Category: Reviews

Ah late Christmas presents! A coworker took the crew out for pizza as a belated Christmas present. We decided to go to Oregano’s

Oregano’s is a local Arizona chain, although somewhat of a late-comer to the Phoenix market. I ate in one in Flagstaff many years ago and bemoaned the fact they didn’t have one closer to home.

Generally I’ve had stuffed pizzas, but today I decided to try the Chicago Thin crust.

The smallest they have is 14″ which they claim feeds 1-2. Unlike most pizza places where the estimate is overstated (“Our 8″ pizza serves 2” Ha!) Oregano’s is understated. Few single people of normal capacity could polish this pie off in one sitting.

The crust was very thin, but cooked and crisp throughout, with very little droopage (is that a word?) even on the center pieces.

It is cut into squares rather than slices and that just plain sucks no matter what pizza it is. The pieces in the middle just don’t have that crusty last bite to complete the experience – although they do make good pieces to give to others and pretend you’re sharing magnanimously.

Otherwise, good all around. Good crust, good pepperoni, good cheese, good sauce. A little salty.

I still prefer the stuffed pizza, but for that you’ve gotta wait the better part of an hour, so don’t order one if you’re dying for food right now.

Oregano’s always seems to be crowded, no matter which one you go to, so go at an off time or prepare to wait.

They have other items and, although I tend to go with pizza, their sandwiches are large and good.

14″ Pepperoni Pizza $10.74, cost per square inch: $0.07 (0.070).

Conclusion: Recommended.

Oregano’s Pizza
1008 E Camelback
(for other locations, see their website)

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I felt my review of Red Brick Pizza was somewhat unfair. Considering how much they bragged up their oven technology, it seemed I must have gotten an off-day pizza. They could hardly have called what I got “crispy”.

Today, I took the family in during the middle of the day and tried again. This time we had a more rounded meal.

My daughter had breadsticks: Like the crust, the breadsticks were nearly flavorless.

My wife had some form of combo pizza. Before she’d ever read my review of Red Brick, she told me the ham and pepperoni must be made of tofu, as they had no flavor, although the sausage and bacon were flavorful.

My pizza was nearly identical to my previous one. Pictured here you can see just how “crispy” the crust was.

We timed the pizza, it was 12 minutes from order to pizza on the table. We did watch the process and from the moment the pizzas went in the oven it was only 6 minutes to the table.

Final recommendation: Not recommended.

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For several months I’ve been noticing the Red Brick Pizza on Camelback, but, with just a glimpse inside, I’ve had the impression it’s really too trendy to be a place to take the family, so I’ve avoided hauling the Glover clan in for a review.

Tonight, Irene and the kids were out and I decided this was the time to try them. How bad could a guy look eating a pizza alone on a Friday night?

My previous impressions were mostly dispelled when I walked in, it’s more of a fast-food place and there’s certainly no reason to believe it might not be “kid friendly”.

Red Brick Pizza has about 7 locations in the Phoenix area. I remember reading about them in the past because of “technological innovations” in pizza preparation technology.

Their menu proclaims that their 1000º pizza oven produces “…a perfect thin, crisp crust center with a golden brown crust.” It also claims it will be “…fresh, fabulous in just 3 minutes” with the disclaimer that 3 minutes is the “approximate bake time.”

When it comes to pizza, I’m not a fan of “fast”, but at the same time, I do not discount that technology might be developed that could compensate for good old fashioned preparation.

For starters, the 3 minutes claim was bunk. When I came in, there were 2 guys sitting at a table without pizza. I ordered my pizza, got my drink, sat down and waited 6-10 minutes reading the menu. That’s when I discovered the 3 minute claim. By this point it was far past 3 minutes and when a pizza came out and was brought out, I thought, “10 minutes isn’t that bad.” That’s when I discovered it was for the guys who’d been waiting. My pizza came another 6 minutes later. Total time, estimated, somewhere between 12 and 16 minutes.

