The Pizza Locust

As I pointed out the other day, Mamma Mia’s has a new location nearer my house.

Since there’s not much eating room at their location and the smallest pizzas start at 14″, I was going to have to attempt a RPEM or “Rapid Pizza Extraction Maneuver.”

That’s where, under the strictest of scientific conditions, of course, we order a pizza, arrive before it has finished cooking. Intercept the pizza straight out of the over and then, in a car with no air conditioning nor outside air flow to negatively cool the pizza, make a beeline for home where the pizza can be evaluated in controlled conditions.

We have an optimum maximum of five minutes. Five minutes being an acceptable time for a pizza to “rest” after leaving the oven, even in a restaurant. (Three minutes rest being optimal.)

Worst-case scenario, 10 minutes maximum from oven to table, with appropriate notation in the review that pizza was a little bit older than it should have been - through no fault of the restaurant.

We scheduled to try an RPEM last Thursday. Unfortunately, that jackass who had the domestic dispute, then started waiving a gun around occurred at 15th Ave and Indian School - about 3 blocks from my house. He had the SWAT team, sharp-shooters and about 40 police cruisers completely bottling up this entire area. Indian School itself was closed off, and with light rail construction and diverted traffic on the other nearby streets, the area was completely snarled. The standoff lasted hours until he finally shot himself, but not soon enough to make it possible to attempt the RPEM. (Cold-blooded that may sound, but really, what did he accomplish except scaring a lot of people, wasting a lot of police time and snarling up the city?)

The next day, a new sign was up on Indian School as I approached Central, “Indian School Rd. Restrictions 10/19/07 - 11/31/07[sic]. Plan alternate route.”

Not wanting to wait until November 31st, which I think only occurs in leap millennia, we hoped that post-rush hour traffic would be light enough to allow a 10 minute pizza run.

We ordered the pizzas and the race was on. As we approached Central, the road was restricted to one lane, but there was no real delays. As we passed Central, though, problem presented itself - westbound traffic was backed up from Central all the way to 7th street - that’s nearly a mile. (That’s 7 blocks. In Phoenix, 8 blocks generally makes a mile.) That struck a serious blow to our plan, but it was too late to quit.

Second blow, the pizzas were already ready when we got there. We’d overestimated the cook time and underestimated the drive time.

Our backup return route was to drop half a mile south to Osborn, which has recently completed having light rail restrictions. We’d hoped it wouldn’t add too much time.

Third blow, Osborn was shut down at Central to accommodate work on some utility poles. We were forced onto Central which, die to the other restrictions, doesn’t allow westward turns on any of the through streets for two miles in either direction. By the time we’d wound ourselves through the back streets, we knew that the RPEM had been a failure.

It was 11 min. 11 sec from handoff to table, and so we’ll have to try another day.

Still, it was pretty good pizza, I had no complaints, apart from the fact that it was well on its way to cooling off and definitely a droopy crust, as mentioned in my previous review of their other location. It wasn’t as droopy as the previous review pizza because it was possible to eat this one with just a fold of the crust in the hand.

Indian School in that part of town (I used to work in an office, just two buildings down from their location) is not a hopping place at night, and while there’s residences behind all the main streets, they don’t seem to come out at night. I’ve always thought of that area as a lunch-only restaurant area. There were no other customers that we saw, either at Mamma Mia, or any of the other restaurants we could see nearby.

I suspect it will take them a while to build up their business there, but I wish them the best of luck.

I was surprised that they had some slices and “pinwheels” out, ready to be served that late at night. Pinwheels are little cinnamon-roll looking things made from pizza crust, with topping wrapped up within them, then served with pizza sauce over the top.

When I commented to my friend that the pinwheels are good for lunch, they gave us a couple for the road. That was very nice of them. I’d always noticed at the other location that they’re very friendly and interactive with their customers, which does make it seem a lot more like your local pizzeria. No doubt that attitude (and the pizza) accounts for the obvious customer loyalty I’ve seen displayed at the first location.

No “official” review on this pizza; however, the flavor was consistent enough with their original location that I’ll extend my “recommended” status to them until Phoenix clears up its traffic problems.

Tony’s Mamma Mia Express
806 E Indian School Rd
Phoenix, AZ
(602) 277-5512

Price, 14″ Pepperoni pizza, $11.45 or $0.07(0.074) per square inch.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Pizza, Restaurant, Review