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  • Hit By A Red Brick


    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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  • Verrado


    Yesterday, we went out to Verrado, which is one of those master-planned communities on the unbelievably far outskirts of the Phoenix-metropolitan area.

    Personally, I have strong misgivings about people who choose to live out in the boonies. I understand the rationale. Who wouldn’t want to get out of the damned, polluted and dirty city? As cities go, Phoenix may supposedly be one of the best-run in the world, but it is undeniably ugly, sitting as it does on the most unpleasantly ugly expanse of desert Arizona has to offer.

    You need to get a long way out of town before the land takes on any character.

    However, while I understand the desire to get away, I’m offended by the complete irresponsibility of people who work in town and drive 60 miles or more a day on their commute. You can’t tell me that isn’t a major contributor to Phoenix’s pollution problems.

    Nonetheless, it’s fun to look and dream about the day when you could retire and not have to drive in. or perhaps that not-so-distant day when we can really telecommute every day. I could make the trip once a month for staff meetings, that wouldn’t be so bad.

    Verrado was supposed to be one of the new attempts to bring community back to people’s lives. Some of the concepts include garages in the back of the house, front porches set close to the streets to foster community. “Centralized” retail space, which apartment living above the commercial space, etc.

    It all sounds good on paper, but in all practicality, the centralized retail space is far away from even the outskirts of Verrado itself. It’s beyond the walking range of the average person, and even beyond the walking range of the extraordinary person when the summer temperatures peak out well over 110º.

    So, while it is a little different from the average tract homes, it’s still just a planned community which relies on the automobile.

    We went out on a lark, in the afternoon, just to take a look. We had no idea there would be some 24 or so model homes from 8 different builders, and we weren’t able to complete the circuit before the sun was going down.

    By way of background, I used to do electrical work. I worked for some contractors who built mega-expensive, completely custom-built homes. These were homes ranging from $4-10 million and that was 22 years ago. I’ve worked on 16-bedroom mansions and homes with built-in elevators and 13 car garages. I’ve seen some very nice homes.

    That notwithstanding, the house pictured here is my favorite house I’ve ever seen. It’s about a 4 bedroom (with massive master bedroom and bathroom), plus den and office and with a completely attached (and yet separate) guest house (which is what you see in front).

    On the right of the picture in the main entry, which leads you into a walled courtyard. There’s even a tree in the courtyard, although I’d be concerned that might be a maintenance nightmare in the future.

    The only I would change about this house is that the model home directly to the left has a better master bathroom.

    However, as this model is over 4,000 square feet and priced at over $634,000, unless I hit the PowerBall, it’s never going to happen.

    Still let’s give them credit where credit is due, this particular home is “Residence Four” in the Acacia neighborhood by Monterey Homes. If you’re out that way, take a look at it, it’s amazing.


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  • My New iMac


    OK, it’s not my new iMac… it isn’t mine… it isn’t even a Mac… come to think of it, it isn’t even a computer.

    We were looking at model homes today and this was one of the props used to show how modern and computer-friendly the house was.

    Too bad there was no actual place to plug one in anywhere nearby.


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  • Red Brick Pizza


    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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  • The Dangers of Billiards


    Every time we go to my father’s house, my daughter wants to toss the balls around on my dad’s pool table.

    So, my dad decided to get her a mini pool table for Christmas.

    There’s a far distance from tossing the balls around by hand and actually putting a cue in the hands of a three year-old, as witness by the picture of Michelle attempting to put my dad’s eye out.

    (Actually, she’d trying to hit the balls on the table behind her, but she just hasn’t got the hang of it.)

    I’m going to hide the cues for a few years. In the meantime, it’s pretty cute that she calls it a “ping pool” table after something she saw on my Buck Rogers DVDs 6 months or more ago.


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  • Faster Than The Speeding Internet


    Before James was born, I got an iSight camera. I was testing it and the video conferencing (using Macs and iChat AV) was the best I’ve every seen, this side of dedicated hardware and network.

    We’d been using MSN messenger to video chat with my in-laws on a PC for months and the experience was painful on the best of days.

    While my father-in-law was here, I demonstrated how it worked and he was so impressed that he bought a Mac Mini and an iSight so they could stay in touch.

