canyonwalker | Entries tagged with pizza

Thanksgiving triplog #17
Mechanicsburg, PA · Fri, 28 Nov 2025. 2pm.

After my plans to see my cousins fell through today I was at wits' end for what to do with myself. Staying around the house with my pokey inlaws is stultifying. So I knew I wanted to go out. But... to do what? Today is Black Friday, so going shopping would be on brand... except there's nothing I want to buy. And trolling around stores on this supposedly busiest day of the year seems like it would be more frustrating. (I'm skeptical about whether it's the busiest day of the year anymore, but that doesn't change the equation that shopping today is likely to be more frustrating than enjoyable.)

Hawk seemed to be looking for an excuse to get out the house, too, because when I suggested I might go out to eat for lunch, she agreed to join me. She agreed to join me for pizza, even. We found a well rated pizzeria a few miles away and headed there first.

Getting pizza in central Pennsylvania was a bit of culture shock. The shocker wasn't the pizza itself. It was east coast style pizza, which is exactly what I expected... though maybe a bit bland compared to what I expected. (Pizza with my mom and sister a few days ago in Virginia was way richer.) The shocker was the price. A lunch combo with two slices and a drink was $8 for cheese slices, $9 for pepperoni. And the slices were huge. That kind of meal back home would be literally twice the price.

After stuffing ourself on more pizza than we believed we could eat we considered again going shopping somewhere. Hawk did have a bead shop in mind, so we drove over to that in Mechanicsburg's quaint downtown area. The old fashioned stores there were empty, and street parking was easy. We considered shopping somewhere again after that but decided just to go home instead. We'd had enough of a break from the house.

There's a classic line from the 1975 movie Jaws. After the titular great white shark appears on the screen for the first time, actor Roy Schneider turns to the sailors hunting the monster and dead-pans, "You're going to need a bigger boat."

I'm not sure that line was all that big when the movie was first released in 1975, or even a few years later when it was making the rounds through theaters again and became popular among my childhood friends, but in recent years it has become a meme.

"You're going to need a bigger boat" - Roy Schneider in Jaws (1975)

And, OMG, this movie is now 50 years old, and a throwaway, ad-libbed line from it is an Internet meme?

Yes, the line was unscripted. Behind-the-scenes stories tell us that the actors and crew were frustrated about the small boat used for filming scenes at sea. They felt the producers were being excessively cheap because the small size made it hard to work with given all the things involved in filming— the cameras, lights, microphones, and all the crew to operate them. "You're/We're going to need a bigger boat" became a running joke among the film crew, who repeated it every time the small watercraft made their work difficult to do.

Then actor Roy Schneider, playing the police chief in the story, ad-libbed the line during filming the scene where the great white shark, Jaws, appeared on camera for the first time. The cast and crew LOLed. Director Steven Spielberg thought it was funny, too— though without the guffaws from behind the camera. He worked it into the movie with some extra footage to set up the (now classic) line properly.

So, here we are 50 years later now, and this line just became relevant to me, personally. We're going to need a bigger fridge!

We're going to need a bigger fridge! (Oct 2025)

That's what I said to Hawk the other night after we'd ordered in pizza. Mine had come in an oversized box (hers was smaller). When I went to put the leftovers in the fridge, using the original boxes for simplicity sake, mine was a few inches too wide to fit into our generously sized side-by-side refrigerator!

Of course we didn't buy a new fridge. 🤣 I mean, the characters in the movie were facing a killer shark, and they didn't buy a new boat. All I'm facing here is half a leftover pizza. 🤣 I stacked the slices on a small baking pan and wrapped it in foil to keep for a day or two.

Phoenix Getaway travelog #9
Hilton Resort · Mon, 22 Sep 2025. 11am

Last night at this evening we've been taking it easy. ...Which has 100% been our plan, because we're on a taking-it-easy short vacation!

Last night we went out for dinner after we were done for the day with floating around the resort's lazy river. We found a pizza place we agreed on and split a pizza there. Afterwards Hawk announced that she'd like to visit a grocery store to buy some dessert (for back in the room) and possibly breakfast for the morning. We found a nearby branch of A.J.'s— the bougie grocery store we bought take-home dinner from last night— and went there. On the way we passed approximately 351 other pizza restaurants. Yes, I counted. Though I may be off by a few. 🤣

When we got back to the room we dug into our desserts right away. Mine was a delicious chocolate ganache cheesecake... and I'm glad to say I only ate half of it. (The other half's for tomorrow night!) We just vegged on the sofa for the rest of the evening. We forgot all about our plans to use the hot tub together and just went to bed a bit after 9pm. OMG we're getting old! 😆

This morning we slept in a bit. The weather was kind of crummy— for Phoenix. It was cloudy and only 80° out! But still we changed into our swimsuits and headed over to the River Ranch in time for its 9am opening.

Taking it easy at the Hilton resort in Phoenix (Sep 2025)

Taking it easy at the Hilton resort in Phoenix (Sep 2025)

We decided to wait out the dodgy weather by curling up on a pair of chaise lounges. 80° isn't exactly let's-jump-in-the-water weather but it is comfortable sitting on a lounge chair weather. We passed the time reading on our phones and chatting about things. And within an hour or so the sun came out. So we grabbed our inflatable rafts and went for a spin.

Now it's 11:00 and we're kind of hungry. That's not surprising as breakfast, at least for me, was a protein bar in the room this morning. We'll head over to the poolside cafe in a few minutes to place an order. If it's a long wait I may even ride the pool slide a few times while waiting for our food.

