canyonwalker | Entries tagged with pizza

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.

Hawaii April Travelog #11
Waikiki, HI - Sun, 10 Apr, 2022, 9pm

We've taken it easy this evening. And for the purposes of taking it easy today, the evening started around 3. I relaxed in the room and caught up on my blogs while Hawk went out for dinner. Yes, dinner around 3. I ate a good lunch and she didn't, so she was hungry. And she thought maybe that amazing udon place with the line 50 people deep would have less of a line. Success for her: it did! The line had only a few people in it. Though by the time she finished eating it was already halfway down the block.

After Hawk's early dinner the two of us went out to the hot tub for a while.

Hot tub and pool at th Holiday Inn Express, Waikiki (Apr 2022)

Hot tub and pool at th Holiday Inn Express, Waikiki (Apr 2022)

The hot tub is big but the pool is small. And cold. So we stayed in the hot tub.

The view from the hot tub is... odd. It's on the 5th floor deck, but about all there is to see is the rest of the hotel.

Looking up from the pool deck (Apr 2022)

Looking up from the pool deck (Apr 2022)

It's a fairly tall hotel. And the one thing I draw satisfaction from looking up at is that while our room has no balcony, none of the rooms have balconies. 🤣

After an hour two in the hot tub we went back upstairs to dry off and think about dinner. Hawk wasn't terribly hungry, having already had dinner at 3pm, so I walked alone to a small takeout pizzeria several blocks away. I bought two slices for myself and one for her, too, and brought them back to the hotel. She met me downstairs and we had a picnic dinner of sorts out on the hotel's breakfast lanai.

After dinner for me and second dinner for Hawk we retired to our room. Tomorrow' will be another busy day. We don't know what we're going to do yet but we're sure it will be busy!

Last week ago I decided to try making Chicago style deep dish pizza at home. I bought a pair of pre-made pizza crusts at Trader Joe's and topped them myself. How did it turn out? Check this results picture and decide for yourself....

Eating deep dish pizza made at home (Feb 2022)

Eating deep dish pizza made at home (Feb 2022)

...Okay, you can't taste it through the screen, but I think you can see it looks pretty good— and very much like a Chicago pie. It tasted pretty good, too. It was better than the frozen Gino's East deep dish pizza I've bought numerous times since local Safeways started carrying it almost 2 years ago.

How did I make it? As I said above, I started with a premade crust and topped it myself.

Making deep dish pizza at home - premade crust (Feb 2022)

Making deep dish pizza at home - premade crust (Feb 2022)

First I brushed the crust with olive oil. Then I laid down a thick layer of mozzarella cheese. Okay, the mozzarella cheese was store-bought, too. I'm not into making my own cheese! Then I put on a good layer of pepperoni— okay, that was store-bought, too; I don't slaughter or cure my own meat 🙄— and, finally, a layer of marinara sauce. The marinara sauce was homemade! I'd made it the night before. ...No, I didn't grow the tomatoes. I used canned tomatoes. 🤣 But I made the sauce myself from base ingredients, including the crushed garlic I sauteed to start it.

Making deep dish pizza at home (Feb 2022)

Making deep dish pizza at home (Feb 2022)

Putting the sauce on top was key to getting the look— and frankly the taste— of authentic Chicago deep dish pizza. I could have gone a little heavier with the sauce I spooned on. As you can see in the picture it doesn't quite cover the pie from rim to rim. I was worried about it spilling over when cooked. It didn't, because the cheese melted down.

What really put this pizza over the top of anything frozen I've tried was that sauce. Its flavor was spot-on. Not just for pizza in general but especially for Chicago pizza. The marinara I made is mostly tomato (as it should be). And it's high quality. One of the problems I've found with frozen pizzas is that their tomato sauces are all terrible. Even Gino's East, which is otherwise the best frozen pizza I've found, has a sauce that's simultaneously overly sweet and harshly acidic. 🤢

I've made calzone at home twice now using pre-made pizza dough from the grocery store. Both times I used half the 1-lb package of dough. I'm glad I did because that turned out to be the right amount!

With calzone #1 I used the other half of the dough to make a bunch of garlic knots. With calzone #2, which I posted about last night, I used the other half of the dough to make a pizza for Hawk.

The idea seemed so obvious once it occurred to me: if a half pound of dough works great for a calzone, it'd work great for a individual pizza. Yet it was a revelation because every time in the past I'd made a pizza from store-bought dough I used most or all of the 1-lb ball to make the pizza crust.

Sauceless pizza (Feb 2022)

Indeed an 8-oz. portion of dough made a nicely sized individual pizza. Hawk ate most of this and left a slice for me.

The pizza shown here is sauce-less. Hawk doesn't care much for tomato sauce. I brushed olive oil on the rolled out dough, covered it with cheese, then topped it with a generous spread of sliced red onion. The yellow color you see on the cheese is from Hawk sprinkling on turmeric. Indian style pizza? Not exactly my thing... though, yes, I've tried it. Both in my own kitchen as well as at Indian pizzerias. But that's the great thing about individual sized pizza. You get your favorite toppings even if nobody else agrees!

