Month: February 2006

Pizza week can also be a time of desperation and despair.

My pizza week had been all planned out, but a change in my work schedule today resulted in my being unable to review the pizza I wanted. I had to shift my plan to have pizza for dinner, but my wife had planned an elaborate meal.

I thought certain that I was going to miss my goal of pizza everyday this week. And then, on the drive home, a shining ray of mediocrity hit me: Peter Piper Pizza. If I’m not mistaken, they’re a locally grown chain that was expanded outside of Phoenix, even outside the US.

How do they do it? The same way McDonald’s sells hamburgers: they pitch to the kids.

I remember quite clearly some 30 years ago when I lived in Oracle, a small town outside of Tucson. We used to get TV reception from Phoenix, but we never went there. I’d see commercials for restaurants and stores that I thought I’d never eat in.

One of those was Peter Piper Pizza. They used to have a spokesman named Tony – a middle-aged, pot-bellied guy in a chef’s hat, standing at a counter, working a big lump of dough.

He’d say things like, “Why does pizza cost so much? It’s just some dough with some cheese on it?”

It’s just that attitude that accounts for the results of a typical Peter Piper Pizza.

What always really get my attention about those commercials was that Tony had a bit of speech problem. When he got animated and spoke out about the injustices of high-priced pizza, he kept visibly spitting in that big lump of dough he was working.

I know it was prop dough, and he wasn’t really the cook, but come on, people! That’s just gross.

I’ve scoffed at a lot of Peter Piper Pizzas over the years, but today was the first time I really tried to analyze one. (Hey, I take my pizza reviews seriously) Here goes:

There’s nothing wrong with this pizza that a good crust transplant couldn’t cure.

Their crust is just not good. It’s dry and has a consistency that is frequently compared to cardboard or dried play-doh. Those comparisons aren’t fair. I can’t think of anything to compare it to. It’s a bread, it’s not quite a cracker, it’s not quite a crusty bread stick. I just don’t know what it is and I spent a lot of time thinking about it today. (I was up till 3:00 AM last night/this morning, so it was easy for my mind to wax philosophical.)

It’s just not a proper pizza dough, and that’s the point where always I’ve dismissed it. In fact, there really wasn’t anything wrong with the rest of it. The toppings and cheese are unexciting, but passable. The blame all comes back to the crust.

How do they stay in business? It’s CHEAP, and most people don’t care what their pizza tastes like.

Cost: 7″ Pepperoni pizza, $2.49! Cost per square inch = $0.06 (0.647)

Conclusion: I can’t recommend the pizza, but they’ve got games for the kids and it’s a cheap way to feed ’em

Peter Piper Pizza has various locations

Review pizza came from

3403 N 7th Ave
Phoenix, AZ

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review

Pizza Week is a time of joy and forgiveness.

And it is the spirit of forgiveness that I returned to Rosati’s for lunch.

As you probably don’t recall in a previous entry, (No Good Deed Ever Goes Unpunished, July, 2005) Rosati’s by my office seriously botched up our order and did a very poor job of trying to keep a customer.

Despite the fact that they’ve served me some of the best pizzas I’ve ever had, I haven’t been back for 8 months.

I’d like to say it was the spirits of Pizza Week (Past, Present & Future) that brought me back to Rosati’s, but it wasn’t. They called my wife, unsolicited, last week and offered her a free pizza. My guess is that they’d noticed she hadn’t ordered in a long time and were trying to lure customers back. (Notice to merchants: keeping a good repeat customer is better than scrambling for new ones.)

The ploy worked.

I’ve had their stuffed crust pizzas, which I really like, and I had their thin or “original” crust, which I wasn’t as crazy about. Their thin crust is wafer thin and, although I like thin crust pizzas, for some reason Rosati’s just didn’t click for me.

I consider both stuffed pizzas and wafer thin pizzas to be out of the range of a “normal” pizza, so when given a choice of multiple types, I will generally try to review the crust most like the “typical” thickness.

For this pizza, I had a 12″ “double-dough” pepperoni pizza. Double-dough turns out to be about twice as thick as the thin crust, and just about the right thickness.

Normally, I eat the pizza on location, but Rosati’s, like many a pizza place these days, caters to delivery and take-out. The near proximity to my office made for only a 4 minute delay from door to table, and it was still piping hot.