Canada travelog #6
Toronto, ON · Sun, 24 Aug 2025. 11:30am.

"My mom wants to stop by a Costco before she leaves Canada," Hawk mentioned at sometime during the past 24 hours. That's all I needed to hear. Since then I've been trying to organize exactly when our Costco trip will be! 🤣

It's not that I'm some die-hard Costco shopper. It's not even that there's a particular thing I'm looking to buy at Costco— unlike for MIL, who wants to stock up on two of her over-the-counter (OTC) medicines there because they're apparently way cheaper in Canada than the US. Yes, the meme from years ago about US senior citizens buying their pills in Canada because they're cheaper is real. And while the current US presidential administration tells you, correctly, that the price disparity exists because of corporate greed, that same current US presidential administration is also all about deregulation. Deregulation because "government regulation is crippling American businesses". Well, it's literally government regulation that checks corporate greed in other countries and makes medicines cheaper virtually everywhere else in the world other than the US. 🙄

Anyway, I was talking about why I wanted to go to Costco. Two things. One, I'm just curious about seeing Costco in other countries. Two, I really wanted a slice of pizza this morning after an unfulfilling breakfast. 🤣

Costco food court in Canada (Aug 2025)

While Hawk and her mom split off to find and buy armloads of eye drops of something like that, I hit up the food court. Well, I tried to hit up the food court. My first attempt was 🙅 Access Denied 🙅... because I tried paying with a Visa card.

While Costco in the US takes only Visa, Costco in Canada takes only MasterCard! It turns out they do accept the US co-branded Costco Visa, but I didn't have that card on me. And when I went back out to the car to grab another credit card I wasn't sure about that so I grabbed a MasterCard just to make sure.

Another difference is the $1.50 hot dog combo. Yeah, sharp-eyed Costco loyalists will have noticed that already in the photo above. It's the same as the US, but also different. The long vaunted $1.50 hotdog and soda combo is actually cheaper in Canada.... It's cheaper because $1.50 here is 1.50 CAD, which at current exchange rates is $1.08 in USD. Canadians get cheaper pills and hotdog combos!

Chicago Trip Log #4
Downtown Chicago - Wed, 13 Aug 2025, 7am

Just like I figured was going to happen after I stayed up too late carousing with colleagues on my first night in Chicago, Day 1 of training on Tuesday was a long slog. It started at 7:15am with breakfast in the meeting rooms, the training proper running from 8 to 5, and then a small team meeting until 5:45pm. 10.5 hours of being "on"— after me getting only about 4 hours of sleep. Ouch.

I kept a game face on for most of the day. Late in the afternoon, though, I kind of lost it. Around 4pm the person who was speaking was not that engaging, and I nodded off a few times. I don't know if I actually fell asleep for a moment at a time, but I definitely did blank out a few times. I got lost in my own thoughts and suddenly realized that I'd stopped seeing or hearing what the speaker was talking about. Fortunately the next speaker was stronger. And the small team meeting at the end of the day was no problem since that was just 3 of us so I was actively engaged. It's much easier to stay focused when the content of the meeting is actively engaging rather than when I'm passively consuming it.

Those 4pm nap attacks, though, told me that I needed to take it easy last night instead of staying up late carousing with colleagues again. Thus I sent my regrets to our regional sales leader that I wouldn't be able to attend his dinner. I figured I'd instead eat on my own and get back early.

As I was considering where to get dinner solo I saw on Slack that one of my colleagues hadn't been invited to any group dinners and was looking for company. I invited him to join me. We agreed on a Chicago pizza chain (Giordanos, for those keeping score) with a restaurant location a few blocks away and walked over there. We split a pizza and an appetizer and enjoyed a couple beers each while chatting amiably about mostly not-work things. It was a right-sized dinner, both in terms of food, drink, and energy levels.

On the walk back from dinner I spotted a few of my colleagues in the hotel bar. I resisted the mild temptation to join them. I knew that "Hey, come have a drink with us!" would easily turn into 2-3 drinks and likely another evening of staying up too late. Instead I retired to my room for a quiet evening. I was in bed not long after 11pm.

This morning I'm feeling a lot more ready for a full day of training than I was yesterday morning. The difference is today I've got 7.5 hours of sleep behind me rather than just 4. That means tonight I should in good shape for the next group dinner / late evening of carousing with colleagues.
Update: over dinner last night I mentioned to my colleague that I'd been upgraded to a nice corner room with a wrap-around balcony at the hotel. "I'm in one of those, too," he said.

A local pizzeria, A Slice of New York, has had a sign out for months that they're closing soon. Now they have a sign showing a date: Next Saturday.

Failing restaurant closing soon (Jun 2024)

Failing restaurant closing soon (Jun 2024)

This restaurant has been circling the drain for several years. The pandemic was tough on many restaurants, but this one did the WTF coming out of the pandemic of reducing their hours in late 2023 to just one and two-half days a week. At the time I mused they wouldn't make it a year by cutting their own revenue so badly. Somehow they held on for 18 months. (I wonder if the landlord had given them a sweetheart deal and it took them this long to raise the rent to market rates. Or for an eviction to work its way through the courts.)

