trash talk

The move to a permanent domain is coming along quite nicely. One thing we neglected, however, was making sure the comment section actually worked. We miss being awkwardly urged to try random pizza joints and the subtle controversy that comes with trying pizza once and making blanket statements about the quality of different pizzerias. Please feel free to bring the internet beef from here on out.

Suffering for your craft

Sometimes I wonder if eating so much pizza is the right lifestyle decision.  One day I’d like to have kids, be a successfulm respectable adult, and turn into a crazy old grandpa that gets to yell everything on my mind at the top of my lungs.  ”Oh he’s just senile,” they’ll say as they hold doors open for me and my Rascal scooter.  Oh, and I’ve always dreamed of having several young men rush to my door to help me off the ground when “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

But I also love Pizza.  Yes, I capitalized it.  It is the food that makes me the happiest in the world.  I celebrate every joyous occasion in my life with pizza from the mundane to the extraordinary.  There is a Devils game on cable television tonight and to celebrate the rare occasion that I don’t have to watch hockey on a 640×480 resolution internet feed, I will consume an entire pizza of my choice.

However, some things I do not out of my desire to consume but instead I do less satisfying things in the hopes that this blog will one day become something bigger than just a small pizza blog with 80 hits a day.

Today I decided to see how well the kids at VCU are eating.   Their pizza, in particular.  You see, I graduated from VCU last year and I never ate too much of the pizza that was served throughout campus.  It can get pretty fucking bad I tell you, and if you’re a student then I probably don’t have to tell you.  On the Monroe Park campus I know of three places where pizza can be purchased with meal plans and dining dollars;  Shaffer Court dining center, The Commons and the first floor of Shaffer Court.

The Commons serves up this stuff called Bene Pizza.  I don’t know much about Bene other than how shitty the pizza was, and apparently still is horrible.  For $2.50 (plus tax) you can get a greasy, sloppy slice of pepperoni pizza.  You know that weird, addicting, McDonald’s-like sugary, oily taste that is greased all over Pizza Hut’s pizzas?  That what this thing has.  The aroma is oddly pleasant, but not in a desirable way at all.  The cheese sucks and the crust is even worse.  In fact, the crust ends look full, plump and full of chewy goodness inside.  Its all air!  You’re really only eating two sides of really flat, stale crust, separated by lots of oven air.  I remember only eating this shit when I had to…when Subway was closed and I had to spend the remnants of my parent’s dining dollars.

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Bears, Bulls and Deep Dish Pizza

I’ve never had a proper apprectiation for Chicago style pizza or “deep dish” pizza.  I remember exactly my first taste of said pizza was Dominos Deep Dish back in the early 90′s.  The commercial was catchy.  I believe it was tied to college basketball in some way and the song had the beat from Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”  The stadium was stomping and clapping the beat, and the hook was something like “DOMINOS DEEP-DISH!”

this CANT be good

Other than that, I can’t honestly say I’ve had a good Chicago style pizza.  What’s offered around here is what I consider crap.  Bottom’s Up is some of the most overrated pizza I’ve ever eaten and I’ve tried both their thin crust and their gi-normous, grossly thick “slices” (I like to call them “slabs”) of deep dish pizza topped with anything from crab meat to Gulden’s brown mustard.  Overrated and overpriced.   My friend ordered a single pizza one night with 3 or 4 toppings and it ended up being over $30.  If you top your large pie with any kind of seafood, that’ll run you $10.95 per topping.

And none of this stuff even remotely resembles the true deep dish pizza of Chicago that I’ve seen in pictures.  That stuff is HUGE.  So I turn to one of my verbal heroes, the voice I hear in my head when I try to write entertaining shit about pizza or really anything in life, Anthony Bourdain.  I’m going in to the windy city with a very narrow mind.  A pizza racism of sorts.  And if Bourdain, a New Yorker through and through, can find a way to enjoy Chicago’s monstrosity, then surely I can.

I took it upon myself to book a trip to Chicago next weekend as a couple friends will graciously host my pizza-eating ass in the heart of the city.  I will arrive around noon on Friday and will run through the city’s best pizza until Sunday night.  I’m setting my goal at 5 different pizza joints, but I can’t expect my friends to be as pizza-obsessed as I am.  Three will be good enough.

Oh ya.  Go Blackhawks.  Those throwbacks are sick.

one more reason not to go to short pump

LEDO Pizza & Pasta.  Their concept is simple.  ”…to provide high quality food at a great value in a comfortable, family atmosphere.”  Sounds like I’ve got a real generic stomach ache ahead…

My boss kept telling me that Ledo Pizza is the best pizza he’s had in town.  ”Everything else tastes the same to me, except this place,” he says, so I took off work a little early today to check out Ledo’s and to kill some Christmas shopping at the same time.

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Orgasmic Pie

Ok so I’ve talked more than enough about the pizza at Tarrant’s, but on Saturday night I gorged on a pizza so delicious, I just have to write about it here.

This time it was different.  I swear!

For the first time at Tarrant’s, I ordered a small pie due to the fact that I had already eaten pretty recently.  However, due to my super-addiction I still craved a pizza.

Normally the pizza here is delicious, but the large slices tend to be really floppy and very close to being undercooked.  With the small pie, everything gets cook more evenly.  The crust ends (always delicious here on any size pie) taste the same as the crust under the center of the pie.  This makes for a wholly delicious pizza which along with the massive gin & tonics that Ellen was serving up, put me in a euphoric state of gluttony that I haven’t forgotten.

I’ll have to try smaller pizzas at some of my other favorite joints and maybe you should too.

-g