This was an excellent pizza. The only negative was that the crust around the outer edge was a bit dry and floury, as if the dough didn’t have quite enough water in it. There was an unusual horizontal layer in the crust, which leads me to believe the double-dough is, in fact, two thin crusts cooked together, which explain a bit of the dryness.

The pepperoni was good and hidden under the cheese, but there was plenty of it. Likewise the cheese was good.

I think I might have finally figured out what, in particular, makes me like Rosati’s pizza: It’s the sauce. It’s, without doubt the best tasting sauce I’ve had and it really adds a lot to the flavor of the pizza.

Incidentally, the staff and crew were a lot friendlier and efficient.

Cost: 12″ (Double-dough) pepperoni, $10.95, cost per square inch = $0.10 (0.097)

Conclusion: Recommended

various locations around the valley

Review pizza came from
Rosati’s of Arcadia
4041 E Thomas
Phoenix, AZ

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review

I thought Godfather’s Pizza went out of business 20+ years ago. Once there were several of them, then they disappeared. It’s been so long since I’d eaten in one, I had completely forgotten what it was like.

Now I find they’ve re-colonized the east valley and today I got the opportunity to try them. Even having just eaten one, I cannot remember if it bore any similarity to their pizzas of yesteryear.

There’s no point in beating around the bush on this one, I didn’t enjoy this experience.

Godfather’s has three kinds of crust: original, golden and thin. I chose original. Mistake.

While I don’t like to use one pizza to describe another, in this case, the pizza I had was virtually indistinguishable from the ubiquitous Pizza Hut pan pizza, only not quite as well cooked. Pizza Hut sometimes manages to take their pan crust and produce a crunchy outer shell, which helps a bit.

Godfather’s was cooked, but soft and bread-like throughout.

I just can’t recommend this pizza, and there are 100s of pizza places I still have to try before I’d go back and see if their golden or thin crusts are any better.

One thing might get me back, they do have a pizza buffet every day, “all day” and, if I’m passing someday, I might stop in and try some samples of the other crusts, just to see if it’s worth going back for a proper review.

Cost: Sizes weren’t listed, but the pizza I had was a “small” for $8. Using a napkin ruler, it measured out to 11″ in diameter.

Price per square inch: $0.08 (0.084)

Not recommended, but it seems a good place to take a hungry soccer team because of the liberal buffet hours.

Godfather’s Pizza is a chain, but in this case I ate at this location:

Godfather’s Pizza
4929 W Chandler Blvd
Chandler, AZ

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Restaurant, Review

Pizza Heaven has recently moved to a new location on 7th Street.

It’s in one of those previously residential homes that have been converted to a business, and they’ve done a nice job. The move is so recent, the paint was still wet on the walls when we visited.

It’s a comfortable restaurant, and the staff were friendly and attentive.

In addition to being a New Times Best of Phoenix winner at some point, their menu brags that Channel 3 awarded them “the cleanest kitchen in the Valley.”

I like a nice, clean kitchen, but I’d be happier if Channel 3 could come up with something better to say, like “good tasting food” or something.

That notwithstanding, I really had a good feeling about this pizza by the time it arrived. When it did arrive, it was a beauty. Rarely have I seen a pizza brought to the table that looked so… right.

After such an auspicious start, it was anti-climactic after that.

The crust itself was done, but very, very light and insubstantial. It was cooked, but it was airy like a loaf of white bread. It didn’t really add anything to the overall flavor of the pizza.

The pepperoni was just ordinary. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Hormel, pre-sliced, just like you’d buy at the supermarket. Similarly, the sauce was just ordinary – nothing wrong with it but really nothing to recommend it.

The cheese finished off a perfect 4 out of 4 ordinaries. It wasn’t particularly flavorful and as the pizza sat for a while, it began to coagulate and breakup like extremely low-fat or imitation cheeses do.

Completely unremarkable pizza, but it’s a nice place to eat.

They do have sandwiches, pastas, wings, calzones and sodas. It was such a nice place, I wouldn’t write this place off and will certainly go back and try something else – or maybe even try another pizza.

The menu says they have wireless internet access too, although pizza sauce splashed on my pristine white iBook would not be a welcome event.

Pizza Heaven
5150 N 7th Street
Phoenix, Arizona
602.277.8800

Cost of 12″ Pepperoni pizza: $9.00. Cost per square inch: $0.08 (0.080)

Conclusion: While I’m not wowed by their pizza, this is a place worth giving a try.

Technorati Tags: Food, Pizza, Restaurant, Review