I have mixed feelings about seeing this pizzeria go under. I used to love this pizzeria. When their pizza's good, it's great. But for the past few years now, more often than not their pizza has been left sitting out too long. It's usually dried out and sad looking. Half the time I've gone in there recently I've turned around and walked out after seeing the choices. It's become an in-joke between Hawk and me; I've got to have a "Plan B" for where else to eat any time I try to go to this pizzeria.

I mentioned recently that March 2025 has been a great month for over-achieving my New Year's resolution to try new restaurants in the area. Y'know, that New Year's resolution from... 2023. 🤣

About 10 days ago I was coming home from a client meeting in San Jose and was trying to figure out where to grab lunch. My Plan A had been to get lunch with the customer, or at least with my sales colleagues, but everyone else had places they wanted to get to quickly. And frankly I had to get back in reasonable time, too, as I had a string of afternoon meetings to join. I looked to see what restaurants were along my driving route. I was just about to settle for one of many familiar chain restaurants when I saw another option: a pizzeria that specialized in personal-sized pizzas. I love pizza— I mean, look, I have a tag for pizza, and my Apple News app offers me "Pizza" as a news topic— so I decided to give it a try.

Pizza California in San Jose (Mar 2024)

While "Pizza California" sounds like it's another chain restaurant— and the well-branded exterior kind of looks like a chain restaurant, too— it's not a chain. It's a one-off pizzeria that's apparently been in San Jose's Berryessa neighborhod for almost 30 years. While that's not exactly my home turf I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this joint before!

Pizza California is vaguely similar to those Chipotle-style pizza chains that have popped up everywhere in the past 10 years. Y'know, the ones where you specify your pizza one topping at a time while a worker assembles it behind a plexiglass divider. Pizza California is like that except you don't walk down the assembly line watching your ~~burrito~~ pizza get made. You order at the cash register, and someone in the kitchen, out of sight, makes the pizza. Oh, and they have beer. A lot of beer. It was lunchtime, though, so I stuck with a Coke Zero Half-Caf from their Coca-Cola Freestyle machine.

Pizza at Pizza California in San Jose (Mar 2024)

Pizza at Pizza California in San Jose (Mar 2024)

The pizza came out about 10 minutes later looking pretty darn good. I got a combo pizza, a set of about 5 common toppings—or, as New Yorkers would call it, a garbage pie. One thing about a ~~garb~~—combo pie is that with all those toppings it can be challenging to balance the cooking. Pizza California baked it right. The cheese was properly melted and the toppings were just slight crisped but not charred.

Would I go back? Yes... but I'm not sure when. The pizza was great, and I love being able to get a quality, custom-made pizza in personal size. Plus the selection of a dozen or so beers on tap makes it interesting for an evening visit. But the location is at the edge of how far I'd drive for a casual meal by myself. I'd totally swing by for lunch again next time I visit the customer whose office is nearby. But go out here just for the pizza? Not very often.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #27
Blowing Rock, NC - Fri, 6 Sep 2024. 2pm

Today we got out of the hotel even earlier than yesterday. Today we were on the road before 10am. 😅

There's a waterfalls hiking trail that starts right in town in Blowing Rock, NC. And it's not just some walk-in-the-park bunny trail, it's a genuine hike with an ascent of over 600' on the return. How cool is that?

Cascades on the Glen Burney Falls trail in Blowing Rock, NC (Sep 2024)

Cascades on the Glen Burney Falls trail in Blowing Rock, NC (Sep 2024)

The first falls on the Glen Burney Falls trail isn't Glen Burney Falls. It doesn't really have a name. It's not even a falls. It's just "Cascades". Okay, but it's more than 4' tall, like the photo above implies. There's actually a pretty good drop here....

Cascades on the Glen Burney Falls trail in Blowing Rock, NC (Sep 2024)

What I usually say about the view from atop a falls not being very enjoyable is different here. These falls— I mean, cascades 😅— are horizontal enough that there's a good view from above. And it's nice with the view of the trail around to the left and the canyon dropping away below us. Oh, and the fact there's no way to stand at the bottom of the falls without trampling a restoration area.

Glen Burney Falls in Blowing Rock, NC (Sep 2024)

Glen Burney Falls in Blowing Rock, NC (Sep 2024)

Further down the canyon is the namesake of this trail, Glen Burney Falls. It's taller than this photo (above) gives it credit for. Like the cascades, these falls are horizontal enough that the view from below doesn't show everything. And the water flow today is light. I wonder what this was like 4 days ago, after rain the day before.

Glen Marie Falls in Blowing Rock, NC (Sep 2024)

Glen Marie Falls in Blowing Rock, NC (Sep 2024)

There's a bonus falls further down on the Glen Burney Falls trail. It's Glen Marie Falls. This falls is actually the tallest of the three, by fair margin. I figure it's over 60' tall. But it falls in kind of a crooked path over the uneven rock face, and at a low flow time like this it doesn't show well. As much as I don't like hiking in the mud, hiking this trail a day, maybe two, after a rain is probably the best way to enjoy it.

The return hike up the canyon was tough. I felt badly winded getting up past the three falls. The trail gets a lot easier above that, though. Even though there were another 300 vertical feet past that I was able to pick up my pace substantially.

