Wilmington Pizza Insulting the stretch of pavement and stripmalls you call home

24Apr/120

Scotto Pizza

Posted by pete

Edible mall pizza. The fuck?

Sbarro, one of only two establishments in town to have the ignoble distinction of receiving a full 8-recirc rating (infinite recircumcision), has bitten the dust. That was very good news. When I heard it was being replaced by another chain pizzeria (this one being SCOTTO, some weirdo place from up north), I was filled with terror and began shaking uncontrollably. It also may have been withdrawal, who knows.

The first thing I noticed was the stupid TVs they used as menu boards. Scratch that, the first thing I noticed was that they had infinitely more employees working there than customers ordering from there (zero versus 6+). And when I say working I of course mean standing around doing jack shit. I guess they're new and don't know how much staff they need at given times. There were so many people working here that I felt like an animal in a zoo being gawked at by a bunch of self-entitled human scum. The small asian people floating around handing out skewered meat added to that effect, strangely.

They have two types of pizza (NY style and something that looked vaguely deep-dishy) and a lot of variety therein. The NY style shit didn't look too bad. It was cheaper than Sbarro used to be ($2.94 versus $3.52) and the slice was larger:

The pizza probably looks oversauced, overcheesed or both in this picture, but it wasn't too bad. The sauce itself was also pretty good, as was the cheese. The crust was alright; it wasn't cooked on a screen (thank Christ) and it had a bit of a crunch. But it definitely could have used more salt (or, you know, any salt whatsoever). I actually enjoyed this mall pizza.

Unlike Sbarro's disgusting bullshit which I didn't even finish, I could've eaten another slice of Scotto's, which makes their 2 slices and drink special for $6+tax a pretty good deal in general and, in specific, an awesome mall deal. Or you could go next door and have some monstrously overcooked fried chinese heatlamped horseshit.

SCOTTO!


4 1/2 recircs out of a possible 8 recircs (lower is better)

Scotto Pizza - $2.94
3500 Oleander Dr., Wilmington, NC 28403

Scotto Pizza on Urbanspoon

17Apr/120

My Essentials Extra Cheese Crispy Thin Crust Pizza Microwavable

Posted by pete

Seventy Cents to Freedom

I went to Golden China at 17th Extension and South College today for two reasons: One, I heard they had an appetizer called Chinese Pizza. Japanese pizza is one thing (and weird as fuck), but Chinese pizza? Sounds too perfect to be true. I don't think the good people of Hong Kong had even heard of pizza when I went there years ago. The second reason is that I wrote another review recently, but I don't want to post it because it's fairly negative and it bums me the fuck out. Anyway, Golden China didn't have any fucking pizza (shocker).

I wandered around like an idiot for a while. I walked around Dollar General. I hate Dollar General. Why don't they call it Everything's More Than A Dollar General? Because everything is more than a fucking dollar. Even stuff that oughta be a dollar is like $1.25, because Dollar General hates you, that's why. Then I wandered around Food Lion, and this My Essentials bullshit caught my eye (partially because I almost never shop at Food Lion and therefore never tried this):

It was on sale so I bought the fuck out of it. Normally this would have cost me over a dollar after taxes but I scored this shit for $0.70. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. I got this one specifically because it says it's microwavable, and I was going to take this back to the office to eat it. We don't have an oven; we have an ancient tiny microwave. It's one of those microwaves that's so old it doesn't have a spinny-turny apparatus. It's one of those microwaves that's so old that it has knobs instead of buttons. It's one of those microwaves that's so old you can feel the cancer emanating from it like a warm summer glow after a long nuclear winter.

Interestingly, the picture on the box isn't too far off. You basically know what you're getting when you buy this garbage, and I respect that. They know you're a broke hobo, you know you're a broke hobo, case closed. I'm surprised they spent the money on color printing, honestly. Here's the little pizza:

The sauce was a bland paste. The cheese was far from memorable. The crust reminded me of that weird, stupid, shitty Totino's frozen pizza I reviewed before. All in all it was pretty crummy and exactly what I expected.

I want to go back and buy every last one of these motherfuckers. Probably one of my favorite dollar frozen pizzas. But it's been a while since I've had the big dogg, Mr. P's.

8Apr/120

Palermo’s Primo Thin Ultra-Thin Crust Margherita Pizza & Thanks!

