The House Always Wins

I have already talked about Greco, but recently they had a special that was so ridiculous I had to try it.  As expected, it proved worthy of its own post.

Behold the Double Decker:

From the photo, I’m sure you’re all thinking, “That must be a stuffed-crust pizza.” And you would be right. But also so very, very wrong.  For look upon what is revealed once a slice is removed!

That’s right. It’s a stuffed pizza pizza.  The entire inside of the pizza has toppings throughout, and then it’s like another pizza was slapped down on top.

It should come as no surprise that I went for the six-meat variety of Double Decker pizza.  Much like the oft-maligned KFC Double-Down, this was so ridiculous that I had to try it.  And like said ridiculous foodstuff, it turned out to be a bit disappointing.  I mean, it tasted good in my mouth, and I’m glad I tried it, but I probably wouldn’t do it again.

My Double Decker experience did offer some crucial insight into pizza, however.

Its key drawback, I felt, was the drastically imbalanced ratio of toppings to crust.  There were bites where all I could taste was ground beef, because the middle toppings leaned heavily in that direction and the top and bottom layers of crust were so very thin—I might as well have been eating a hamburger instead of a pizza.  Now, I loves me a hamburger, but it is not pizza and not an equivalent experience.

That was the insight.  The importance of balancing all the aspects of the pizza: crust, sauce, cheese, toppings—if any one of these drastically overpowers the rest, then it doesn’t really come across as pizza.  The delicious awesomeness of pizza is in the balancing of those factors against each other.

(To be clear, even pizzas with those main factors imbalanced can still be—and usually are—delicious, as was the case with the Double Decker.  Such concoctions do not achieve the pizza perfection that I seek, however.)

All in all, I would have preferred a regular Greco pizza to the Double Decker, but now I know.  And knowing is half the battle.

After the tragic Stoggers fiasco at work (where we ordered at 11:30 AM, the pizza didn’t show up till 3:30 PM, and they only offered a 10% discount) we had to cut them from the Pizza Friday rotation.  The first viable alternate suggestion was Hobo’s Pizza, and so we tried that.

It… wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad.  As I recall, the crust didn’t have much flavour to it on its own, but with the toppings the pizza was okay.  The key attraction of Hobo’s—and the reason it has stayed on the list—is the crucial value-for-money proposition.

We got a ridiculous amount of pizza for significantly less than our normal price.  The pizza may only be okay, but it is cheap and plentiful.  That can be a potent combination.  While it is nowhere near being a favourite, you do get some decent bang for your buck.

During one of my recent (increasingly infrequent) visits to the gym, I noticed that a new pizza place was rising from the ashes of a former Blockbuster video location: Greco Pizza.  In this context, “new” is a relative term—I seem to recall that there used to be a Greco somewhere else in St. John’s, but there hasn’t been for a while.  They do appear to be a fairly significant chain, however, with over 100 locations throughout Atlantic Canada and Ontario.

Anyway, I took advantage of a current special (a large with 3 toppings for $15) and got a pizza for dinner tonight, with cheese, pepperoni, bacon, and ground beef.  Initial impressions were good: the toppings were abundant, I saw it come out of the oven so I knew it was fresh, and it was not overdone.  asting it was just as encouraging—it was a good pizza.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it was the right kind of pizza.  Greco pizzas are pan pizzas reminiscent of Pizza Delight or Pizza Hut.  As such, it was a little greasier than I’d care for in my perfect pizza, with a soft crust where I tend to prefer a little bit crispy.  Furthermore, they tout their “edge-to-edge” toppings, whereby the toppings are spread over the entire top of the pizza, and indeed this was the case.  I, however, like a bit of firm crust accessible around the edge so I have something to hold on to.

The restaurant site itself was clean (not surprising, giving that it has been open for less than a week), with a lot of people in the kitchen efficiently producing pizzas.  While I expect this would bode well for the consistency and reproducability of Greco’s pizza, it also homogenizes the experience a bit and makes it feel just a tad too generic.

Looking back, I realize this sounds rather negative, and that is certainly not my intent.  The pizza was quite delicous, and I had six slices eaten before I realized that I should probably not eat six slices.  It is good without being the type of pizza that is my ideal, but I can hardly fault it for that since it aspires to be something different.  While the Pizza Quest will continue, I will still be happier now that there is a Greco nearby.

This entry has been a source of great consternation for me.  My cousin—an avid follower of my quest—had suggested trying The Big Cheese, but as it was located a bit far away from me, I hadn’t gotten around to it.

Then, one Friday, lo and behold, it came up as a suggestion when another place was unable to deliver, and so we went for it.  The results… were mixed.

At our Friday pizza lunches, garlic fingers are typically ordered to accompany the pizza.  I usually have a couple of small ones out of a sense of duty, but they are really not my thing.  I am all about the pizza.  The garlic fingers we had from The Big Cheese, however, struck me as especially awesome.  Topped with cheese and bacon, they just totally hit the spot, the right mix of flavour and texture and deliciousness.  I think I had four large ones.

The pizza, though… the pizza was a disappointment.  It looked promising, initially: ample cheese, generous amounts of ground beef, pepperoni, and other toppings.  The crust appeared a little on the thick side, and a bit dark—perhaps it was a tad overdone.  Unfortunately, the taste did not live up to the looks.

The toppings tasted fine, but the sauce was not noticeable and the crust basically had all the flavour of cardboard.  I want to stress that the crust didn’t taste bad.  Rather, it seemed to have no taste at all.  Eating a slice of pizza was basically like eating a handful of pizza toppings with some flavourless filler material.

I just don’t understand how the garlic fingers could be so good—the best we’ve had at work, in my opinion—and yet the pizza could be so bland and dissatisfying.  I mean, they’re basically the same thing!  In an attempt to get to the bottom of this I may try them again in the future, on the off chance that it was a one-off bad pizza.  Of course, it being a one-off bad pizza would not factor well into its consistency rating—reproducibility is key to a good pizza place, and certainly to the place that will become “The One”.

Based off this one experience, I couldn’t recommend the pizza though the garlic fingers are great.  I reserve the right to change my mind, though, after a second tasting.  (If I wanted to be snarky, I could argue that I haven’t really tasted anything yet, so it might as well be considered a first tasting still.)

There has been a lot of pizza-related activity lately, thanks to Friday pizza lunches at work.  We have embarked on a Pizza Quest of our own, there, and so it has afforded me the opportunity to sample a few more new places.

Today’s entry is—I think—Pizza Empire.  (I had been thinking it was called Empire Pizza all along, but Google can find no such place.)  I am told that it is the best of the pizza places found in the Empire Avenue cheap pizza district, but—not having sampled the others—I cannot verify this.

I can verify that it was cheaper than most of our usual places.  The quality… wasn’t bad.  Toppings were reasonably generous, but I felt the crust was overdone and a bit tough.  The size of the pizza was quite generous and crust thickness was mid-range, neither too thin nor too doughy.

Overall, it tasted fine but didn’t stand out for me.  I would certainly eat it again, but there are several prior entries in the Pizza Quest that I vastly prefer.