Bastard of the Day
Today's award goes to the useless bastards at Pizzeria Aroma. How is their food? Don't ask me. Those bastards refused to deliver it.

Even though their Web site shows a delivery area that includes our house, someone called me five minutes after I ordered and claimed, "We never go west of Western." I argued that their Web site says they do (it clearly shows that they deliver to California, four blocks west of Western). He said, "Sorry, we're way too busy tonight to make any exceptions." Damn it, I'm not asking for an exception. I checked your delivery area before I called. Why bother publishing a delivery area if it's wrong?

Pizzeria Aroma, you stink. You will never get another chance to get my business, you bastards.


UPDATE 02/26/2008 - They charged my credit card, too! I called them and fortunately they remembered my situation and said they'd credit my account.

Labels: bastards, pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 7:54 PM 0 comments

 
Didn't Think This Was Possible
Pizza Hut deep-dish crust has gotten greasier since the last time I ordered it. I thought it was already completely saturated, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe they reformulated the dough so that it could hold more. If I had one of those biofuel cars, I could wring out a slice into the gas tank and get 50 miles out of it.

Labels: pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 9:27 PM 2 comments

 
Bastard of the Day
After a slow but steady decline, Leona's Restaurants (the whole freakin' chain) are collectively the Bastard of the Day. It all started when they stopped offering meat lasagna several years ago. Sure, you can get the five-cheese lasagna with meat sauce on top, but it isn't the same. Then a year or two ago they eliminated their whole wheat crust pizza (which unlike most whole wheat crusts, did not taste like cardboard or sawdust) from the menu. Well, technically it wasn't eliminated from the menu because they kept passing out the old menus, but if you tried to order it, you were S.O.L.

The best pizza crust from Leona's has always been their delicious, buttery, cornmeal deep-dish. It was square to fill the entire box, and Leona's offered special toppings that weren't available on the "regular" thin crust. My favorite was the Italian meats pizza, which included the usual sausage and pepperoni along with tasty meatball slices. The sauce was thick and rich, and the cheese was plentiful.

So tonight when I ordered the Italian meats pizza from the new Leona's menu, I expected that fantastic pizza. The new menu doesn't say anything about the crust, but I assumed since it was more expensive than the thin crust and was categorized under "gourmet pizza pies" that it would be the cornmeal crust I love.

Alas, it was not; the Leona's deep-dish crust is no more. I paid $18.75 for a large pizza, and the crust was about two millimeters thick. Even if I didn't hate superthin crust (and I really, really do), this pizza was utter crap. The toppings were sparse, there was a mere hint of sauce, the cheese was adequate at best, and any spot not covered with cheese was charred. The superthin crust meant there was barely enough to feed the two of us; usually a large pizza is good for at least a lunch or two worth of leftovers.

My wife works evenings, and while she's working I eat cheap, mediocre dinners alone -- frozen lasagna, frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, maybe a bowl of cereal, or creamed chipped beef on toast for goodness' sake. When I'm eating with my wife, I want a good meal for a change. Leona's has always delivered (in all senses of the word) until tonight. I hope they realize their mistake and bring back the real pizza crust, and I hope they fire the bastard who took it off the menu in the first place. In the meantime, there are at least a dozen pizza joints nearby that make twice the pizza for two thirds of the price. Arrivederci, Leona's!

Labels: bastards, Chicago, pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 11:59 PM 0 comments

 
Volume Discounts: Pizza Mathematics, Part II
When we did the math, I was surprised to learn how rapidly the area of a pizza grows. A 12" pizza is 44% larger than a 10" pizza, and a 14" pizza is twice the size of a 10" pizza. That got me thinking about menu prices. By dividing the cost of a pizza by its area, I can determine the cost per square inch. Of course, pricing varies significantly from place to place. For the first example, I will use prices for Giordano's stuffed pizza with two toppings because that is what we ordered:

Size (inches)	Area (square inches)	Price	Cost per square inch
10	78.5	$14.95	19.04 cents
12	113.1	$18.95	16.76 cents
14	153.9	$21.25	13.81 cents

As I always suspected, ordering a larger size is a much better deal. What about their thin crust pizza?

Size (inches)	Area (square inches)	Price	Cost per square inch
10	78.5	$10.95	13.95 cents
12	113.1	$13.65	12.07 cents
14	153.9	$16.75	10.88 cents
16	201.1	$19.85	9.87 cents

Here is a great example of what a deal larger sizes are. A square inch of 10" thin crust is more expensive than a square inch of 14" stuffed, even though the stuffed pizza is about three times as thick.

For another example I will use Manzo's, a local Italian restaurant, because they offer a wider range of thin crust sizes. Again, prices are for a pizza with two toppings:

Size (inches)	Area (square inches)	Price	Cost per square inch
10	78.5	$9.00	11.46 cents
12	113.1	$10.50	9.28 cents
14	153.9	$11.75	7.63 cents
16	201.1	$13.00	6.46 cents
18	254.3	$14.75	5.80 cents

As long as you have a way to store the leftovers, a bigger pizza is a much better deal than a smaller one. There are numerous reasons for this. While a 14" pizza requires twice the ingredients of a 10", it doesn't require twice the labor. And restaurants probably account for fixed costs (rent, utilities, etc.) on a per-pizza basis rather than adjusting for size. Of course, one could argue that if ordering a bigger pizza just makes you eat more (i.e., if you don't save the extra food for another meal), then you are paying for it in different ways.

