It’s been quite a week. Although I’ve eaten pizza, on average, at least once a week since I was on solid food (that equates to thousands of pizzas, by the way), I don’t think I’ve eaten pizza 7 days in a row since I was in college. (I think my personal collegiate record of pizza 50 days in a row will remain unbroken.)
I think next week will have to be “Salad Week”.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week
Thursday, my first choice for a pizza to review was Spinato’s, but it was not to be.
Spinato’s (on Glendale) has been taunting me for some time now. I’ve never driven past it at a convenient time to stop and have a pizza, and, as it is tucked away in an oddly positioned strip mall, it’s very easy to miss.
Much to our surprise, when we arrived Thursday around 7:30, it was packed, there were people standing outside waiting to be seated. As we were hauling two small children, we decided to move onto a backup location, but I was intrigued that they had such a good business on a Thursday night.
When I returned home that night, I began researching Spinato’s. I was surprised to learn they’d been in business in Phoenix since 1974 and had four locations around the valley. How they’d remained under my radar is beyond me.
I also discovered an unusual number of online reviews that were all positively glowing, although the fact that many of them singled out spinach pizza as Spinato’s best was worrying.
And so it was with a lot of anticipation that we entered Spinato’s today, just after they opened for the day.
The restaurant is a nice, family-friendly establishment (In fact, the motto “The Family Pizzeria” is emblazoned on all their tables, so it is the market they cater to.)
Their primary pizza is a Chicago-style thin crust, but they also serve a thick (Siciliano) style. I had the lil’ (7″) thin crust pepperoni, my wife had the 7″ thick crust for comparison. Honestly, we didn’t see much difference in the thickness of the two pizzas, although her had a thicker outer edge and had pizza sauce spurted all over the top like a ketchup-colored dessert frosting.
The Pizza
I’m not usually a fan of Chicago style crusts (thick or thin) because they’re usually more like bread and less like a crust. Spinato’s was no exception. The dough was well-cooked, but soft and puffy, but the flavor was good.
The pepperoni was… unnoticeable. Buried underneath the cheese, I completely forgot it was there until I was halfway through the pizza. The cheese was plentiful and good.
The problem with this pizza was the sauce. It’s sweet, really sweet, and therefore overpowering. It was also laid on heavy.
Buried just underneath a solid layer of cheese, this ocean of sauce tended to flow away from where you bit, forming pressured bubbles of hot liquid that, when ruptured spurted geysers towards innocent passersby.
I burned myself when one jet shot out over my hand like a fountain of blood in a Sam Peckinpah movie. I found myself planning my bites with great care to prevent a repeat.
Still, it was a nice place to eat with friendly staff and efficient service. In spite of the sauce, it was still a pretty good pizza. I’ll recommend it to others with the caveat that the sauce is just too sweet for me.
Cost: 7″ Pepperoni = $5.20, cost per square inch = $0.14 (0.135) making it quite expensive. (The next smallest pizza is 12″ at $8.70 or $0.08 per square inch bringing it down to a more reasonable number.)
Conclusion: Recommended (but beware the sauce!)
Spinato’s has 4 locations, but the review was at:
Spinato’s Pizza
1219 E Glendale
Phoenix, Az
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review
My son said his first intelligible word today, both my wife and I heard it clear as a bell.
We each spend a lot of time saying “Mommy” and “Daddy” to him in the hopes he’ll echo it back to us.
So how were we rewarded?
He’s recently taken to holding out his finger so that one of us will hold out our finger and tough them together. When I do that, I first touch his finger and then reach over and touch his nose and say, “beep.”
Today I did that and he looked right at me and said, “beep.”
I suppose an onomatopoeia is a word and we have to count it, don’t we?
Monday, when searching for pizza, I stopped a Mamma Mia Brick Oven Pizza first, but there was nowhere to eat and the smallest pizza was 14″, so I grabbed a menu and planned for a weekday lunch visit from my office.
When I picked up the menu, the restaurant smelled heavenly! (Admittedly, I was hungry at the time, but it really smelled good.)
