Talking Sweet About Nothing

Wow, what a disappointment. Pizza John's gets consistently great reviews and has a rabid following among Baltimore Pizza-Hounds. Naturally, it was on my list of places to try and I finally scheduled a pizza club meeting this weekend. Judging by the packed parking lot and ABBA on the soundtrack, I started to get my hopes up.

I should have realized they weren't making serious pizza when I noticed their menu only offered cheese pizza plus toppings. They didn't even offer a Margherita (the original!) Now there's something to be said for simplicity. One of my biggest pizza-pet-peeves is too many toppings. But to only offer a basic choice of toppings with no thought or effort put into creating a specialty or even a classic just shows a lack of originality or caring.

Tipoff number two would have to have been the small pools of grease on the cheese pizza. If you really want to separate yourself from the average pizza makers, you can't overload your pie with tons of questionable quality cheese. If the crust can't support the weight of your cheese and toppings, you're doing it wrong.

Speaking of the crust, there wasn't much to distinguish Pizza John's crust from the Pillsbury tube of pizza crust you can get at the grocery store. It's made in-house and is hand-stretched with an even, thin cornichone, but there was little to no flavor. It was under-cooked and chewy, and drooped from the weight of the cheese. It's a bad sign when half of your pizza slides off of the crust and onto your plate, leaving you with a limp slice of soggy, mediocre crust.

One positive thing I can say about Pizza John's is that they make a really great sauce. It's just too bad that it's buried under an avalanche of cheese. And unfortunately, it's just not enough to save this pie.