Back at the trailhead we discussed what to eat for lunch. There actually aren't a ton of restaurants in this touristy little town of Blowing Rock. We didn't French cafe food (too French), we didn't want a brewpub (too early for beer), and we didn't want Mexican (too inauthentic— like, they use American cheese in enchiladas 🤢)... so we went back to the pizza place we visited a few days ago. Hawk's rarely in the mood for pizza, but they actually offer a style she enjoys— and the cook nailed it with her special requests. Plus I had a beer, because screw it, it's not that early. 😂

Pizza Hut recently started offering Chicago tavern style pizza as a limited time special. For the past few weeks I've been curious to try it as a) I've always liked Chicago thin-crust style pizza, which is also called tavern style pizza; b) Pizza Hut's Thin-n-crispy crust is already pretty close to a Chicago thin crust, and c) Pizza Hut offered a special named "The Edge" two years ago which was also pretty much a Chicago thin crust pizza. As B & C were already pretty close to A, I figured Pizza Hut had a pretty reasonable shot and pulling it off, and I wanted to give it a try. Friday evening I decided to order takeout and went with Pizza Hut's special.

Pizza Hut Chicago tavern style pizza (Jul 2024)

Pizza Hut Chicago tavern style pizza (Jul 2024)

Pizza Hut offers a few different sets of toppings on its Chicago tavern crust. I opted for the Ultimate, which is pepperoni, Italian sausage, sauteed onions, roasted bell peppers, and plum tomatoes.

How was it?

Crust: the crust was okay. It tasted a little bland and it lacked the flavor and texture of corn meal, one of the hallmarks of Chicago pizza. It seemed kind of like Pizza Hut's normal Thin-n-crispy crust.

Sauce: I don't think there was sauce on my pie, except maybe the bit near the edge you can see in the picture. Maybe they went really light on sauce on purpose because of the tomato topping? I poured some marinara sauce from my fridge into a dish, warmed it up in the microwave, and used it as a dip.

Toppings: The pepperoni and sausage are standard Pizza Hut toppings and taste like they do on any other pie. Fire roasted peppers are okay, though on a pizza I tend to prefer the slightly sharper taste and less squishy texture of raw bell peppers baked on the pie. I'd skip the caramelized onions next time. I like raw onions baked on a pie, but these were too oily and too sweet. And the grape tomatoes were disgusting. I ended up picking all of them off. (I pretty much always hate fresh tomato slices on a pizza.)

Would I do it again? Yes, but not the Ultimate variety. I'd get a pie with pepperoni and maybe 1-2 other toppings from among Italian sausage, fresh onion, sliced mushroom, and fresh bell pepper.

Alaska Travelog #16
At the hotel - Mon, 17 Jun 2024, 10am

The way it's light so late at night here in Alaska is kind of disorienting. Don't get me wrong; it was nice having twilight until 1am when we landed in Anchorage and drove to our hotel. And it's nice not worrying about about finishing our daytime activities outdoors before dark. We'll almost certainly run out of energy before the day runs out of daylight. But the sun not even starting to set until after 10pm throws off my sense of time. It's interesting to learn how many things are aligned to a kind of circadian rhythm. Like, I forget to eat dinner.

I forget to eat dinner. That's certainly not a sentence I ever thought I'd write! While some people I know easily forget to eat, when I haven't eaten in a while my body reminds me approximately every 3 minutes that food is delicious and would fill a void in my stomach. But here with sun not even dropping behind the mountains until 10pm, I've been like, "Woah, it's after 8pm already, I should get dinner!"

Unfortunately the choices for dinner in this small town of Seward are few. There are a handful of restaurants at the low end of the spectrum, dive-y type places serving small-town America staples like burgers, pizza, and chicken fingers with your choice of barbecue sauce or ranch. Then there are high end, or at least high end-looking places with steak and seafood and prices that promise a tab of $50-70 per person after adding a drink, tax, and tip. We're not the spendy-dinner type of people, especially when traveling in small towns where all the food looks kind of suspect, so we've eaten at the dive-y joints. And that— not being disoriented by the sun— is why I've had pizza 4x in 36 hours.

No, I didn't buy pizza 4 times in 36 hours. I bought it two nights in a row for dinner. But each time there were leftovers. And since I have a thrifty streak from childhood I can't quite outgrow (and also the pizza wasn't disgusting) I ate the leftovers for breakfast both yesterday and today.

But hey, back to the midnight sun thing. You'd think that the flip side of midnight sun would be early morning sun. Like, blazing sun preventing sleep at 4am. Well, here in Seward, there's been morning fog. So yay being able to sleep in 'til a morning hour. But boo not being able to get out and enjoy the daylight right away.

Today we're planning to hike up to Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. Just like yesterday's cruise in the fjords started out with hours of heavy fog that left me uncertain we'd get to see anything, so too does today's fog make me reluctant to head into the park until I see evidence the clouds are starting to burn off. And here it is 10am already... which means the sun's been up— not that we can see it— for almost 6 hours! Well, it's a good thing there's another 13 hours of daylight left for us to go hiking later today. 🤣

When I got home from a trip Thursday night last week I thought about what I wanted for supper and decided, "Pizza!" More specifically, I wanted good pizza. 😅 In Vegas there was plenty of pizza that was poor. Or wildly too expensive. Or both. Anyway, there's a great by-the-slice joint near my house. It has kind of funky hours, though, so I looked it up quickly online to see if it was open. Bingo!

When I got to the restaurant, I saw this:

Local pizza place only open 3 days a week... limited hours, too! (Nov 2023)

Local pizza place only open 3 days a week... limited hours, too! (Nov 2023)

The good news was they were still open Thursday evening. The bad news is they've reduced their schedule even further than what it was several months ago. Now they're only open 3 days a week. WTF?