I had a plain crust, although several “gourmet” crusts are also available. If the plain crust isn’t good to begin with, tarting it up with parmesan, sun-dried tomato basil, chipotle or roasted red peppers isn’t going to help. The picture accompanying this review is a bit deceptive. The pizza is not as thick as it appears here and can truly be considered a thin crust pizza. The maximum crust width was about 0.25″ at the outer edge.

While it was browned all across the bottom, it certainly was not “crisp” and flopped unless folded. It was so thin that it really didn’t have any noticeable flavor until I reached the outer edge, which was dry and flavorless, luckily there wasn’t much of it. I found myself eating the outer crust first so that I would have crustless pizza for my last bites.

They also make a big deal about their “healthier” toppings, including leaner meats and cholesterol free olive oil.

I quite liked the sauce, but it was very reminiscent of some other pizza sauce I’ve had. It took me an hour or so to remember where I’d tasted it before: Village Inn Pizza, which pretty much closed down 25-30 years ago in Arizona. My memory might not be perfect on that recollection. (Although I did stumble across a Village Inn Pizza a few years ago and the flavor was exactly as I remembered it.)

The cheese was fine, although if I had to guess, I’d say it was part-skim instead of whole milk mozzarella.

I was on the last piece before I realized I hadn’t even noticed the pepperoni. Not only did it have no discernible flavor, it was so soft that it had no textural difference from the sauce and cheese.

Apart from the outer crust, this wasn’t an offensive pizza and if they could really cook and serve it in 3 minutes, it would be a great lunchtime burger alternative.

I had the 9″ pizza, which cost $6.25 without beverage (although the printed menu and the board menu differ in 3 places). The #2 combo which includes a drink at $6.50 is a better deal.

Using the $6.25 cost, the pizza is about $0.10 per square inch.

Neutral rating

Red Brick Pizza
1650 E Camelback Rd, Suite 180
Phoenix, AZ
602.212.1400

Update 01/08/2006, read my follow-up review here

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30 minutes after the first pizza, I was back at the table with this pizza.

Cooling the oven failed to have the correct results, the stone didn’t loose temperature, but the ambient temperature apparently dropped. The second pizza was still burnt on the bottom, but the toppings failed to cook.

Another thing I noticed, the second dough was actually harder to work than the first, exactly the opposite of what I was lead to expect.

All-in-all a disappointing pizza year-end experience.

2006 will be the year where I perfect this!

And on that note, I wish you all a Happy New Year and many good pizzas!

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No life-long search for the ultimate pizza could be complete without attempting to take matters into one’s own hands and create it oneself.

I have spent years looking for pizza crust recipes, and no matter how many I find and try, I’m amazed at one salient point: There is so very little variation in the recipes as to be almost meaningless.

So from where does the variation come from? Is it the flour, the oven, the yeast or what?

I’ve tried every variation imaginable and have been unable to find a consistently good-tasting and properly-textured pizza crust.

I was pleasantly surprised when I recently saw an old episode of Good Eats explaining the bread-making aspects of pizza dough.

It delved into the importance of the gluten content (I knew that), but more importantly, it explained how working the dough in the correct fashion directly altered the texture and the flavor of the finished product.

And so, yesterday, just in time for New Year’s Eve, I implemented version 1.0 of this pizza dough.

To really make the whole thing really experimental, I went ahead and make the Good Eats version of a red sauce to use on it also. The whole process took 24 hours and you can see the picture of the first pizza here.

In the interests of fairness, I think I should review my own pizza efforts, so here goes:

If I’d received this pizza in a restaurant, I’d have sent it back.

Although it looks nice on top, the bottom is burnt black, clearly I had a temperature control failure with the pizza stone, it was simply too hot and burned the bottom before the toppings could finish cooking.

Other problems, the sauce was too sweet and had a carroty flavor. (The sauce does have a small amount of carrot in it, but the flavor was too dominant in the final sauce.)

