Pizza Reviews
I can’t find an “official” Pizza Week in the US, but, gosh darn it, there oughta be one!
…and so, it’s my pleasure to announce that from this year forward, President’s Day – a rather lackluster holiday at best – shall be the kick off of Pizza Week.
In honor of Pizza Week, I’m going to risk gaining 10-15 pounds and try to eat pizza every day this week.
Enjoy this the first lonelocust.com sanctioned Pizza Week!
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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
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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.
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This is two weeks in a row that I’ve eaten in a residential house converted into a pizza place. (The other review has been delayed due to a fact-checking issue and will be posted after this one.)
Pizza City is a weird little place which is only open 5 days a week: Sun, Tue, Thr, Fri & Sat) and then only for dinner. They’re also open for lunch from Thursday to Saturday.
Remember to consult your Magic 8 Ball to decide if they’re going to be open when you’re hungry for pizza.
As always, when I go into these quirky little places, I’m expecting something really special. Chains and upscale fru-fru places rarely have good pizza. It’s the little mom and pop shops where I expect to find the next great pizza.
This pizza was an extremely near miss. As I was eating it, I felt like I might really like this pizza but for one problem: the entire flavor was overwhelmed by the taste of garlic powder. (Not fresh garlic – the dry stuff.)
Towards the center, I think I could taste the cheese some, and it wasn’t bad, but everything else was drowned out by the garlic powder.
When you reached the outer crust, it was exactly like eating a bread stick with garlic powder stuck to it – not a garlic bread stick where the garlic had been melded into the flavor, but just bread with garlic powder poured on it.
Service was a little slow, but the owner/manager/pizza maker was very friendly but quite busy. Apart from a delivery person he seemed to be the only one working.
I’m going to give them a second visit in the near future because it’s possible that they just spilled too much garlic powder on the pizza. (Although, my party had two other pizzas and they all reported the exact same thing.) Besides, I need a better picture of the pizza. Apparently the garlic altered the focal properties of the air in the localized vacinity of the pizza. (Or it might be bad photography.)
Pizza City
4447 N 7th Ave
Phoenix, AZ
602.604.2489
Cost:10″ Pepperoni, $4.36 or $0.06 per square inch
(Note: this is one of the cheapest pizzas per square inch I’ve reviewed. It only achieved $0.06 by rounding, the actual cost was $0.055)
Conclusion: The jury is still out, but if you really like garlic (powder) this might be the pizza for you.
Stay tuned for a follow-up.
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I’ve added a new static page explaining the general guidelines of my pizza reviews.
It should appear on the right side of all pages and you can refer to it at any time if you need reminding on my methodology.
I so needed this pizza! It couldn’t have come at a better time.
The last few pizzas I’ve had have been disappointing at best and so, almost in despair, I tried the Phoenix House of Pizza.
Irene and Michelle had just eaten at the Chinese festival. I scrupulously avoid eating at the festival and so by the time we left, I was starving. From my list of pizza places to try, I knew that Phoenix House of Pizza wasn’t far away and I really needed a good pizza. I only hoped they could deliver.
Phoenix House of Pizza sits just north of Van Buren on 48th Street, behind a Circle K in a rundown, tiny old-style strip mall. It’s a curious little place that immediately says, “Latino” instead of “Italian” when you walk in the door.
The menu says they’ve been in business since 1992. My first reaction is that it’s in a poor location, but while eating I could see the tanks of the Motorola plant just a couple blocks away and I knew they had plenty of custom in the area.
To dispense with the mystery: This pizza was a good, solid entry in the New York-style pizza category. I completely enjoyed it.
That’s not to say everything was perfect. The smallest pizza they serve is 14″ which is, in my opinion, too large to cook properly. (That’s why I always try to review the smallest pizza available.) It’s also too large for me to eat by myself.
Since pizza-by-the-slice is invariably just re-heated pizza, that’s never good enough for review purposes. When I’m forced to review larger pizzas, I try to take the inherent structural difficulties into account.
Toppings: Good, good cheese, sauce and pepperoni.
Crust: Tasty, browned across the bottom, well-cooked at the edges, floppy in the middle.
As stated, it’s a good solid entry, and I’d recommend it to anyone in the area.
Cost: 14″ pepperoni, $10.34, cost per square inch: $0.07 (0.067)
Recommended
Phoenix House of Pizza
326 N 48 St.
Phoenix, AZ
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On general principle I don’t review frozen pizza, they’re all bad, but that doesn’t stop me from eating them occasionally. The worst pizza is still better than the best cauliflower dish and they’re so darned convenient.
One thing that does fascinate me about frozen pizza, and indeed about any frozen food, is the money and research that goes into the technology to improve the product. Pizza, in particular, has always been problematic. Frozen bread is tricky to begin with, but add a layer of topping and the problem is multiplied.
I tried DiGiorno’s rising crust pizza when it first came out, and really wasn’t impressed. (I never had another.) But curiosity got the best of me the other day when I saw DiGiorno’s new microwave rising crust. (Cooking a frozen pizza in an oven is hard enough, a microwave adds yet another obstacle.)
Late last night, I tried the first of four that I bought on sale.
As you can see from the pictures, they’ve developed an upper ring that sits over the crust, presumably this helps crisp the crust, although my initial thought was that it might prevent it from drying out.
