The Pizza Locust

Nello’s Pizza has been a long-standing favorite in the east valley for many years and recently came in second in the AOL City Guide poll of pizza places.

Their original pizza is a deep-dish style and that’s what I’m familiar with at Nello’s, but today I decided to try their thin crust sausage pizza.

I’ve had many Nello’s deep-dish pizzas over the years and, while no deep-dish pizza is going to be my favorite, I can’t recall ever getting a bad pizza there…

…until I tried their thin-crust pizza today.

If this had been the first Nello’s pizza I’d ever had, it would also have been the last. It was thoroughly disappointing and I left much of it on the table when I left.

When the pizza arrived, it looked great. It was thin, puffy and cooked but not burnt. It looked delicious, but that illusion was rapidly dispelled.

The crust was incredibly dry and bland. The dryness was like a sponge, seemingly absorbing every molecule of H₂O in my body. The crust was also almost flavorless, except for the flavor of corn meal stuck to the bottom of the crust. It was not at all like their deep dish pizza.

While the cheese and sauce were unremarkable, the sausage was another story. I can’t think of a sausage that I’ve ever liked less. It was bland but with an odd flavor. While I wouldn’t have liked this pizza in any case, the sausage really made it unpleasant. I was actually concerned that it might have gone bad.

Because of their long track record, I’m not going to write off Nello’s completely, but it will be a long time before I go back, and it won’t be for another thin crust or sausage pizza.

Nello’s Pizza
4710 W Warner
Phoenix, AZ
(480) 893-8930

12″ Thin Crust Sausage pizza, $9.25 = $0.08 (0.0818) per square inch

Not Recommended (Note: This recommendation related to the thin crust only and may be an aberration as Nello’s has produced good deep dish pizzas in the past.)

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