The Pizza Locust

Never deviate from the script, those are the rules, and then I go and break them.

I’d passed the Boston’s on University, near the University the other day when I was down seeing Richard Dawkins speaking at Gammage. I made a mental note to come back soon, and the opportunity presented itself a little sooner than I expected, albeit at a different location, down in Gilbert.

Boston’s is a bit of a sports-themed place, with a separate full-bar area. They’ve also got quite a diverse menu and there were several non-pizza items that tempted me, but the Pizza Locust’s job is never done and I decided to stay the course.

Then I got around to looking at the “specialty” pizzas, and I was tempted to break from my rigorous testing guidelines once again. There were two pizzas on the menu that were particularly speaking out to me, the Ultimate Pepperoni, which had two kinds of pepperoni and a cheese blend, and the Ultimate Sausage, which added crushed red pepper, fresh parmesan cheese cooked over the top and fresh basil and oregano.

We were a long way from home and I knew that the odds of me getting back to Boston’s again anytime soon are astronomically against, so I decided I’d choose a specialty pizza, knowing that it would invalidate some of the testing controls I try to put in place.

I choose the Ultimate Sausage. My reasoning was that, the cheese blend included fontina, which isn’t a typical pizza cheese, therefore these was outside the standard ingredient list, and not typical of Boston’s other pizzas, which mostly just use mozzarella. The Ultimate Sausage pizza had standard mozzarella, with parmesan over the top. It’s not uncommon for me to put parmesan cheese on my pizza, so that was too far out of the ordinary. Similarly, crushed red pepper, basil and oregano are all either typical spice ingredients or a common shake on topping after the fact. Again, I wanted that pizza, and I didn’t have to go far to convince myself I wasn’t really breaking my rules.

Still, their individual pizza is only 8″ and I was feeling quite hungry, so I also had a bowl of french onion soup, which is just my favorite soup. I’ve never met a bowl of french onion soup I didn’t like, unless it came out of a Campbell’s soup can.

Warning bells should have been ringing in my head when, after ordering my pizza, the waitress put the order into the kitchen, and then came back to tell me they didn’t make an Ultimate Sausage pizza. “We make an Ultimate Pepperoni pizza,” she said, “We could throw a couple chunks of sausage on one of those if you’d like.”

Instead I asked for the menu and I showed her the Ultimate Sausage pizza on their menu, complete with full-color photograph. To be fair, it was on their Pizza Madness menu (or something like that) rather than the main menu, but the fact that neither she nor the cooks apparently knew about it should have been a warning to me.

The menu read something like this: “We take a layer of our Italian Sausage, cover it with mozzarella cheese, crushed red peppers, slices of parmesan cheese and fresh basil and oregano to make the Ultimate Sausage pizza.” (Disclaimer: The Pizza Madness menu doesn’t show on their website, so I’m quoting that from memory, but I did go back after the meal and re-read it, just to make sure I wasn’t delusional.) I’m going to have to guess that the cook took the menu, read that description and tried to make the pizza.

Unfortunately, that may have been reading things just a little too literally.

For starters, the pizza looked nothing like the photograph, second, it had no sauce on it. If he was going to be that literal about following the description, I’m surprised it wasn’t just a layer of sausage on a bare plate – the description didn’t mention anything about a crust either, but he seemed to figure out that he needed one of those.

And yes, I checked, their other pizzas and they (for the most part) seemed to have sauce, and they even mention how great their pizza sauce is, so I assume sauceless is not the norm at Boston’s.

Sauceless and not looking like I expected, how did it stack up?

Not so well, I’m afraid.

The sausage was excellent, and having the crushed red pepper cooked into (under?) the cheese really made the flavor permeate throughout, which was good.

The crust was well cooked, but nothing special. The whole pizza, though, was dry, dry, dry.

I broke my rules of engagement for rating pizzas, and it really came back and bit me. I had to make a decision if I was going to ignore this trip and come back another day and try again, or write Boston’s off.

I also had french onion soup, and I mentioned, I’ve never had a french onion soup I didn’t like – until I ate at Boston’s. The soup was weird and tasted nothing like any I’ve had before. My wife tried it and her face was priceless. I won’t repeat what she thought it tasted like. She had a pasta dish with spiders or crustaceans or one of those undersea things and chicken – she didn’t care for it. My daughter had spaghetti and meatballs, and complained of stomach aches all the way home.

For those reasons, I’m writing Boston’s off. I cannot recommend them.

Boston’s – The Gourmet Pizza
1026 S. Gilbert Rd.
(480) 813-9223

8″ “Ultimate Sausage” pizza, $7.99 or $0.16 (0.159) per square inch

Not recommended

iPhone friendly?: Yes.