And it's not even 3 full days a week. It's more like one day and two half days.

Again, WTF?

When this business first opened several years ago it was an expansion by a local entrepreneur who had another pizzeria across town. I'll call him Kirk. Kirk was a good guy, cared for his workers, worked hard to run a small business, etc. Kirk took a business partner in the expansion who I believe ultimately didn't pull his weight. (The partner was a techie who wanted to keep his day job for the money while running a pizzeria as a lifestyle job. It didn't work.) The partner left, and Kirk spun off this restaurant to focus on the original. Now the new owners don't seem to be so savvy.

Why not so savvy? It's because the restaurant says "costs" are the reason it has cut its hours. That's actually a double WTF. It argues to me the people running the business may not understand how to run a small business. "Costs" are only half the equation. The other half is "revenues", and there are no revenues being made the majority of the week when they're closed!

You might notice that typically people who are building a small business work long hours to get it going. I remember years ago when the local paper interviewed a local businessperson about his long hours. "You work 16 hours a day," the writer observed. "Why so long?" "Rent is 24 hours," he said.

This restaurant is now a cooperative; the workers run it! It kind of makes sense then that the owners— a crowd of mostly 20-somethings with little to no experience running a business— kind of suck at it. That's too bad because they do still make good pizza. But I doubt their business will be around at all in another year or two unless they hire someone with a clue.

I wrote recently about how we've made a point of trying new restaurants since the start of the year. I'm still catching up on the first several we've tried. Today it's Pizz'A Chicago, a few miles away in Santa Clara.

Pizz'A Chicago is not new. It's been there for over 30 years. And we've eaten there before. As with Gumba's I wrote about last week we're considering it effectively new to us as it's been so long since our last visit— almost 25 years ago, I think— that we don't remember it well. Also, it could be totally different now.

The air of Chicago is thick in the restaurant. Chicago is right there in the name. It's also all over the walls, which are covered in black and white photos/murals of classic Chicago scenes and public figures. Alas it may be just a Chicago veneer covering an increasingly generic restaurant.

Curiously there are two Pizz'A Chicago restaurants in the area. They have the same name, spelled and punctuated the same way, and the same logo. But they have different websites. Neither website acknowledges the other restaurant's existence, and the two sites offer different "About Us" backstories. The other restaurant tells the story of its founder, who grew up in Chicago and opened a restaurant here. This restaurant has none of that. It's just a place that was founded in 1991, no names, no inspiring childhood story.

Clearly the restaurants were started by the same person. My point is that it looks like the founder sold off part of his business, or perhaps had a falling out with a partner, and this store is the orphan. It's got the name but it no longer has the same parent-guardian. And that's obvious down through all the staff working here. Despite all the Chicago memorabilia on the walls, nobody working here looks or sounds like they're from Chicago.

So how was the food? Enh. I thought it was decent, Hawk didn't like it. The tomato sauce was too richly flavored for her. And they were pretty liberal with it. "Poured it all over everything," would be an apt description. "And served a half cup on the side."

I'd be willing to give this restaurant one more try. I'd have to do it without my spouse, though. I'm also curious to try the other Pizz'A Chicago store, in Palo Alto. With the founder still involved, that one might be better.

A few weekends ago I did a gonzo beer-buying shopping trip. I scooped up 6 or 7 packs of beer. A few were beers I've liked in my Beer Tasting 2022 project and want to keep in my cellar. The others were beers I want to add into the competition. This week's competition involves a beer I've been wanting to try for several months now but can't always find in stock at the stores, Pizza Port Chronic Ale.

Pizza Port Chronic Ale vs. the reigning champ of amber ale, Fat Tire (Mar 2023)

Pizza Port Chronic Ale vs. the reigning champ of amber ale, Fat Tire (Mar 2023)

Pizza Port is a brewery down in Carlsbad, California, about 30 miles north of San Diego. Why do they call it Pizza Port? I dunno. I just kind of figure their brewery serves pizza. Their Chronic Ale is an amber ale. I had it once before, years ago, on tap at a restaurant up here in the Bay Area. I was excited to see it sold in cans for retail.

Because Chronic Ale is an amber ale I had to pair it against my reigning champion of amber ales, Fat Tire. I did give Chronic Ale a bit of a home field advantage, though. I tasted both beers with pizza! 🍕🍻😂

The first tasting round, though, was the solo round. I tried each beer without food. The Chronic tasted a bit harsh, but then so did the Fat Tire. Amber ales can be a little strong without food, especially the Fat Tire which has a swish of a hops sourness that tastes a bit harsh on its own but serves as a great palate cleanser between bites when eating.

What was surprising was how similar these two taste. They're not impossible to differentiate, like how North Coast's Laguna Baja is basically a clone of Negra Modelo, but they're close. The slight difference I found is that Pizza Port had... more going on in its flavor. That "more" wasn't necessarily a positive, it was just... more. The Fat Tire had a simpler flavor mix but was also slightly smoother. ...Better integrated, perhaps.

With pizza, the comparison held. Both beers are good beers. They're very close overall. Pizza Port had slightly more going on in its flavors, but Fat Tire tasted just slightly smoother and better put together. I downed half a pizza along with these two beers and still couldn't decide which one I'd rather have next time. For Chronic Ale to come out and fight the reigning champ like this is impressive. I call it a draw!