Labels: pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 8:22 PM 0 comments

 
What Difference Does Two Inches Make? Pizza Mathematics, Part I
A few nights ago, a friend and I went out for pizza. We deliberated over whether to order a 10" or 12" (stuffed, not thin crust). We chose the larger size but didn't finish it. Knowing that my friend is a top engineer for one of the nation's premiere steel fabricators, I figured he'd enjoy the mental exercise of determining whether we made the right choice.

First, we recalled the formula we learned long ago for the area of a circle: π * r² or "pi times the radius squared"

My friend took out his PDA, and we used 3.1416 for π. For our calculations, the value of π to ten-thousandths would be plenty, especially considering that pizza dimensions are imprecise enough to introduce a significant margin of error. This table shows how pizza diameter translates into area:

Size (inches)	Area (square inches)
10	78.5
12	113.1
14	153.9
16	201.1

We discovered that the 12" pizza we ordered had 34.6 more square inches of area than the 10" pizza. Since we ate 75% of the 12" pizza (84.8 square inches), the 10" pizza would not have been big enough, assuming we would notice the difference of six square inches. That's unlikely, but at least I got a second meal out of the leftovers!

Labels: pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 4:26 PM 0 comments

 
A Woman Delivered My Pizza
Tonight when I answered the door, I was shocked to see a woman coming up the stairs to deliver my pizza. Those of you who live in suburbia, exurbia, and beyond won't recognize the significance of this. But here in the big, bad city, I would have been less surprised to see a hobbit come trudging up the steps of our porch. Females don't deliver food in Chicago. I've lived here for more than 12 years in three different neighborhoods (all relatively good), ordering pizza once a week on average, and I cannot recall ever getting my pizza from a woman before. It happens often on vacation, but never in the city.

Safety concerns are the obvious explanation. I don't have any statistics, but according to my scans of the local paper's police blotter, delivery people are robbed on a somewhat regular basis. Occasionally worse things happen, but usually it's just about cash.

Alas, women aren't any better than men at this job. Once again, I received a pizza with the cheese and toppings slid over to one side. That's the second time this week from two different restaurants. What the hell, can't anyone properly transport a pizza in this city anymore?

Labels: pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 11:58 PM 0 comments

 
Bastard of the Day
Today's award goes to the pizza delivery guy. For the first time in years, I opened the box to find all the cheese and toppings were shifted to one side. If not for the tall rim of the deep dish crust, my cheese would have been all over the box. The worst part is that I had already given the pizza-tilting bastard a good tip. Should I open the box at the door and inspect my pizza before tipping?

Labels: bastards, pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 11:53 PM 2 comments

 
I'm in the Kitchen with the Tombstone Blues
Was Bob Dylan singing about frozen pizza? Doubtful. (And yes, I know he wrote "streets" instead of "kitchen.")

Eating frozen pizza is definitely slumming, especially in Chicago where so many great pizza joints deliver anytime from 11 AM to 5 AM. On the other hand, it is dirt cheap compared to "real" pizza, and I feel a little guilty ordering good pizza while my wife is working (we only dine together twice a week). For frozen, I think Home Run Inn is the best, especially since the Home Run Inn restaurant where we used to go (Rolling Meadows, I think) closed. Unlike most frozen pizzas, it is prebaked; the cheese is already melted. They don't have any unusual toppings, but the crust is exceptional.

But this blog entry is about the ubiquitous national brand, Tombstone. My favorite Tombstone pizza is barbecue chicken ("The sun's not yellow it's chicken"), which is about as exotic as Tombstone gets. For some reason it is never done at the prescribed time on the package. Then last night I had a sausage & pepperoni Tombstone. The instructions said to bake at 400 degrees for 17-19 minutes. The barbecue chicken pizza says to bake at 400 degrees for 12-14 minutes. Somehow I doubt that replacing the pizza sauce with barbecue sauce makes it cook in two thirds the time of a "regular" pizza. Mystery solved! What I don't understand is why Kraft has left clearly wrong instructions on the label for so many years.

By the way, have you ever read the small print on the sausage and pepperoni pizza? It says "made with pork, chicken & beef." That's like getting three toppings for the price of two! Of course, the best thing about frozen pizza, aside from its low price in general, is that you don't pay by the number of toppings anyway. Sausage & pepperoni is the same $2.50 on sale as plain cheese. On a real pizza, it costs $2.50 just to add two toppings. Or just to tip the delivery man (which reminds me: I never see women deliver pizza here in the city, so I'm always surprised to see a woman show up when I order pizza in a smaller town).

The brand's slogan disturbs me: What do you want on your Tombstone? I'm afraid my tombstone will read, "Here lies a guy who got fat eating cheap pizza."

Labels: pizza

- posted by David Johnsen @ 3:32 AM 0 comments