The flavor of the crust was, where possible to tell, not bad, but the texture was still wrong, being too fine (more like a loaf of bread rather than a crust.) There were some good pockets of air, leading me to believe I’m on the right path.

The cheese was good, but I’ve been using the same personally-developed mixture of whole-milk mozzarella, white cheddar and provolone for several years. I think it works quite nicely when I’m not just using mozzarella.

One of the issues while working the dough was that it was too elastic, pulling back too much as I worked the dough out to shape. Supposedly, that eases up if you leave the dough out longer (say, 30 minutes.)

Luckily, the recipe created two pizza doughs, and so while I ate this pizza, I let the other rest in the hopes of a superior product on the second try. I also let the oven temperature lower.

Review of Version 1.1 to follow.

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Here’s another half-review.

I was taken to lunch the other day to Pier 49 Pizza, a new restaurant, somewhere in the Phoenix/Tempe borderland.

I didn’t get a menu, and didn’t notice the prices, so I don’t have price/quantity information, but as for the pizza, here goes…

I gotta say, I completely agree with Alton Brown that the crust of a pizza is the essential foundation of a pizza and the toppings are just a covering, sometimes disguising the underlying problems with the crust.

That said, I love bread, any kind of bread, but not every kind of bread should be made into pizza dough.

The list of inappropriate bread doughs is probably endless, but for the purposes of this review, let’s start with this one: Sourdough is not pizza dough.

The flavor and the texture are just wrong, and so Pier 49’s pizza gets off on the wrong foot.

As for the toppings, both the cheese and the pepperoni were unremarkable. In fact, the pepperoni tasted like the pre-sliced Hormel pepperoni you can buy at the supermarket.

The sauce was tasty, and I quite liked it, but the pedestrian toppings and light, airy, odd-flavored crust just made for a passable, but easily forgettable pizza experience.

I can’t recommend the place.

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Things are slowly returning to normal around the house, although the Christmas holidays tend to make everything a little out of the ordinary. Most people had a four-day weekend, but, of course, I didn’t as the State doesn’t close for the day after Thanksgiving. They might as well have, it was nearly abandoned.

Anyway, it was the holiday weekend that lead me to try Venezia’s Pizza.

Since my disappointing discovery that all the Round Table Pizzas in Taiwan appear to be gone, I’ve been meaning to go to Phoenix’s one remaining Round Table since we got back. We arranged to meet some friends who live in the area on that far and distant shore. (It’s just before you drop off the end of the planet or hit Albuquerque, whichever comes first.)

Upon arrival, it was closed. Everything appeared normal inside, it was just closed. (I tried calling them this evening and the phone just rings off the hook. To quote virtually ever character in Star Wars, “I have a bad feeling about this.”)

We altered our plans and didn’t have pizza until later than evening, far, far away on Pecos Rd at Venezia’s Pizza.

Before I commit commentary on this pizza, let me just point out that I did not eat a proper control pizza and do not consider this to be an “official” Lone Locust review. We had the pizza as take-away and it was extra-large, two things that always diminish the quality of a pizza.

For starters, it wasn’t fully cooked: No shock there, no one ever manages to get a 16“ pizza cooked through to the middle, that’s why I review smaller sizes.

However, the rest of my opinion is favorable. It’s one of the few pizzas I’ve had in a long time that you could clearly tell in the taste that everything was freshly made in the restaurant. OK, I doubt they actually made the mozzarella in the store, but both the crust and particularly the sauce were fresh and didn’t come from Sysco Food Services.

In that respect, I liked it, and will have to go back for a proper review soon.

Venezia’s has three locations, all on the east side of the Phoenix metro area.

The Extra large cheese pizza was $11.25. (Our usual pizza pricing comparison is based on the smallest pepperoni pizza per inch and would have been $0.08.)

Preliminary conclusion: warrants further study

[Revision 3/11/2006, Follow-Up Review]

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