Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I’ve decided to start a new series of posts on this blog wherein I review the various bits of pizza I eat. As some of you may know, I’m something of a Pizza Snob. I’ve worked on and off again at pizza places since I was 14, including chains and family-owned establishments, in capacities as both cook and Deliverator. I’ve dined on good and bad pizzas in 24 states, and consider it my second-favorite (but first-most-taste-seducing) food. I’m sitting here at work, munching on some leftovers from last night’s pizza run, and thinking “Man, I sure do have a lot of long-winded, mostly useless stuff to say about pizza. I should blog about it.” Okay, why not?

I’m not a fan of numerical rating systems for anything, so instead I’ll be using a pretty simple descriptive rating system that should be self-explanatory. I’ll be judging the pizzas I eat on Cheese, Crust, Sauce, Toppings, Service, CPQ (Cold Pizza Quality), and RHV (Re-heat Value). The actual ratings are as follows: “OMG!”, “Yum!”, “Pretty Decent”, “Okay”, “Meh”, “Yuk!”, and “Never. Again.”

Thus begins Episode 1: Papa Murphy’s.

Last night, the fabulous Sciaroni Sisters and I decided that pizza was gonna be for dinner. It’d been a while for me (unless you count the crapstravaganza cardboard delight that is Tony’s pizza, munched only a few days prior), so I was down. Pizza is admittedly the one food whose temptations almost never fail to lure me in, and in fact the attempt to resist its charms is a tool which I sometimes use to try and strengthen my willpower. I usually succumb, yes, but that’s a cave-in that I can’t really ever call a failure.

Since we’ve only been in our new domicile a little past a month, we’re only currently hip to less than a handful of pizza joints in the neighborhood, those being three: Pizza Hut, Papa Murphy’s, and Bob’s Rocket Pizza. My initial vote was for the Rocket, seeing as how we’d yet to try it and it’s delicious aromas taunted me every time I cycled past it on the weekends. My vote changed when I looked at their menu; sorry, Bob, but I cannot personally justify paying twenty dollars for a 14-inch “large” pizza, unless you’re giving away under-the-table (under-handed?) sexual favors along with that pie, or you’re donating it to some kind of Earth Defense Fun (hey, I’m serious about keeping us safe from those Commie Martian Invaders). Maybe I’ll try you sometime in the future, but for now, my slimming pocketbook says otherwise.

After a bit of debate, we decided to give Pizza Hut a try. A half-hour later: Never. Again. That company has pissed me off for the last time. Did you know that you can no longer call an actual Pizza Hut store and order a pizza, be it for delivery or pickup? Sometime in the last year, it seems they decided to re-route all of their ordering through central call centers, which then dispatches the order information to the nearest individual stores. Telephone and computer orders are all routed through a central system before the actual restaurants even see them. Cosa Nostra Pizza, anyone? I remember a time in my youth when they actually made the pizzas at the store, but I’ve come to understand that almost everything about their food now is pre-made and pre-packaged, from pre-rolled crusts to pre-measured toppings. It’s no longer a pizza restaurant – it’s a pizza-like food machine.

I just wanted to order a carry-out pizza, but the call center blankly refused to let me give them money for a pizza unless I gave them my telephone number, street address, and zip code. When I said Funk Dat and actually tracked down and called the nearest store, they also refused to take my order, saying that I had to call the central office. The Central Office. For a Pizza.

Yeah, no thanks. So we called up the next (and last) place on the list, Papa Murphy’s. For those of you unfamiliar with this restaurant, they’re a fairly unique chain of pizza restaurants that lack ovens in their stores. Yep, you call ‘em, they prepare a pizza, and then you take it home and cook it yourself. It’s pretty simple, and if you’re blessed with a good oven (like me), enjoy having your pizzas cooked to your own special brand of perfection (like me), and don’t enjoy paying twenty goddamned dollars for a large pizza (also like me), then Papa Murphy’s may just be for you. One thing to keep in mind, though: they don’t deliver. However, when I picked it up I noticed that they do take food stamps, if that’s any kind of consolation for you.

After a couple of price inquiries, we called in a “family size” pizza with half-and-half* toppings:

Side #1: extra cheese and tomato
Side #2: black olives and “Italian” sausage

“Family Size” is their name for what most other major pizza chains call an Extra Large pizza, which in turn is the term most major chains use for a 16-inch diameter pizza. Some pizza chains have even had the audacity to call their 16-inchers things like “New York Style” or “Big New Yorkers” and such, which just appalls me.

Anyway, we brought it home after an ordeal actually getting to the store (that location’s parking was completely nonexistant), popped it into the oven we thankfully remembered to pre-heat before we left, and 15 minutes later we were munching on fresh-from-the-oven pizza, custom-made to our specifications. It was good. Very good. It was the perfect conclusion to our rather aggravating Quest For Dinner last night. The cheese had a really nice consistency, the sauce was not oppressively sweet, the crust was not Butter-Injected (unlike Pizza Hate), and my hands weren’t grease-soaked after picking up a slice. The best part, to me, was the sausage. Damn, that was some frickin’ tasty sausage. The rest was okay, but that sausage really hit the spot.

I brought a couple of slices with me to work today for lunch, giving one the Cold Pizza Treatment and another one the Microwave Treatment. While the nuked slice was kinda mediocre (sub-par to both the cold and fresh experiences), the refrigerated slice was (gasp!) better than the original. Even the cold crust was delicious. I’ve honestly never had cold pizza that was that good, and Cold Pizza Quality is one of my biggest deciding factors on the “Will I Eat Here Again?” pizza scales.

All right, now for the Ratings. I tried to tone them down, but I really didn’t have anything negative at all to say about the experience outside of the parking fiasco.

Cheese: Yum! (tasty and not too greasy)
Crust: Pretty Decent (If I even like it cold, it’s at least decent)
Sauce: Okay (wasn’t paying attention, sorry)
Toppings: Pretty Decent (great sausage, seriously)
Service: Meh (getting to and into the location was more inconvenient than it should have been)
CPQ: OMG! (I’m drooling over here)
RHV: Okay (not nearly as satisfying)

The Final Verdict: I’d most definitely eat there again.

Pros: Pick-up only, which means no delivery charges and no required tipping of a driver. They accept food stamps. Since you cook it yourself, its fresher when you finally get to eat it. Fantastic Cold Pizza Quality. You have the opportunity to add your own home toppings to the pizza before it is cooked.

Cons: You can’t get it delivered, which sucks if you’re lazy and/or without transportation. You have to cook it yourself.

Other Notes: I’ve head from several friends and associates that you can get really good deals at most Papa Murphy’s establishments if you go in late and ask what they have on the “bad order” rack – meaning, the pizzas ordered earlier that were either messed up somehow or that the customers never came to pick up. I’ve done this myself once at a franchise that was near my old residence, and got a weird half-cheese, half-Hawaiian pizza for 5 bucks. Only tried it the once, though, so your mileage may vary.

* Half-and-half toppings, to me, are one of the most beautiful things about pizza. Where else other than at a pizza place can you get the ingredients on a single creation split so wonderfully? On a hamburger? Hardly.