Normally my microwave cooks things faster rather than longer than the recommended cook time, however, I programmed it to cook the longest length of recommended time.
The result: The center of the pizza was still refrigerator cold, the outer crust was somewhat blackened and had the taste and consistency of dried-out Play-Doh.
It’s going to be tough getting through all four pizzas.
Western Pizza (or perhaps Western Pizza Express is a Canadian chain with one location in Phoenix.
Looking at their website, they operate two types of locations: take out and delivery only (Western Pizza Express) and facilities that include dine-in also (Western Pizza). If that’s the case, the Phoenix location is a Western Pizza, although their menu says, “Express”. Your guess is as good as mine.
This pizza has more of a bready crust, but it wasn’t bad, and was properly cooked throughout – a welcome change after the last few pizzas I’ve had at other places.
The pizza was loaded with good-tasting pepperoni, a full layer under the cheese and then small slices on top of the cheese.
The cheese was good too.
All-in-all it was a good, serviceable pizza, my only complaint was their “…’family secret’ recipe for our incredible tomato sauce…” as they put it.
There was another person eating pizza with me, and without consulting each other we came to exact same conclusion: It’s barbecue sauce, not pizza sauce.
If you like a really sweet pizza, this might be for you, but it was a bit too much for me. Although, to my surprise, it wasn’t as awful as it sounds.
It was a nice place and I might eat there again, although I’d be inclined to try something else on their menu. They have a variety of subs, salads, wings, appetizers and desserts.
Conclusion: Not for everyone, but worth a try, maybe, I suppose, or not.
Price: 8″ Pepperoni, $7.50
Price per square inch: $0.15 (0.149)
Western Pizza
Western Pizza Express
4801 E. Indian School Road
Phoenix, AZ
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How’d you like this thing staring at you while you eat your pizza?
They haven’t released all of Scooby-Doo on DVD yet, but if they ever do, I’m pretty sure this one is in there.
It’s the episode where every time Shaggy and Scooby eat pizza, this ghost shows up and scares them into a hunger strike.
Pizza is subjective. I’ll be the first to admit that.
One person’s ultimate pizza is another man’s greasy cardboard. Some days when I’m eating a review pizza, I think, “no one could like this”.
Other days I think, “this isn’t my cup of tea, but I could see how someone else could love it.” And so it was while I was eating at Pino’s Pizza Al Centro.
Right off the bat, I’m not inclined to return, but I’ll try to be as detailed as I can in this review to let you decide as you see fit.
I generally see pizza lovers falling into two major camps: Foundationers and Topping Heads. I’m a Foundationer.
A Foundationer is not a crackpot religion, but a pizza philosophical position. In short, a crust failure is a total pizza failure.
(While it isn’t a crackpot religion, if anyone would like it to be one, just send me money and I think something can be arranged. Similarly, we are looking for someone to write a wikipedia article on this philosophical movement.)
Meanwhile, Topping Heads think everything above the sauce is the key to a masterful pizza. They’re just plain wrong, but I have to say that to keep my membership up in the Foundationers.
Keep all that in mind as we move along in this review.
Pino’s has been just off Central on Thomas for I don’t know how long. I’ve been passing it on my way home for as long as I can remember although I won’t go so far as to say It’s been there for the full 12 years I’ve been driving home that way.
It’s never open when I pass it. For the longest time, I thought it was out of business. In fact, it’s only open weekdays between 10 AM and 2 PM and again from 5 PM to 8 PM and I’m almost never driving that way during those times.
Today I made the effort to get there during lunch hour. I was expecting them to only have a couple small tables (looking through the front window gives the impression of a cramped space and no dining area), but actually they have a good-sized dining room with 20 or more tables.
Even though I ate an early lunch, it was quite busy.
They have several pizzas in a serving area for pizza by-the-slice, although I did notice that the crowds seemed more inclined towards have pastas and sandwiches rather than pizza.
My pizza was a 10″ (their smallest) pepperoni. It looked really good when served up but it did not, for me, live up to the promise of its appearance.
Starting from the top:
Unfortunately, this was the bitterest, most smoky flavored pepperoni I’d tasted in a long time. That, in itself, is not a show-stopper, there’s always Italian sausage as a fallback.
The inside portion of the crust was raw. “Raw” in this case meaning “wet dough”. This is exactly what happens when you put too much cheese (or other toppings) on pizza. The bottom browns up nice, but the top of the crust remains uncooked.
I took a picture of it for demonstration purposes, but my cell phone camera has no macro and the picture was not clear enough to post. I was able to measure it though. There was a thin layer of cooked crust on the bottom and 3 times as much uncooked dough sitting on top of that. If you figure that the cooked crust will have risen, that’s really a lot more 75% uncooked.
As a Foundationist, the uncooked crust is inexcusable, and yet I know many people who wouldn’t think twice about eating a pizza with double or triple cheese on it.
If that’s you, then this pizza might be for you, but if a well-prepared crust reigns supreme in your book, give this one a miss.
10″ Pepperoni Pizza, $6.95 = $0.09 (0.088) per square inch
Conclusion: Topping Heads Only (But you might really like this one.)
Pino’s Pizza Al Centro
139 W Thomas
Phoenix, AZ
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