Posted by pete

Bloody mouthful of a name

Usually when I put up frozen pizza posts on here, it's because they're cheap as hell and terrible as all get-out; easily torn to pieces in a hopefully humorous way. This Palermo's pizza, on the other hand, is just goddamn delicious. I don't get it terribly often, but that's only because it usually costs at least an arm and a leg. Luckily, this time, I got it for very cheap. It was on sale, you see.

Their misuse of the term margherita aside, this is a hell of a frozen pizza. The crust is barely there, but its crunchy at least so that's cool. The toppings are all great; the tomatoes, basil, garlic and mix of cheeses. I could eat this pizza all day and frankly wish that was a viable option. One of the most glaring problems is that I can, and have, eaten an entire one of these dumb motherfuckers in one sitting, during a monumental hangover. The upside being that I probably passed out immediately afterwards and upon waking was likely ready to get back on the glorious boozetrain.

Some of Palermo's other offerings aren't as good, but a lot of their thin crust pizzas are rather dank. I stole some kind of fucking Palermo's goat cheese pizza from my parents freezer the other night. I don't know why I felt the need to mention that.

As an aside, the Kickstarter project was successful! Thanks to everyone who donated, I will hurry up to get everything done and sent out.

5Apr/120

Pizzetta’s Pizzeria Round Deux

Posted by pete

I liked the pizza this time so you can get off my back and jump up my butt

I got a lot of flak for giving Pizzetta's a mediocre review last time. Some time ago I journeyed back there again (with my mommy this time) and had some pasta dish that was really good. Considering the conflicting opinions of others regarding their pizza and my conflicting opinion of their other food, I decided to revisit Pizzettas. But I'm a lazy man, as you have surely come to realize.

The other day, I went to check out whether or not Sbarro had indeed closed down and turned into a place called SCOTTO PIZZA (no joke). It had not but this change is apparently forthcoming. Luckily they can not possibly do worse than the shit Sbarro was peddling last time I was feeling masochistic. So then I had to figure what to eat for lunch (no, fuck mallcourt food). Though Flaming Amy's was the obvious choice, I remembered my responsibility to my loyal readership (only briefly, mind you), and headed to Pizzetta's to get their $5.50+tax 2-slice-and-drink lunch special.

This time I decided to hedge my bets and get a regular slice and a Nonna's slice. Below is the regular slice:

This already looks a lot more promising than the vaguely-passable stuff I was served before - and it was. My only slight complaint would be that it was too sweet - the sauce mostly. Which is weird because last time I loved the sauce. Maybe the tomatoes were a bit sweeter than before, or they used too much sugar? I don't know. The sauce was still good. And I thought the cheese was better than before. At the very least it wasn't applied to the slice by a maniacal dump truck. The ratios were all quite right. The dough consistency was fairly good, but I kind of thought it also had a strange bit of sweetness.

The Nonna's slice was great:

I wasn't even planning on reviewing this because it looked weird. Then I had a few bites (in the span of approximately one second) and changed my mind. I then snapped that shitty picture you see above. I don't know if this goes for all Nonna's slices, but this thing was pretty big. And it was awesome. It had the same problem of the sauce being too sweet but fuck it, this shit was good. Did it look weird? Yes. Do you look weird? Probably. Live and let die. I killed this pizza.

I would offer a mea culpa for my previous review, but that would be ignoble. The other slice I had wasn't very good. It wasn't very bad, either. It had serious issues, though. Sometimes restaurants have off days - and therein lies the problem with most restaurant reviews. While I'm sure a lot of professionals will make multiple visits to a single establishment to ensure their opinion is scientifically sugarplums and rainbows, I don't have time for that bullshit. If I ate at every one of these places three times I would probably be fat enough to be on Medicaid. And then I wouldn't have mounting medical debt. Hey... hmmmm.

As an aside, sorry for the lack of updates recently. That's all you get. No excuses. Also, if anyone emailed me in the past two weeks, or sent messages via the Feedback thing, I probably didn't get it. I forgot to switch the mail stuff over to the new host because I'm a genius.

Hypnotoad!!

2 recircs out of a possible 8 recircs (lower is better)

Pizzetta's Pizzeria - $2.43
4107 Oleander Drive, Wilmington, NC 28403

Pizzetta's Pizzeria on Urbanspoon