Indian Pizza at Ipanema Cafe

Ipanema Cafe on Grace St. has long been one of my favorite late night hang-out spots, notorious for the huge Monday night crowd flocking to their $2 pints of very keenly selected beers.  Their food is excellent too, specializing in vegetarian/vegan dishes which are all very well done.  I am far from cutting meat out of my diet but I will eat here any day of the week, and I did so on Tuesday night.

On the menu?  Indian Pizza!  I’ve never heard of this kind of pizza before and was eager to try it out with a couple pints of Lagunitas IPA.

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Mojo's, Cary St.

Mojo’s on Cary St. right behind the GRC dorms serves up almost every kind of food imaginable, operates as a late night dive bar and does a pretty damn good job at it too.  From several types of cheese steaks to vegetarian humus plates and portabella mushroom wraps, they serve up every type of food imaginable.  Granted, none of it is really that great, but it gets the job done.  It blows my mind that I missed their pizza menu for the four years that I’ve lived here.

My roommate came home one day with a small pizza.  He told me it was good, not great.  Just as I expected from Mojo’s.  However, had I asked for a slice of his pizza, I would not have gone out on a limb to order my own and find out just how bad this pizza could be.

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Summer-time Pizza wrap-up

Well, summer vacation is officially over this week.   Kids will be back in school during the day instead of raising hell in the streets, and we’ll no doubt get several hundred (or thousands) of newbies (or n00bs) to the VCU area.   Their wallets will be no doubt loaded with their parent’s money and with what they think is an unlimited amount of RAMbucks, so it only makes sense that the area pizza joints are preparing to explode with college kids who are prepared to spend that money at the drop of a dime.

Most of these kids will without a doubt be hitting the pizza shops located on campus and the surrounding areas, but hopefully we can direct them to some other places that are worth the five-minute drive around the fan.  Continue reading »

Homage

We are long overdue for an explanation on our humble beginnings.  We are eternally thankful and in the debt of this great man.  If we believed in a pizza God, this might be him, and his pizzeria, our mecca.

Tarrantinos Round 2

So Grant and I have known for a while that one of Richmond’s newest pizza joints, Tarrantinos is hit or miss. I was treated to free pie last night and it was dead on.

My roommate is a server there and I’ve been dealing with her dogs fucking around for a few days now. One is a senile rat, the other is retarded and may require corrective doggy lenses and the third is too smart and in-turn a terrible example and enabler for the other two dogs. She definitely bought me guilt pizza to thank me for my dog sitting services.

Being free, I wasn’t worried about the quality. But Tarrantinos has a tendency to get this pizza swamp right in the middle of the pies. Thin, undercooked dough at the center with a little too much sauce and grease leaves you with these 3/4 flops of a slice and a total mess of cheese. This pie was night and day different.

A thin slice for sure, but cooked nicely through the underside, a nice crispy layer was broken on each bite getting to a chewier body of dough. The sauce hit me in the face, I was told crushed red pepper was added to the sauce. It was better than any “spicy” sauce I have ever had on a pizza. The cheese was slightly browned in some areas, complimenting the crispness in the crust. The sauce backed all the way up to the crust separating the cheese and the outer edge of the pie. I ate 3 huge slices and packed 2 away for lunch today.

I was so amped on the quality I had to ask… HOW?! Where can I get this quality again. Is there a special oven as Grant suspects? Are they varying the ingredients or cooking times? The answer is two dudes, Andrew and Tommy. If you want the pie, ask if they are working. You won’t regret it. Only complaint was a little extra flour on the crust.

If Tarrantinos can lock down their cooking methods, they will definitely have some of my favorite pizza in the city, and at a stones throw, I would be hard pressed to go somewhere else for impulse pie.

9/10 – Pics after the break.

