The Pizza Locust

Starting with the usual disclaimer for this scenario: We always try to have a hot pizza served in the restaurant. Two Hippies Pizza doesn’t have any seating so this review is of a takeaway pizza. Time to table at home was 9 minutes.

Two Hippies is an ever-expanding and ecclectic empire of central Phoenix eateries. A taco shop here, a hamburger shop there and most importantly, a pizza shop at 7th Ave and Missouri.

This place is eccentic. They advertise that they use “…Arizona grown and mostly organic ingredients.” Of course “organic” is mostly a marketing scam pulled over the eyes of people who don’t check what that actually means but it is harmless and I can’t fault them for trying to use local ingredients.

Pizzas only come in the 12″ size and are made in either “hand tossed” or “paper thin” crusts. I can attest that the paper thin is the thinest I can recall ever having.

In addition to all the standards, Two Hippies offers some, frankly, bizarre combinations. For example they make a Chinese pizza, complete with bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and two kinds of noodles.

For review purposes we had the pepperoni pizza. So, how was it? Different. Not quite like any pizza I’ve ever had.

The crust was thin, really thin, with not a bad flavor.

The cheese, advertised as mozzarella, had a flavor almost as if some cheddar or some other yellow cheese was mixed in. Again, not at all bad but different.

The pepperoni was spicy and almost tasted like Italian sausage. Since I like both that was fine, too.

The sauce was really different. Not only did it have largish chunks of plum tomato but it also featured chunks of very flavorful peppers. Bell peppers if I’m not mistaken. The effect was rather like having a fresh, mild salsa added to marinara sauce.

I rather liked it, my daughter was less impressed. It was too “different” for her.

Another surprise: the menu indicates that the pizza should have cost about $7.72 before tax, but they charged me $7 total, including tax. Which makes the pizza about $6.45. Very economical.

Cost – About $6.45 for 12″ pepperoni or $0.06 (0.057) / sq inch

Two Hippies Dropped Out of College and Opened a Pizzaria
SE Corner of 7 Ave and Missouri
602-265-3604

The Pizza Locust recommends Two Hippies Pizza because it’s enjoyably different (but your kids might not appreciate it.)

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Update: 11/03/2009

We stopped in yesterday and picked up two pizzas.  This time a thin crust sausage and a hand tossed pepperoni, both were again exactly $7 each, which is a good deal.

I wasn’t as enamored of the hand-tossed crust, but it was fully cooked.  Unfortunately, that could not be said of the thin-crust pizza, which was tortilla floppy, and caused everyone all sorts of problems trying to eat it – forget picking it up, it was fork pizza only.

The other “new” element in this test was the sausage, which was plentiful and quite good.