Working late one night, I decided I needed some pizza to keep me going. Fortunately, there is plenty of pizza to be found around my office in North Hollywood. One place, called Pizza Man (sadly not a superhero who fights off villains with pepperoni and tomato paste), always has a sign to advertise their $5 large pizza, so I looked them up and gave them a call. A man with an indistinguishable, but quite pleasant European accent answered the phone. It turned out that the special was only for plain cheese, but they had a two-topping carry out special for $6.99. This price was comparable to Papa John’s and other fast food pizzas, so I felt good about the price.
For toppings, I chose the two unvegan staples, pepperoni and sausage. The friendly voice told me it would be ready in 15 minutes, so after a few minutes more of work, I took a stroll to Pizza Man. The pizza was ready by the time I got there and smelled so good I could hardly wait to start eating. At first, the pizza tasted great. The dough was a bit sweet, but tasted pretty good with my savory toppings. Unfortunately, as my hunger faded, I found that the pizza wasn’t quite as good as I had originally thought. This wasn’t because I was getting full, but because the pizza was actually kind of dry. This was a slight problem for the cheese and toppings, which had little to no grease on them, but especially true for the dough. The crust was crunchy and flaky, and not in the good Italian pizza way, but in the overcooked or under-oiled way.
Despite the dryness, I found the sausage to be surprisingly good. It’s possible that this was because they were the juiciest part of the pizza or because they were actually good. Kind of like Chris Bosh on the Raptors. Although with Bosh we’ll see the truth in Miami, whereas with this sausage we may never know.
Nonetheless, this wasn’t really a bad pizza. $6.99 was a good deal and if they can lube up their pizza a little bit, the deal could be even better.
