Z Pizza – Review
- Posted by Pizza Locust on February 20th, 2007 filed in Arizona, Phoenix, Pizza, Reviews
- 1 Comment »
Across the street St. Joseph’s hospital is a relatively new place named Z Pizza. When I’m in the area, I usually already have lunch plans at Johnny’s Red Hots next door and so haven’t had the opportunity to try Z Pizza yet.
Besides, well, I admit it, their claims about the low-fat and healthy ingredients the use just don’t seem consistent with the spirit of pizza. Love it though I do, pizza is not on anybody’s diet.
I had the 10″ pepperoni pizza. According to their documentation, the crust is made with “Montana Winter Flour” (whatever that is). The tomato sauce was 100% certified organic. The cheese was “award-wining”, low-fat skim mozzarella and the pepperoni was “reduced fat, MSG-free.”
With that kind of write-up, I was prepared for a pizza from one of those pre-packed diet food programs.
Nothing could have been farther from the truth. This was a good pizza.
The crust was thin and cooked, but not particularly outstanding. Perhaps that’s an indication of how cold the Montana winter was that the flour came from?
The sauce was very good, with just a hint of sweet that seemed to come more from the tomatoes rather than sugar.
The cheese was the best low-fat, skim mozzarella I’ve ever tasted. I don’t know whose award it won, but it deserved it. Normally mozzarella needs to be a whole milk variety to get a good rich flavor out of it, but this was certainly an exception. Apparently those Wisconsinites really know their cheese.
Only the pepperoni was a let down. It wasn’t bad, but it was rather bland. I doubt I could have told the difference between this and a cheese pizza, except for the $1.25 difference in price. In fact, their pizza does work out to be a bit more expensive than most in town.
Nonetheless, there was nothing to complain about it. Next time I’ll try their sausage pizza.
Z Pizza apparently started in the art colony of Laguna Beach back in 1986 and now has locations in 4 western states, including 3 stores in the Phoenix area.
Z Pizza
53 West Thomas Rd
Phoenix, Arizona
(602) 234-3289
10″ Pepperoni Pizza, $7.74 = $0.10 (0.985) per square inch
Recommended – Although, cheese would have been a better choice over pepperoni and a better deal at only .0826 per square inch.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review
April 8th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
We were with some friends this weekend and in the general area of Z Pizza, so I suggested we go there for lunch and so that I could try a second pizza.
This time I tried a sausage pizza. While the sausage wasn’t too bad, certainly more flavorful than their pepperoni, regrettably, this time the crust was thicker, puffier and not fully done. Similarly, the mozzarella was undercooked. Mozzarella has that fundamental phase/state change when it has been completely melted. This time it wasn’t quite past that point.
This visit was on Saturday at about 11:30AM. It appeared as if we might have been the first customers of the day and they may simply not have gotten the over up to temperature yet.