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

14Apr/110

Wilmington’s House of Pizza

Strange little place

My compliments to the photographer!

This is a curious establishment. I first caught wind of this place by way of Port City Foodies. I guess they were supposed to be called Pharaoh's Pizza, but changed their name at the last minute. King Tut still graces their menu, curiously. Late last week I inferred that they were open for business, after spotting over 9000 watts of neon blasting forth from their windows.

When some place calls themselves "House of [insert food item here]," you sort of expect that food item to be the flagship of the restaurant. I don't think I've ever had pancakes at IHOP, but that's only because pancakes are stupid. They're just lazy waffles, after all. However, as a pizza addict, WHOP piqued my interest, by virtue of its name alone.

Well fuck me running, pizza only makes up about 10% of the WHOP menu. This place has the most extensive menu of any place I can ever remember patronizing. They should have named this place Wilmington's House of Every-God-Damned-Thing. The menu is mostly various sandwiches and salads, plus some pizza, pasta, breakfast, bar food, wraps, burgers,  calzones, seafood and desserts. Got that? All the prices look pretty good, though. Incomprehensibly, they don't offer slices on their menu.  Wilmington's House of Pizza will gladly sell you souvlaki (wtf is that?) or flounder, but there's no mention of goddamn slices on their menu. Kind of off-putting.

They do offer a small cheese pizza for $4.50+tax, which is an okay deal (I guess):

This is the most spot-on replica of a Pizza Hut pan pizza I've ever had the misfortune of ingesting. If I were to rate this thing based on how much it tasted like Pizza Hut, it would do quite well. However, Pizza Hut doesn't make good pizza. So there you go.

As with Pizza Hut, WHOP's slice had unremarkable sauce and cheese. The crust was big and bready with a well-browned - yet very soft and sadly crunchless - bottom. If you love Pizza Hut but hate supporting huge multinational corporations (chances are no such people exist), I wholeheartedly recommend giving Wilmington's House of Pizza a whirl. They're probably cheaper than Pizza Hut, too.

On a positive note, it struck me that this pizza was created with care. That's more than I can say for a lot of the shit I've reviewed here. WHOP's pizza is what it is, and for what it is I guess it's alright. I'm just not a fan of what it is. I wish their Blodgett oven was put to far better use.

They should have called this place Hut of Pizza to make what they're offering more apparent right off the bat. In any case, I'll likely be going back there to try something else, probably a sub or maybe some souvlaki and motherfucking baklava.

And they seem to have a decent pizza oven too, what a shame.

5 1/2 recircs out of a possible 8 recircs (lower is better)

Wilmington's House of Pizza - $4.86
1016 South College Road,  Wilmington, NC 28403

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Posted by pete

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  1. I am a waitress there and we do have slices, but they are like little personal pizzas. A cheese slice is a $1.50… I do agree with the extensive menu, it needs to be reduced!

  2. First things first, this place’s website is COMPLETELY FUCKED. Their listed hours of operation are incorrect, not even close to their actual hours… but even worst is their blasphemous claim that they “have a wide range of unique pizzas not found anywhere else”, my ASS. The only unique thing about their pizza is that it had ABSOLUTELY no sauce on it whatsoever, not even visual remnants. Their sign claims that they have 7$ large pizzas, so I order a pepperoni and have it delivered since Im too stoned to go pick it up (their website also lies and says they have free delivery, which is bullshit because the pizza was $13 when it got to my house.) To top it all off, I open the pizza box and it looked like the delivery boy had fucked the pizza on the way over, several slices of my overpriced, already subpar pizza had little to no cheese on them, and as I mentioned earlier the pizza contained no sauce at all, so 2 of my 8 slices were mere grease soaked pita chips. Its very clear that the owners of the place couldn’t give 2 fucks about their establishment due to the simple fact that they can’t even post their correct hours of operation on their website, not to mention it took me 15 minutes to sound and spell out my road name to the egyptian dude on the phone taking my order. I will not be getting pizza delivered from here ever again, it’ll be Dominos or Papa fucking Johns. Fuck WHOP. Frankly I am shocked that you, a self proclaimed pizza connoisseur, considered it to be “mid tier”. It was extremely sub par and I would rather eat bath salts and chew my own limbs off than eat there ever again

    • first off, awesome comment. secondly, man i love eating bath salts and chewing my limbs off. thirdly, i’ve only had the pizza here once or twice and it came out looking like the photo (ie it had sauce and cheese and wasn’t all raped up by a delivery driver). WHOP’s rating was kind of based off the style of pizza it was going for. which is pizza hut. it did that pretty well so i might have drunkenly rated it too well. i’d still prefer pizza hut, but only if i could go back to 1988 when i didn’t know what pizza was.

      as far as going to dominos or PJ, you should first try out Brooklyn Sal’s Famous Pizza. i’m about to write that review. it’s not that good, mind you, but it’s okay if you’re in the area. if fuck what’s it called, pizzettas, if they deliver, the next time you get stoned order some of that because it’s good (try the nonna pizza too). more importantly if the incredible off new centre delivers to you, just get that and rub it all over your filthy, stoned body.

  3. yeah, wilmington house of pizza is really bad, i did not know that Brooklyn Sal’s is open, i will be trying it tomorrow.

  4. I grew up in Wilmington and have been living in Raleigh for the past 8 years. On my last visit, St. Patrick’s Day 2013, I noticed this establishment and was intrigued. Only three days prior, I was Wikipedia surfing at my apartment and stumbled upon the term “House of Pizza” while looking up “Greek pizza” (I should mention I also work at a New Yorker owned Italian pizzeria and restaurant near Research Triangle Park and the RDU Airport). This might help you guys figure out why there are “…souvlaki and motherfucking baklava…” on the menu:

    “This style of pizza is referred to as “Greek pizza” even when it has non-Greek toppings, since it is typical of pizzerias owned by Greek immigrants. (These pizzas are similar to the pizzas served in Italian-style restaurants in Greece itself.) These establishments often also sell Greek specialties, such as Greek salads and gyros, and tend to brand themselves as “Pizza and Pasta” or as a “House of Pizza”; a code signifying that it is not an Italian restaurant, but a Greek restaurant serving Italian-style food. In the United States, the latter usage is common in New England cuisine.” – Wikipedia – accessed 3/18/2013 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_pizza


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