Welcome to CiCi's

Quite possibly the last place you’ll find a food blogger writing about, CiCi’s Pizza is a buffet style pizza restaurant which focuses on providing low income families and insane college kids some of the cheapest-to-produce pizza in the country.  How they’re able to produce this much pizza for this amount of money, I really don’t want to know.

The pizza?  Yeah, its horrible.  That’s no surprise.  Its not inedible by any means, I certainly eat way too much when I go there, which happens to be about once a year.  Thats not to say I don’t usually regret eating so much, but you can’t say that coming here isn’t an enjoyable experience to share with friends.  We all know what we’re in for when we keep returning to the buffet for thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and so on.  This is fun.

And on this day we gather to celebrate a friend’s birthday as we make ourselves sick  with mac n’ cheese pizza, dessert pizzas, and whatever unholy creation that shall be damned in the name of pizza that we choose to shovel into our mouths and down our throats.

The pizza here is…well…bad.  Whatever cheese you find on the pizza is of the poorest quality, I’m not even sure its mozzarella half the time.  Your teeth cut through the entire pie, leaving no gooey cheese to hang in the balance.  It all separates effortlessly.  The crust leaves no lasting impressions and hardly has the qualities of pizza crusts that you’d be accustomed to.  To give you an idea of how bad the pizza can get, the best kind is the mac n’ cheese pizza, which is essentially elbow macaroni and cheese atop some toasted bread.

But you know what?  This is a testament to just how awesome of a food pizza really is.  If my description can sound this bad, how can we still enjoy eating here?  I don’t have any answers.  But as long as its cooked enough, you can’t really fuck up what is essentially cheesy bread.

CiCi’s Pizza to me, means good times with awesome friends and some really, really cheap food.  I’ve never had a bad time here.

To top it off, a friend gave me some pretty cool pizza plates.  Enjoy. -gRant

Planet Pizza. Pizza Planet? A Labor Day Weekend Slice at the Beach.

Whatever the name is, I can never get it right.  I also can’t remember if its on 8th or 9th and Atlantic down at the Virginia Beach ocean front, but you’ll see its enormous blue storefront either way.

I’ve eaten pizza here many times.  My high school girlfriend would eventually land a summer job at this place, and we’d all make friends with the owners and they would treat us very graciously time and time again.

Over the weekend I made a trip down to the ocean front to visit some old friends and was given a slice of piping hot cheese pizza and it was freakin’ great.  What is pictured above is a mushroom/pepperoni that was ordered at the same time.

This stuff is perfect I tell you.  A beautiful mixture of sloppy and wet, but still the cheese magically does not slide off, and is also chewy and salty.  The crust is lightly dusted and while droops like a traditional NY slice, still has a bit of the crunchiness that should define the crust of any kind of food.  Complete with a savory tomato sauce, the one slice I was given made my mouth water for more.  Being treated to an unexpected free slice of pizza from some old friends, I dared not ask for more.  The rest was gobbled up pretty quickly anyway.

I definitely need to return as soon as I can, and YOU should check it out if you’re ever at the ocean front.  -gRant

Pizza Hut's new stuffed crust pan pizza

Not too long ago my favorite pizza blog, Slice, checked out Pizza Hut’s new stuffed crust pan pizza and had some surprisingly positive things to say about it.  I decided to try it for myself on a slow Saturday around the office…er…bed room.

The stuffed crust pan pizza has a ring of cheese stuffed into the crust which ends up being hardly noticeable due to the consistency of the crust itself, and all of the crappy cheese baked on top.  This ends up tasting like any other pan pizza I’ve had from “The Hut” and not much else.

I liken eating this pizza to eating a cake.  Its thick, soft and easy to bite through.  It comes with that familiar Pizza Hut taste and smell, something that no one could probably describe.  Its like that taste that McDonald’s food has.  You can’t really describe it.  It just tastes like SOMEthing.  And only these guys do it this way.

The cheese is absolutely horrible.  There is no consistency here.  You could pick the tiniest pieces of with your fingers as if the cheese were formed from some kind of liquid paste.  Of course by the time you eat it, the cheese has solidified into a yellow sheet with crispy pepperonis on top.  Which brings us to the best part.