    Before I purchased the computer for him, I located a couple people in Taiwan and tested video chatting and it worked just as well. (I also tested it with people in Vermont, Germany, England, Australia and New Zealand with similar results.)

    But when my in-laws got back to Taiwan, the experience, although not as painful as MSN, just wasn’t very good.

    So when I went to Taiwan in September, I brought along everything I needed to try to figure out why the experience was so bad. It didn’t require much diagnostics, my father-in-law’s high speed cable connection operated at a blistering 24k. He’d switched internet providers since our last trip and was paying for a connection that was frequently slower than a modem.

    However, I had the darndest time convincing them that their connection was the problem.

    Finally, Johnny (my brother-in-law), who likes to do online gaming, convinced his father to install an ADSL line, and now we great full screen chats and my wife’s parents can watch their grandchildren grow up even when they’re half a world away.


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  • New Sofa, At Last


    At last, our Ikea sofa set arrived today, and after hours of assembly (I’ll never remove those covers for cleaning) it was finally done.

    While Irene is happy with the sofa (and I’m not displeased) the path to happiness wasn’t smooth.

    Here’s the story of the Ikea fiasco associated with this sofa.

    I was hoping to purchase and have the sofa delivered before Christmas as Irene’s present. For some months she’s been trying to get me to purchase a sofa set, and I’ve been putting it off with the idea of surprising her for Christmas.

    There’s no way I could surprise her if I had to arrange for one of our friends to help me purchase and move the sofa, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay Ikea’s delivery charges.

    I went to their website on about November 30th and was pleased to learn that if you buy from “Ikea Online” within the next three days you received a 10% discount. (On $1,400 worth of sofa, that’s nothing to sneeze at.) A coupon code was provided to get the 10%.

    I went through the entire online order process with reasonable ease until I reached the end. At each step of the process, I expected an opportunity to use to coupon code, but it never materialized.

    When I received the e-mail confirmation, no discount had been applied, and so for $140 I was willing to get on the phone and call.

    After 45 minutes on hold (Is there a better argument for ordering online?) I got through to a very helpful operator who informed me that the 10% discount only applied to Ikea Online when you call on the phone. Their online ordering system can’t handle discounts.

    They were at a critical juncture at this point and could have failed miserably when I said, “I’m on the phone to you now.”

    And, sure enough, they gave me the discount; however, they had to cancel my old order and place the order again.

    One minor snag, my order hadn’t shown up in the computer yet, (another shortcoming of their computer system) so they told me not to worry, just ignore any e-mail I might get about the first order. That wasn’t too comforting and visions of 2 sofa sets on Christmas morning were dancing through my head.

    When the order was complete, I was given an estimated delivery date of December 21. I figured if they showed up on the 21st, it would be a bit early, but Irene would be able to show off for the party she was holding on the 24th.

    Unfortunately, Irene finally decided that we just had to purchase the sofa before her party and I had to spill the beans. The secret wouldn’t have lasted because the bill showed up on the credit card statement long before the 21st.

    The 21st came and went and the sofa set didn’t arrive. Irene, impatient, called Ikea only to find out that our order had been cancelled.

    Why? Because we hadn’t paid.

    When Irene pointed out that our credit card had been charged, they said, “Oh, yeah, that happens sometimes with our order system. I’ll put the order back in for you.”

    Why do they bother to even have a computer system? It’s certainly not to reduce the amount of work their staff has to do, or that we had to do for that matter.

    There was no way we’d get it before Christmas, but they did credit us back the delivery charges and “expedited” the order so we’d get it in about 1 week.

    Needless to say, that was 2 weeks ago, but it did finally arrive today. The order was right, we ultimately paid less than we’d have paid at the Ikea store and delivery was free.

    Despite all that, the best part is that both sections are big enough that I can stretch out. Ahhhhhhh.


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  • Stand Up And Be Counted!


    I’d like to try to tell you that I caught James’ very first time standing, but these things don’t happen when you’re holding a camera, and it doesn’t last long.

    Sometime about 2 weeks ago, James began standing for sometimes up to 5 seconds without assistance, but yesterday he managed to stand for 20-30 seconds and I was able to get the camera a snap this picture.


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  • New Year’s Eve Pizza, V1.1


    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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  • The Great Search


    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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