me and the food around me. i like to eat, so listen up.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

SLAB PIZZA: i'm still not convinced

there was a discussion on my facebook page a few weeks back about slab pizza, its a little place over by BYU campus that caters to cheap BYU students. first off, i'm not a fan. at all. tho, a few friends (ernie and vegor) really like it, and while i will disagree with them on the merits of this pizza i will grant that i haven't tried everything on the menu.
in defense of my stance i will say that my criteria for a pizzeria is their cheese pizza and their pepperoni pizza. the logic i follow is pretty simple: if the cheese pizza sucks, i'll still try the pepperoni. if the pepperoni sucks, i'm done with the place. if a pizzeria can't get either one of those two pizza right, it doesn't make me want to spend time and money on anything else.
that said, slab pizza's cheese pizza sucked. so did their pepperoni. their employees also weren't wearing gloves or hairnets. strikes 1,2, and 3.
don't get me wrong, i tried really hard to like this pizza, but it was just too flavorless. the crust was bland, as was the sauce and cheese. it seemed like no thought at all went into the recipes. i felt like i could have gone to smiths and gotten a prepackaged dough mix with a jar of "pizza" sauce and some hormel pepperoni and gotten the same thing.
i will give props to them for using a brick oven, but for some reason they put a screen underneath the pizza instead of putting it right on the brick. it doesn't seem like they understand the reason for using a brick oven when they cook pizza that way. seems like everything there is kinda backwards.
granted, nicolitalia is one of the most backwards places on earth, but they get the essential things right.
i can understand going cheap on some of the ingredients, that is fine, but why be lazy about a recipe? it won't affect cost margins too much to develop a better sauce or dough recipe when the main cost on a pizza is cheese. if they spent a little extra money on decent cheese and threw a few spices into that pizza sauce it wouldn't be so bad, because at $3.75 for a quarter slice they can still make money, and have a better reputation.

12 comments:

Jenna Holm said...

I love you joey- oh, and what makes a quality cheese? i totally getcha about brick oven cheese... shoudln't they start calling it fleese (flour/cheese)? keep your food posts around- they're the shiz!

deadcityrebel said...

some companies make better cheese, and most pizzerias don't use it.

ericb said...

Joey, we appreciate your comments about your experience at slab and agree with you that bad cheese or pepperoni pizza is unacceptable. You had a poor experience here which is unacceptable to us. Please come in and we will make another pizza for you on us. We would also enjoy talking with you about our crust, baking methods and ingredient selection. Best Regards, SLABpizza

deadcityrebel said...

ericb, the cheese and pepperoni weren't "bad" in that they were being used out of their proper date range or moldy or anything like that, it was how the pizza tasted in general. some folks can and some folks can't tell (or care about) the difference between good quality cheese, pepperoni, sauce, and crust. i can tell the difference, and, like the post said, it isn't worth it to me to go back to a place that hasn't put much thought into those essential ingredients. its lazy pizza making.
also, since i work for another pizzeria, i don't know how much my employer would appreciate me giving another pizzeria pizza making advice ;)

ericb said...

mr rebel, i really have to question the credibility of your critique given your obviously bias opinion and the fact that your work for another pizza place across town who, by the way, i happen to have great respect for. fact is, i distinctly remember serving you and a lady friend that evening. i could sense that there was nothing that i could humanly do to change the negative energy coming from your direction. if you didn't like the cheese or pepperoni, thats cool. i would invite, and have invited you, to come down and let me give you a free pizza as well as show you the ingredients, wisconsin cheese, san juaquin valley tomatoes, fresh mades sauces every day. is seems to me that if the majority of the response to our place is pretty good and you had a bad experience then either a) you need me to get you a good piece of pizza, which i am willing to do and come to the table and approach this other than behind a keyboard, b) recognize that it did not matter what i served you, you were not going to like it anyway.

my offer still stands . . .
Eric Beutler SLABpizza

Ben said...

You have lady friends? Who knew?

deadcityrebel said...

eric, i never said my opinion wasn't biased. my whole blog is biased. i wanted to get a job at the pizzeria where i work because i love their pizza so much. (if i lived in salt lake i'd try to get a job at ESTE) i have favorites and i usually stick to them, but there is always room for new favorites. i had a good recommendation to try SLAB out and i also said in my post i wanted to like the pizza and i wouldn't have given it a shot had i not wanted to like it. i fucking love pizza and i want all pizza to be kickass pizza, but it ain't always the case, hence my post. also,i don't trust popular opinion and i rarely trust the taste of the majority of the folks in this town, because for the most part, people here have shit for taste. sucks for me to have high standards for food i really like.

deadcityrebel said...

ben, i got more lady friends than i know what to do with right now. can you help?

jendar said...

i totally agree with you. btw, do you still work at nicolitalias? ive had some great pizza here in nyc, but that place is still one of my absolutely favorites.

deadcityrebel said...

how did an asian teen porn site operator find my blog?

jeremy said...

seeing your picture i sure wouldn't want to eat a pizza made by you!!

deadcityrebel said...

woah, jeremy, good one! go fuck yourself! lube up with some of slab's pizza grease!