For years I've sneered at the idea of pineapple on a pizza. Basically since I first learned that some people eat pineapple on a pizza— which I think was in college, because none of the pizzerias in my hometown even offered pineapple as a topping— I've sneered at it. "It's definitely food, but it's not pizza!" I said many times.

Well, there's another thing I've said many times. It's okay to hate a food, but you're got to at least try it first.

Do you see the conflict here? Immovable wall, meet irresistible force.

Today I decided I would actually try pineapple on a pizza. I figured either of two good things would happen. One, I'd discover a delicious new type of pizza. Or, two, I'd become fully validated in sneering at pineapple "pizza" for the rest of my life. 🤣

PINEAPPLE on a PIZZA? I give it a try! (Mar 2023)

PINEAPPLE on a PIZZA? I give it a try! (Mar 2023)

Today I ordered a pepperoni and pineapple pizza. Ham and pineapple is the usual combo you see with pineapple pizza. I chose pepperoni instead because I'd read that its savoriness better complements the pineapple's sweetness. Ham has a much milder flavor that lets the pineapple's sweetness dominate. I didn't want an overly sweet pizza. Plus, I really like pepperoni.

So, how was it?

I knew after the first bite that pineapple as pizza topping isn't to my taste. It's too sweet. I picked off half of the bits of pineapple and finished the first slice. Still too sweet. Then I picked off pretty much all the rest of the pineapple.

Pineapple on a pizza? Yeah, no thanks. (Mar 2023)

Pineapple on a pizza? Yeah, no thanks. (Mar 2023)

By the time I was done I had a pile of pineapple chunks in the pizza box. I nibbled on a few of them as I ate the now-pepperoni pizza so the sweetness could contrast the meat's savoriness. But I really wished I had something else to provide a touch of sweetness, like hot-and-sweet peppers.

Conclusion: pineapple pizza is wrong. It's for people who can't decide whether they want a proper pizza or a piña colada and try to split the difference.

(And BTW, a piña colada is a terrible drink to have with a pizza. The flavor combinations would all be wrong, just like here.)

In my previous blog I wrote about chain restaurants. We visit them sparingly, prefering local restaurants which are often way better— especially in our area. But sometimes we have a taste for chain food, and when traveling we're more likely to opt for chain food because it's a known quantity in an unfamiliar place. When we were traveling around Colorado a few weeks ago we visited more than our usual share of chain restaurants. Here's a rundown of what we visited during the week & what we thought:

Qdoba: Our first chain food was lunch on Saturday. We picked Qdoba, which is in the same niche as better known competitors Baja Fresh and Chipotle, because we wanted Mexican food. Also, neither of us had been to a Qdoba in at least 10 years, so it was kind of like trying something new. How was it? Meh. The quesadillas we bought came heavy on cheese and light on meat/veg. The cheese seemed to be low quality with a weird aftertaste. We won't go back to one for at least another 10 years.

Pizza Hut: "The 'Hut" is a guilty pleasure for me. I think their pizza is actually good. Well, not good-good, but the one near my home is reliably 3.5/5 stars, occasionally reaching 4/5. I ordered pizza from one in a small town on Saturday night not because it was my first choice but because it was my thirteenth. How was it? Not as good as the one near home, but it got the job done. One of the things I like about Pizza Hut is that, with their online deals, I can virtually always get an excellent amount of food for a very reasonable price. On this Pizza Hut delivered. Well, not delivered, because I went to pick it up, but figuratively delivered. 😅 Also, as an example of why I don't blanket-dismiss chain food, when I bought pizza at two different local restaurants later this trip, one of them was clearly better than Pizza Hut but one was not quite as good— despite positive Yelp reviews.

Dairy Queen: This ice cream chain is a guilty pleasure for both of us, and the guilt here is mostly the "OMG how many calories did I just ingest?" kind. I know from visiting a number of them that DQs vary in selection and quality, though at worst the quality is still at least barely acceptable. How was it? This trip we visited three DQs, using Yelp to avoid a few of the not-so-good ones. As with past experience, the worst we visited was still okay. The other two were like, "OMG that was delicious... but how many hundred calories?"

Famous Dave's: We ate at one of these chain barbecue restaurants Monday night when I was ready for some "red meat therapy", as I like to call it. It was either Dave's or Outback; we picked Dave's because, like Qdoba, we hadn't been to one in about 10 years, so it was kinda like trying something new. How was it? I shared a photo a few thoughts already. Basically, it got the job done. Not great, not quite good, but definitely okay to okay-plus. I could see going back to a Famous Dave's in less than 10 years.

Del Taco: Del Taco is one of those chains we'd eat at more if there were any near us. Instead we look for them when we're on the road in the southwest US. "What's a Del Taco?" you might ask if you're not from this region? Imagine it being like a Taco Bell but with way better food. ...Yeah, I know that's damning it with faint praise. It's still fast food, but we like it. How was it? The store we visited had marginal reviews on Yelp but we found it was exactly what we expected, no more, no less. The negative reviews were likely from people who either don't grasp the decidedly Mexican-American style cuisine they offer (e.g., meals come with fries on the side, not beans and rice) or don't grasp the idea of fast food vs. full service.

Village Inn: This diner we ate at on Friday was actually my first experience with the chain. Inside, the restaurant is decorated in a motif of pale orange and teal, seemingly an homage to the popular Howard Johnson's restaurants of 40+ years ago. I figure that's deliberate as this kind of restaurant caters to people who remember fondly the restaurant scene of 40+ years ago. How was it? I found the menu uninteresting... unless you want breakfast all day or a burger. I'm not much of a breakfast person, especially at 1pm, so I ordered a burger. It was okay. I have no interest in returning. Hawk wanted to go again a day later; I insisted we choose a local diner, specifically one with a broader menu, instead.

