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

14Apr/110

Wilmington’s House of Pizza

Posted by pete

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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