The Pizza Locust

We’re down in Tucson for the Gem & Mineral show. I was in the area of my favorite Tucson restaurant chain (Lucky Wishbone Chicken) and my favorite bookstore (Bookman’s) and playing with my new iPhone when I happened to catch an open wi-fi signal from some place called “Uppercrust.” Looking around, I discovered Upper Crust Pizza across the street, so I used their wi-fi connection to look up information about them. With four rave reviews and couple mediocre or worse ones over at City Search, I decided to give them a try for dinner before we left town.

It’s been a cold, rainy friday night, and we took the kids in for a couple pizzas.

Upper Crust is more of a take-out place, but they have six tables for dining in. Orders are placed at the counter. Pizzas come in four sizes, ranging from 10″ to 16″. They also sell enormous individual slices of pizza. Drinks are in cans and bottles only.

We ordered 2 10″ pizzas. One pepperoni, one sausage. The pepperoni pizza arrived first, the second pizza was made cheese only and they took it back and made the correct pizza without asking us. Consequently, I was finished with the pepperoni pizza before the sausage pizza arrived.

The pepperoni pizza was a good solid entry in the New York style pizza category. Although there was nothing that stood out as exceptional, everything was pretty serviceable. On the first piece, the crust was crispy enough to pick it up without flopping; however, the oil from the pepperoni seeped though the cuts and got under the pizza and softened up the rest of the pieces.

It was quite done - in fact, blackened, but not quite burnt - in a few places. The outer crust lacked a bit of flavor, but it wasn’t such that I was wont to leave it behind.

This was certainly a pizza I could imagine ordering for delivery, if I lived in that area. (In fact, I did live in that area when growing up, but this restaurant wasn’t there back then.)

I didn’t eat any of the second pizza, which was obviously rushed because of the preparation error. The feedback I got was that it was burnt on the outside and undercooked on the inside. I can’t confirm or deny that.

Prices are a bit confusing, the printed menus, the menu board and the actual prices seemed to be somewhat at odds. I was told that the menus are out of date and that flour prices have doubled (or was it tripled?) in the last 6 months. There’s going to be a price raise in three weeks.

For our visit, the price for the 10″ pepperoni appears to have been $8.75, which equates to $0.11 (0.111) per square inch.

Upper Crust Pizza
1909 E Grant Rd
Tucson, AZ
520-881-7000

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