Their menu says, “Est 1980” but I can only assume this was at another location. I lived in this neighborhood in the late 80’s and I’m sure it was a different restaurant back then. I also note that their menu shows they won best pizza awards in New Jersey.
They do have a few seats and I could have eaten there today, but it’s just too much pizza for one person, so I called in a take-out order. I arrived early to make sure I got it right when it came out of the oven.
While I was waiting, I was really beginning to wonder what the fascination with the Rat Pack and license plates is. This is the second restaurant in two days so adorned.
It was also clear while I was waiting that this was a restaurant that was developing a loyal following. The owner(?) greeted several of the people by name and the dialog with many of the others showed familiarity. It’s certainly been a long time since I’ve heard so many unsolicited testimonials on the taste of the food.
I could hardly wait.
It was 7 minutes from the oven back to my office and onto the plates, which is at the extreme upper limit of acceptable delay for eating. Still, the pizza was plenty hot.
The pizza was New York style and much too droopy in the middle. It had to be eaten with a fork.
Apart from that annoyance, this was a great tasting pizza. It had lots of cheese, pepperoni and sauce and all of it was good.
The crust around the outer edge was good too, but it had an unusual flavor I couldn’t quite place. The nearest thing I could compare the flavor to would be butter, but I don’t think that’s what it was.
The is definitely a shop worth stopping at for a pizza.
Cost: 14″ Pepperoni = $10.45, cost per square inch = $0.07 (0.068)
Mamma Mia Brick Oven Pizza
3937 E. Indian School Rd
Phoenix, Az
Conclusion: Recommended
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review
Pizza Week rolled onto Thursday with an evening visit to Pat’s Pizza Plus.
Pat’s is not much to look at, located as it is in a ramshackle old strip mall on E Glendale Rd. Inside it’s got the same kind of character.
I’ve never understood why some restaurants feel the need to cover their walls with memorabilia from the Rat Pack or Marilyn Monroe? Even more mystifying are old license plates. Pat’s has an abundance of both.
The pizza itself was what I’ve been referring to as “California Style” and was… average and inoffensive.
We had two pizzas at out table, both were a little soggy, one more so than the other.
Crust, pepperoni, cheese and sauce were all… good but unremarkable.
The restaurant was doing a brisk trade for late on Thursday night, so they must be keeping their customers happy. I certainly would have no problem recommended them to anyone in the neighborhood, but I wouldn’t recommend a pilgrimage there.
12″ Pepperoni pizza = $8.74, Cost per Square inch = $0.08 (0.077)
Pat’s Pizza plus
1135 E Glendale Ave
Phoenix, Az
Conclusion: Recommended, but unremarkable
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review
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
To quote the blurb on the menu from Slice of Sicily:
Founded in early 1999 by Bill and Donna, Slice of Sicily is now regarded as the pizzeria of choice in the Northeast Phoenix, with a combination of 25 years experience, old family recipes and using only the finest ingredients, the art of creating the best traditional Italian food around has been mastered. As for service, once you walk in… you are family!
While I’m not sure that I’d consider 38th Street and Indian School to be “Northeast Phoenix” certainly I can attest to the family approach to the service. It’s one of the friendliest restaurants I’ve eaten in.
It was a holiday, and business was apparently slow, but most of the customers who came in appeared to be regulars and the staff knew their orders before the customers did.
It wouldn’t matter if it was the friendliest restaurant in the world, it would be all for naught if the food wasn’t good.
My pizza was pretty good. I’d have no problem recommending it.
It’s a typical New York style and the smallest available size is 14″, which, typically, results in a floppy center, and this pie was no exception to that unfortunate rule. Despite that, the crust was properly browned on the bottom and tested good.
Similarly, the cheese and the sauce were quite good. My only reservation on this pizza was that I wasn’t too crazy about the strong-flavored pepperoni. In future, I’ll probably try for a cheese only or sausage pizza.
Price: 14″ = $10.45, Price per square inch = $0.07 (0.068)
Conclusion: Recommended
Slice of Sicily
3724 E Indian School
Phoenix, AZ
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review
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!
Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week
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