Adventure #40 - Pizza Land

Get your Indian food! Get your kebab! Get your. . .pizza? All is available to you at Pizza Land, on Burnet between Anderson and 2222. In addition to kebab and biryani, you can get fish masala, chicken nuggets, and spaghetti. Terrified yet?

Withhold your terror, dear readers! We braved this menu to try a Greek pizza for you, complete with Gyro meat, onions, green peppers, and tomatoes. To leave you twisting in the wind waiting to know if it was any good, I'll grace you with some excellent pros in favor of Pizza Land:

- Staff was very pleasant when I picked up the pizza AND there was a discount for pick-up.

- Their hours are beyond compare: Sun-Thursday 10am-3am, Fri-Sat 10am-5am. FIVE AM!

- Their food is Halal, for anyone who lives under that umbrella of dietary restrictions.

Cons after the crust:

- Their food is Halal, meaning you won't find any piggy on your pie (they use turkey instead.)

- The pizza. . .


FAKE OUT! The pizza was about average for a neighborhood pie shop. Nothing to write home about, but nothing off-putting either. I found the gyro meat to be a nice touch, slightly crispy and cut up like bacon. Karin thought the cheese was pretty good. We both agree at 3am on a Saturday the cheese would taste great - so if you're in the neighborhood order it up!

Adventure #39: Promise Pizza

When we saw that ATX Gluten Free was having a Gluten Free Pizza Week, we jumped on the chance to try something new.  If you didn't know (and I didn't either), gluten free means wheat (and rye and barley) free.  I knew that gluten is the thing that gives dough stretch and chewiness because, if you've ever made pizza dough, you can see the gluten strands webbing the dough when you stretch it to transparency.  It's why flour, when wet, becomes dough instead of just wet flour.  Gluten is also a problem for people with Gluten Sensitivity and Coeliac disease (both of which do horrible things to your intestines).

There were several options around town for us to try a gluten-free pizza, but we decided on Promise Pizza.  I won't spout their official stuff, but everything about Promise Pizza seems to say "organic food is clean food."  I don't necessarily subscribe to that attitude, but from the sterile metal decor to the designation of drinks as "bio-fuels" and the use of company-owned Smart cars as delivery vehicles, it's clear that they are serious about it.

Here's what we thought of the food itself:

We got two appetizers, the stuffed mushrooms and the stuffed jalapenos.  Both were excellent.  The mushrooms were fresh and flavorful and the jalapenos were spicy (they're smaller than what you typically see for stuffed jalapenos because the jalapenos that are typically used in restaurants for stuffing are larger and bred to be milder).  The stuffing was cream cheese, sausage, and pepperoni.

We got "The American" pizza which was sausage, pepperoni, extra cheese, and mushrooms.

The breakdown:

• Toppings - delicious.  I really liked the flavors and amount of toppings.  They weren't anything special, but I didn't find that to be a fault.
• Cheese - good shredded mozz (we decided not to try their Vegan cheese so that we could focus on the difference a gluten-free crust had on the pizza)
• Sauce - too sweet for my taste

(and for what you came to find out...)

• Crust - it was crispy and delicious.  If someone had handed me that slice without telling me the crust was gluten free I would have been surprised at how good their thin-crust was without even thinking that it might not be made of wheat flour.

The downsides of the crust were that it was $4.50 extra and only came in the 10 inch size.  For someone who is dying for pizza (or who has a gluten sensitive child who is), the extra money might be completely worth it, though at $16.50 for a pizza that would easily feed only one person (maybe two if you stretch it with an appetizer), that's one expensive meal.

In total, I might be persuaded to try Promise Pizza again to try their regular crust, but the sweet sauce is a huge turn-off for me (they do offer a garlic and olive-oil "sauce" as well, which is what I would recommend you get if you don't like sweet sauce either).

-Karin

Adventure #38 - Grand Slam Pizza

Say you're on the way to a brewery opening (Jester King, ne?) or headed out to Blanco for a winery tour. Say also that you're a pizzadventurer, much like Karin and I.

Where is the nearest pizza?! Is there pizza in Dripping Springs? Is it good?

Gentle reader, we have answered these questions for you. Please meet Grand Slam Pizza, one of what Google Maps believes are only two independent pizza places in the Dripping Springs area.

We grabbed The Heat, as seen in the middle, above. The aim is similar to a taco: mozzarella cheese, cheddar cheese, ground beef, onions, bell pepper, chunky tomato, and a picante sauce base. Did the Heat deliver on it's Mexican promise? Did it deliver as a pizza?

Picante sauce on a pizza doesn't work for everyone, but it had the desired effect on me= Taco 'za! The thin application of the not-too-spicy sauce was just right in proportion to the toppings. The toppings themselves were about average, but were evenly distributed and in the right ratio to each other.

The one complaint that was brought up in the discussion was the extensive use of what appeared to be garlic salt on the pizza. You can see it covering most of the pie in the pictures. I wasn't at all bothered by this, and liked that it added some flavor to an otherwise dull crust. However, this was not the majority opinion in our group of four, so be warned!

The atmosphere of the place is very hometown-ey. There are sports pennants all around, and a family-friendly game room with a handful of cheap arcade games. The service was also friendly and prompt. Last but not least, the cheese bread (cheese on crust) was pretty awesome, but I hid the mention of it down here because I neglected to take a picture. : (

- Ian