The Great Pizza Adventure #9 - Ziffles

Ziffles has been around forever.  When General Anthony Wayne boated down the St. Mary's river, he rode his horse due east and prompted ordered himself a pulled pork sandwich.  No lie.

Now I've not been of fan of their BBQ, even though enough people must love it for them to have such longevity.  And I've NEVER had their pizza before, but since they are a walking distance away I thought it was about time.

I placed my order on a weekday around 11:30 and was told it would be thirty minutes.  I found that odd because most regular pizza places quote a time of 15-20 minutes and it's usually done in 10.  But hey, maybe they're busy or maybe it just takes that much time.  So I meandered around a bit and showed up exactly thirty minutes later and there it was, waiting for me. 

The pizza itself looked, well, like a pizza.  Their 14" large was just a shade lacking.  Weighing a hefty 43.4 oz, though, makes it the heaviest pizza I've reviewed so far.

They didn't have any "specials" or coupons so I paid full price, which is $12 for a thin crust cheese pizza and $1 per topping.  It wasn't until I got home that I realized that even though I got half pepperoni and half sausage that they charged me for two toppings.  What's up with that?

It looked to have a decent amount of cheese and other toppings, but I couldn't count el pepperoni due to the cheese placement.  Pity if you like crisp pepperonis.  It seems like a decent amount of meats, although not worth paying double over.

  

The big question is how does it taste?  Into the hopper went a slice of sausage and... where's the sauce?  And strangely, after the first piece there was a slight numbing feeling in my mouth... very weird.  The sausage was just okay, not tons of flavor and kinda sad, considering what I paid.  I was hankerin' for some dipping sauce or a sprinkle of garlic salt.  It gets a 3 out of 10.

The pepperoni piece was better.  Oddly it had more sauce, which makes me think the sausage absorbs it, but overall it only gets a 4.5 out of 10.

The cheese was decent quality (not as good as Raimondos) and the crust had a bit of flavor but not too much.  It was thin but not crisp.  Overall I was disappointed, especially having paid fifteen bucks!  I had another piece of each and put it aside to have for lunch the next day.

As best as I can tell, during the night, some pixie must have flown in and sprinkled magic dust on the pizza.  Either that or when I reheated it in the oven I rejuvenated the pie into what it should have been... the crust was crispy and the flavors more pronounced.  

Now that I think about it, the pizza wasn't exactly piping hot when I picked it up yesterday. Could it be that my pizza sat around for fifteen or even twenty minutes, losing precious heat, crunch, and flavor?  I'm not going to risk another $15 to spin the wheel finding out when there are better and cheaper options out there.

So how about those stats?

Weight: 43.4 oz

Diameter: 13.5" 

Cost: $15.12

Service:5 (due to probably being given the wrong time)

Crust:5 (3 day 1, 7 on reheat)

Sauce: 3 (on the half that had sauce)

Toppings: 8 (quantity) + 4 (flavor) / 2 =6

Value: 5 (34.8 cents per ounce) / 10.6 cents per square inch

                  Overall Score: 4.8

                  Flavor Score: 4.7

A meager 4.7 Ziffles... so sad.  This puts you just behind Mama Mia's.
Between this and your flavorless BBQ, how do you stay in business?