A month ago I wrote about making calzone at home for the first time, using store-bought dough. The results were good... but I could see room for improvement. Thus I tried Calzone #2 a few weeks later.

One process improvement this time was that I remembered to take pictures as I worked. 😅 It flummoxes me that as much as I enjoy photography and have integrated it with other pursuits, particularly hiking, I have to remind myself to take pictures when cooking.

Making calzone at home, round 2 (Feb 2022)

Making calzone at home, round 2 (Feb 2022)

This picture shows the dough rolled out to a circle... or as close to a circle as I could get. These store-bought dough balls are rarely as workable as from-scratch bread dough I've made a few times.

I've piled the toppings up on one side of the dough. This time I skipped including the slice soppressata I used last time (it wasn't very tasty). I doubled up on pepperoni instead. I also added onions and reduced the amount of ricotta cheese I used. Those were two additional ideas for improvement I'd noted. From here I folded the circle of dough over into a half-moon shape and pressed the edges together.

The dough here is only half the 1-lb ball that came in the package. The other half is that separate lump in the upper-left corner of the picture. I had other plans for that piece; more about that in my next blog.

Making calzone at home, round 2 (Feb 2022)

I baked it in the oven for [mumble] minutes. Maybe 12? I don't remember now since it was a few weeks ago. Recipes like this I judge by how they look, not what the clock on the wall says.

One change I made with the cooking was to increase oven temperature to 500° F. That was recommended in the recipe I followed but I decided to try 450 instead the first time because multiple responses to recipe blog I followed said, "OMG, don't use 500, it burns!" I used 500 and it didn't burn. 🤷‍♂️

How did it turn out? On the whole Calzone #2 was better than Calzone #1. The higher cooking temperature allowed me to slightly brown the top crust without overcooking the bottom crust. I enjoyed the pepperoni and bit of onion, minus appallingly poor soppressata (from Whole Foods, of all places!), as fillings. Reducing the amount of ricotta cheese I used was also an improvement, though I went a little too light on it this time. I'll try to dial that in right next time. Finally, there's room to go heavier on the fillings than what's shown in the first picture. This calzone came out feeling... not quite stuffed. And I was still slightly hungry after eating it. So I'll scale up the mozzarella and pepperoni next time.

Over the past 2 years I've bought a few boxes of Motor City Pizza Co. frozen pizza from Costco. As frozen pizzas go, they're pretty good. As pizza goes, though, they're enh. When I wrote about trying their meat combo pizza a few weeks ago one friend,

stinaleigh, suggested I try their cheesy bread. So I did.

Frozen Detroit style cheesy bread from Costco (Jan 2022)

My plan wasn't simply to try the cheesy bread; I intended to make it into a more Detroit-style pizza than their other varieties.

One hallmark of Detroit style is that there's no sauce under the cheese. Sauce is added on after baking, in "racing stripes" across the top. This characteristic might be debatable, but to me it's one of the few things that make Detroit style pizza a unique style— otherwise it's "Oh, look, Pizza Hut pan pizza!"— so I'm going with it.

Detroit syle cheesy bread PLUS my own toppings MINUS half I already ate 😅 (Jan 2022)

Detroit syle cheesy bread PLUS my own toppings MINUS half I already ate 😅 (Jan 2022)

With this trial I went with a simple topping choice: pepperoni. It's my favorite topping anyway. And rather than put sauce on top I heated it in a dish and used it as a dip. The reason for that was practical: don't make a mess on the serving plate.

How did it turn out? For frozen store-bought pizza it was amazing. For all pizza it was... actually pretty decent!

Three things helped:

1) Better sauce. As I noted before, one of the weaknesses of this brand is their marinara sauce is awful. It's too acidic. Just using a decent bottled sauce from the supermarket (my fave is Prego) was an enormous improvement.

2) Better toppings. I don't think I mentioned it before, but the brand's toppings are crud, too. The pepperoni and other meats just taste... cheap. Like high school cafeteria cheap. 😨🤢 Just using Hormel pepperoni bought at the grocery store was a marked improvement.

3) Don't over-bake. My usual inclination is to bake a pizza until it's more golden colored than in the picture above. Especially with frozen pizza the edges are generally brown by the time the frozen cheese in the middle is fully melted together. With this brand's thick crust, though, I found the crust was getting too dried out. So I tried reducing the baking time a few minutes. This was frankly easier with no toppings on at the start. That heavy layer of meats on the combo pie may look delicious it but it causes the cheese underneath to melt slower. I added my not-frozen pepperoni only halfway through the bake. Everything came out perfect. The crust actually had a light, airy texture!

I'll definitely do this again. In fact, I think this is now my go-to frozen pizza.

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Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with pizza

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!

Taking it Easy in Waikiki

Making Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at Home

Pizza on Half the Dough

Calzone #2

Frozen Detroit-Style Pizza, Take 2: I'll Top it Myself!