The Unvegan

A coworker of mine was raving about the amazing-ness of Z Pizza in El Segundo, so I went to check it out with another coworker of mine.

The first thing I wondered was how they came up with the name “Z Pizza.” When I heard it the first time, I imagined a group of German immigrants sitting around a dingy New York pizza joint. One of the immigrants is clearly in charge, albeit with a strong accent, and asks the rest of the table, “Vhat vould you like on zi pizza?” Thus, a restaurant name is born.

When I walked into Z Pizza, though, I didn’t find any immigrants; German or otherwise. What I found instead was a lot of specialty pizzas with vegetables on them. Apparently I was tricked into going to a healthy restaurant! The concept of a healthy pizza place had never crossed my mind, yet there I was. Luckily, they also had pepperoni pizza for the occasional unvegan that accidentally walks through the door.

They were running a lunch special for two slices and a drink for about 7 bucks, so I tried that out with two slices of pepperoni. I asked the guy to give me the two biggest slices, and he complied, earning his franchise bonus points in the unvegan scale.

Then came the eating. I bit into a piece and it wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t anywhere near as amazing as I had been told. The crust was only slightly crunchy, while actually being a tad bit rubbery in texture. This shouldn’t happen with thin crust pizza. The cheese and sauce were just fine, but nothing special. The pepperonis, though, were actually quite good, which was surprising for a healthy place. Unfortunately, they could have found a better pizza to be cooked onto. I’m not saying Z Pizza is especially bad pizza (since it’s almost impossible to mess up the pizza-making process), it’s just pizza that fell well-short of its potential.