Colorado Travelog #33
Glenwood Springs, CO - Thursday, 7 Jul 2022, 11pm

We're now settled in Glenwood Springs for the evening. It feels weird to be here again, as we left here 4 days ago. (I know it seems like forever ago... it was 30 blogs ago!) We're even back at the same hotel, in a room that looks exactly the same. (The views out the windows are different; we're on the opposite side of the building this time.)

It wasn't our plan to double back to Glenwood Springs, at least not originally. It came about when we called an audible and re-planned the second half of this trip two nights ago. But now we're here for two (more) nights. Tomorrow we'll hike Hanging Lake and Saturday we'll drive to Aspen to hike Maroon Lake. We could've stayed a night in Aspen instead but it's literally twice as expensive as here, an hour away. We'll drive an hour to save hundreds of dollars.

Speaking of driving, we got into town late-ish this evening. It was barely 9pm, but it felt later. We'd driven 220 miles in addition to hike several miles in several locations. It was a full day. All we needed was dinner. Well, and a room for the night. But we went to dinner before checking in. We picked an Italian restaurant downtown. Hawk crushed a bowl of pasta and I demolished half a pizza. The other half's now in our refrigerator to be my breakfast. Mmm, cold pizza, the breakfast of champions!

As we left the restaurant we realized we had just 10 minutes or so until stores closed for the evening at 10pm. I wanted to buy some beer... and Hawk wanted to pick up our new suitcase. Yes, if you remember from when we left here 4 days ago, we threw an old, broken suitcase in the trash bin. In the time since then we've done some shopping online. The best deal we found was for a suitcase at Target, with in-store pickup available. There's a target a few blocks from our hotel, so we ordered it from that store's inventory. Thus on the drive to the hotel this evening I dropped Hawk at Target and continued to the liquor store. We met back up at the truck, her with suitcase in hand, and me with a 6-pack of beer. That seems so... appropriate for pickup truck drivers.

Colorado Travelog #9
Fruita, CO - Sunday, 3 Jul 2022, 1pm

After we wrapped up our visit to Rifle Falls this morning it was time to hit the road again. We continued west 70-ish miles to Grand Junction, Colorado. We'll be staying the night here tonight... but not yet. Days are long this time of year, and we're looking to take full advantage.

So how did we take advantage of this long summer day first? We went shopping! There was a gem store in town Hawk wanted to visit. Then, because I don't particularly enjoy standing around gem stores while she does the actual shopping, she let me choose lunch. I picked pizza. Unfortunately the pizza place nearby wasn't that good. But it was still pizza. 3/5 stars, wouldn't go back unless I was famished.

After that we headed toward Colorado National Monument, a beautiful park where we plan to do a bunch of hiking and sightseeing today... but first, more shopping and more food!

"Shopping", in this case was buying gas. We stopped in the town of Fruita, just outside the park. Our rental, "Taco", hit just north of 23 mpg on the tank. I was surprised. As much as it struggled climbing the passes west of Denver (going from "mile high" to more than 2 miles high) I thought it would post something around 18-19 mpg. EPA ratings are 19 City / 24 Hwy / 21 Combined, so getting 23 mpg through 412 miles of this highway but high elevation driving is impressive. Our Nissan Xterra SUV would only manage about 18.5 mpg in similar conditions.

Also in Fruita we spotted a Dairy Queen. After underwhelming pizza for lunch, and with temperatures in the 90s outside, it felt like a perfect time for ice cream. Hawk got a caramel sundae while I tried one of their new Blizzard flavors. Both were great. Now we've got to do some hiking to work off the calories....

In the world of pizza delivery chains, Pizza Hut gets short shrift. People seem to like it less than Domino's and Papa John's. That's strange to me because I find Pizza Hut much better than the others. I even tried Domino's again recently... they're not better.

Last week when I got the jones for some Pizza Hut pizza I checked their Deals page and saw a limited time special called The Edge. Basically it's a thin crust pizza with toppings right up to the edge. As that sounded like virtually the same as their standard "Thin & Crispy" pizza I was concerned it was a gimmick. But they were offering a deal on it with a 5-topping combo, and I like their thin crust pizza, so I ordered one.

Pizza Hut's "The Edge" pizza is a pretty good thin crust pizza! (Jun 2022)

Pizza Hut's "The Edge" pizza is a pretty good thin crust pizza! (Jun 2022)

While the ad copy seemed a bit gimmicky, the actual pizza came through above my expectations. The crust is a little different from a standard Thin & Crispy pie as it's rolled flat instead of curled up at the edges. The big different seems to be the cheese. On this pie there's plenty of it. That's a worthwhile upgrade from Thin & Crispy-land, where they're often stingy on the cheese.

Note the pizza's also cut in a Chicago cut. That's right, it's a round pie but some dweezil is like, "Duh, I only know how to cut squares." It gives you a mixture of those weird, mostly edge pieces and those "How do I pick this up?" center pieces covered with toppings literally edge to edge. For Chicago style pizza fans, that's all part of the fun.

"How can this be Chicago pizza? It's not deep dish!" you might object. There are actually three styles of Chicago style pizza. Deep dish pizza, the kind with a thick crust, is the one most people from elsewhere know as "Chicago style pizza". But there's also Chicago thin crust and stuffed pizza, where there's a crust on bottom and on top, kind of like an apple pie.

