizza or mostly white (or mostly both). but not mostly pizzas with toppings. that's not to say you can't get good pizza with lots of toppings at somewhere where no one else is buying, but it's risky. it's kinda hard to find one of these places that's good. there's like one good one in every neighborhood that everyone eats at and maybe 9 that may or may not be good, but that don't have crowds of people at them, so it's chancy. if it's not a tourist area, then there is just the one good one.
it's harder with the sit down pizza sellers. follow a guide book, or an internet recommendo, or try to get a look at some of the pizzas before you enter and sit down. if you see a ton of people there it's probably good, unless it's in a heavy traffic area. it probably won't be open for lunch if it's good. if they sell a bunch of other food besides pizza, that's riskier too.
