What's the Point of Buying Pizza from a Pizza Place? (mushrooms, freezer)
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Where I live, we have the full gauntlet of pizza chains, AND a few local mom n pop places. IMO, Dominos is a step down from a frozen DiGiorno pizza.
If someone else is buying it, I won't complain, but I won't order it. Everything else is on the table as far as I'm concerned. But my favorite is Imo's pizza. (I'm from the St. Louis area.)
Lucky you. Who knows where it is (state secret?), but power to you.
I'm in Kirkland, WA 98033 btw.
Pizza here is a pillar of mediocrity. Most places in Chicago, I can make one call and find something great. I dropped into Schaumberg last summer and stellar pizza was within a mile. One (1) mile. Compared to here, you need to ask around, look at Yelp, and etc. then maybe drive a half hour or so (depending on time of day) to that one place, on the lake, that oh yeah: makes great Chicago or NY Style. They come and go.
So I settle for, in increasing order of tolerable: Little Caesars, Dominos, Papa Johns, and Papa Murphy's take and bake. The latter is pretty good, as it goes. I used to like Pizza Hut but haven't tried it in years, if it's gotten any better. Top of the line is Pagliacci, thin crust (NOT my favorite), at top of the line prices: delivery with fees and other crap is usually pushing forty bucks for pie, calzone, and not much else. That's a couple day's meals, to be clear, but still...
It's a somewhat rare splurge, or I'll pick it up. Tending to agree with others that all that is too expensive anymore compared to value.
I do not understand pizza chains myself. They really suck.
There are pockets of good pizza in places other than the New York Metro area and Chicago. I live in one - North Eastern Ohio.
What I will NEVER understand is some people buying Papa Johns - when there is a perfectly good Mom and Pop pizza place nearby.
In fact, I will go as far as to say that many higher end frozen pizzas are better than the chains - Paul Newman is excellent.
Even DiGiornos is better than Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Ceasars, Domino's etc. are not edible.
This thread is making me so grateful that I live in New Jersey. I can walk to three good pizza places in ten minutes. My favorite is a little further, about a mile. No chains, although one owns another shop about 15 minutes away.
I can't imagine a time when I would think to MAKE a pizza. The point of pizza is that it's a food that someone else makes and you buy.
I can get decent pizza in my neighborhood, thankfully. Making it at home sounds good but my oven would never get hot enough to get a good char on the crust.
I grew up outside of Chicago. Most people from the area understand that it's not about deep dish even though that is the fame. It's about a thin, crispy crust with the cheese bubbly and brown and cut into squares. One really had to search for a mom and pop place that was bad.
Current hometown doesn't have any place like that and the 1 or 2 mom and pop places have soggy crust. Papa John's is a no go for us. Domino's worked if we needed a lot of pizzas at one time, but it's not a regular order. We have two local places with pretty decent pizza just not the kind of crust I love most (thin and crispy).
I started making my own pizza more the a decade ago and outside of vacations to (NYC, Naples, Italy) where buying local pizza is just part of the experience, I'm not sure that I've bought a pre-made pizza (including from a store). Mostly I started because I like to cook and it's something I like to eat, but it's morphed into a refusal to pay someone else because the cost vs quality/reward just isn't there. Like you said, you spend $20 for a pizza that's no better than the $5 frozen pizza you can buy at a grocery store. Move upscale a little, we've been known to spend $40~50 for a pizza on occasion, and it's good food but not worth the hassle or cost when compared to doing it yourself. I can make the same quality at home (as the $40~50 pizza) for under $10 and less than a half-hour of effort. That's less time than just the drive TO the closest upscale, and less cost than all but the cheapest of options... for something that's as good as anything I've ever bought.
There is a learning curve... the standard in the US of a "hand tossed" isn't too difficult, but pulling of a neapolitan is a bit more complex (I'm getting close after 3 attempts).
BTW, I feel this way about buying prepared food in general. Cost is too high for the quality/experience. If I eat at the same place twice (or more), that is high praise indeed as I'd rather just duplicate the food at home. Not terribly hard to do for even a hack home cook like myself.
I've been learning to bake for the last three years and I can make a decent loaf of sourdough bread. I have started making pizzas and so far, they are turning out pretty good.
Yes, except I'm a woman, not a guy lol. I don't have issues with tips. I have issues with mandatory tips and various fees we have now that we did not have five or ten years ago: cleaning fee, processing fee, plate splitting fee, application fee, membership fee, delivery fee, convenience fee, the list goes on and on.
You're also the woman who started a thread complaining about Netflix's "steep price increase" of $1-2 per month, aren't you?
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