I’ve always liked the pepperoni at Pizza Hut.  They are thin and crispy, almost bacon like slices of salty flavor.  Thats all you need for pepperoni.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t make the pizza.  I wanted to throw up after I ate a few slices of this stuff and I hope my roommate eats the leftovers so I don’t have to.

Buon Giorno Pizzeria, Cary Town

Thursday nights are usually reserved for Chipoltle bike rides with Cary Town Bike Co., (check em out here) but me and Evan were either late for the ride, or the ride didn’t happen.  Either way, I suggested we’d try Buon Giorno a few blocks down.

The place is run by an old couple, could be Italian, Greek, I really don’t know.  What I do know is they are very cute and very friendly.  I love coming to this tiny, cramped pizza joint, they really do cater to their customers better than any place, probably because they don’t see as many as a place like Mary Angela’s which pollutes Cary St. just a few blocks west.

We ordered a few slices, two each.  The first three came from a pizza that was obviously sitting around for 20 minutes or so, which is what I come to expect when ordering by the slice.  I really don’t mind, good pizza should hold up for that long anyway.  The fourth slice had to be cut from a hot, fresh out of the oven pie, which my friend received.  He kindly let me try it and I opted to get another slice from that same, hot pizza.

The fresh slice was obviously much more delicious than the others I had, but still retained the same, dull flavor.  They serve it up NY style, and more legit than most places I frequent in Richmond, but the pizza has sort of a sour flavor to it.  Not neccesarily a BAD thing, and I don’t mean “sour” as in “spoiled” but sometimes cheese can have a more sour flavor, which I enjoy.

Its different here.  And I applaud different where ever I can find it.  There is really no need for two or three of the same types of pizza in such a small city.

The flavors really don’t jump out at you, but Its a pretty enjoyable pizza.  The crust was the only thing that jumped out at me, probably the closest thing to the crust I’ve had in Manhattan than anywhere in Richmond.  Great stuff, worth it to stop in.  Just try to get a fresh slice, its well worth it. -gRant

Ukrops and Shanell T

I got to work yesterday around 11:30am and had an immediate urge for the perfect snack. Ukrops in Carytown happens to have a few good options for take out. A salad bar, friend chicken, bakery etc. It also happens they have hot delicious pizza available by the slice. I was long overdue for a taste test.

Shanell T, (who by her uncanny customer service I assume must be at the top of the corporate pizza serving ladder) was able to get me set up with three slices of cheese.  The pizza looked fantastic although sitting under hotlamps.  There were a few options, cheese, pepperoni and veggie which appeared to have some green peppers and onions and a few tomatoes and they all looked good but I went simple in order to get a baseline evaluation.

I explained to Shanell T my dilemma in frequenting a certain Pizza place nearby and she seemed very disappointed.  To make me feel better she gave me the biggest slices in the case and with a certain curiousness asked me if I was indeed going to eat all three slices myself.  I cooly and calmly assured here that it would be no problem for me at all and in addition to eating the pizza I would give it a honest review and name drop her here on Pamparius.  Big ups to Shanell T.

Shanell T sure did a fantastic job cooking this pie.  My first bite came with a rush of sweet, herb filled sauce and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of flavor.  The cheese was good consistency and had a nice saltiness to it.  The dough, although slightly undercooked by my particular tastes, had a good flour presence and was heavy in a way that was filling but not overwhelming.  I shared a slice with a co-worker and put the third in the fridge for a snack later on.  The pizza was really good out of the fridge as a matter of fact.  The cheese not too solid and the crust not too rubbery.  The sauce was able to keep its flavor and wasn’t dulled down by a change in temperature.

For a quick cheap slice and no hassle service from Shanell T, I give the Ukrops a 4 out of 5 this time around.  Definite future trips in the works.