As a Chicago-style thin crust pizza this one's close. To be truly authentic it would need to have the toppings under the cheese. But that's really a form factor issue, not a taste issue. The taste of this one is good. The toppings are adequately generous, and the cheese is plentiful. I'll keep ordering these as long as Pizza Hut sells them.

Two weeks ago I tried Domino's Pizza. It had been years since I'd last ordered from them. They keep making noise about how they're better now (hint: it's a fake advertising ploy), though, and they had a 50% off sale, so I figured I'd give them a try to see if anything's really different.

The simple answer is, despite all their advertising about how they've improved their pizza, they really haven't. Their advertising message the past several years of "we suck, we're sorry, we're getting better" was purely a marketing ploy. It was a high risk ploy that a lot of people expressed worry about at the time, but it has paid off nicely for Domino's. Meanwhile, their pizza is actually... apparently worse... than before.

I remember ordering Domino's a lot in high school. Classmates at my school and I realized we could get Domino's to deliver to the flagpole at the front door after the final bell rang. We pick up pizzas there, run to the buses, and enjoy pizza on the long Friday bus rides home. Okay, maybe it was the taste amplification from doing something that seemed borderline illicit, or the joy it brought to a grinding ride in a school bus, but those pizzas rocked.

Hallmates and I ordered Domino's a bunch my first year at college, too. That was until I discovered there was way better pizza from a local shop. Domino's wasn't bad; they just weren't awesome compared to strong, local competition. Of course, that was in New York!

Domino's today just isn't that good. The sauce flavor is bright, same as it ever was. That alone cast my memory back to those halcyon Fridays in high school. But the cheese and toppings were bland. Domino's today isn't so bad I'd refuse to eat it.... It just isn't good enough that I'd choose it if any kind of reasonable alternative is available.

I make Chicago-style deep dish pizza at home a lot. The first many times were frozen deep dish pizza. Yeah, I know. But Safeway started carrying Gino's East frozen pizza a few years ago and it's actually pretty good. Still, frozen pizza is never the best. Next I started buying pre-made crusts and adding my own toppings. Those were even better. And that also got me thinking, "What if I make my own deep-dish crust?"

This past weekend I made a deep dish pizza taking another step towards full from-scratch ingredients. I bought a ball of premade pizza dough at the grocery store. Instead of rolling it out into a traditional New York-style pizza like I've done countless times, or making a calzone like I've done a few times recently, I pressed it into a pan and topped it Chicago-style. I.e., cheese on the crust, then 1 meat and 1 veg, then fresh home-made sauce on top.

How'd it turn out? Here's the first 1,000 words:

Deep dish pizza I made at home - mostly from scratch (Jun 2022)

Deep dish pizza I made at home - mostly from scratch (Jun 2022)

I kneaded and rolled out the dough into a round... -ish... shape larger than the pan. Then I laid it in the pan, pressing the extra dough up against the sides with my fingers. I brushed oil on the dough, laid on the toppings, and baked it.

One thing about the form factor is that I used a spring-form pan. That wasn't my first choice but it was all we had. It turns out we don't own a traditional round cake pan right now, so I used what we had. It worked perfectly. Releasing the sides from the pan meant I didn't have to try digging the pie out from inside it. I just took the sides off and basically slid it from the pan bottom onto the wooden board to cool, cut, and serve.

So how did it taste? I'll add another thousand words:

Mmm, fresh deep dish pizza! (Jun 2022)

Overall this was a success. The pizza had good taste and texture. The cheese was plentiful (I used 8 oz. of freshly shredded mozzarella), the toppings were plentiful, the fresh sauce I made was good.

A few things were not quite right.

— One, the dough isn't Chicago style pizza dough. It's not made with corn starch. So the flavor and texture were slightly off from a Chicago pie.

— Two, the crust was a little overcooked. Oh, it was still good; it just wasn't perfect. I baked the pie for 25 minutes. Next time I'll try 22 or maybe even 20. The challenge with cooking time is I don't know how to test for doneness other than trial and error.

— Three, as you can see in the photo above if you're a connoisseur of Chicago pizza, there's not enough tomato on it. That's on me for choosing to go light as I spread sauce atop the uncooked pie. I was trying to avoid over-sauced pizza, which I hate. As I iterate on doing this I'll fine-tune my technique to get the amount of sauce neither under nor over but just right.

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Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with pizza

Bored on Black Friday

"We're Going to Need a Bigger Fridge"

Easy Evening, Easy Morning in Phoenix

Canada Costco: Cheap Pills AND Hotdog Combos!

Long Day 1 of Training; Quiet Evening

Failing Restaurant Closing Soon

Trying New Restaurants: Pizza California

Hiking Glen Burney Falls

Pizza Hut Chicago Tavern Style Pizza

Sun all P.M., Fog all A.M., Pizza 4x in 36 Hours

Three Days a Week

Trying New Restaurants: Pizz'a Chicago

Pizza Port Chronic Ale

PINEAPPLE on a PIZZA?

Chain Restaurants - Colorado Experiences

Dinner & an Evening in Glenwood Springs. And a New Suitcase!

Driving, Shopping, Food between Hikes

Pizza Hut's "The Edge" - It's Pretty Good

Domino's Pizza... Not as Good as I Remember

Making Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at Home - Mostly from Scratch!