Sammy's Pizza

With the Olympics on I’m almost a full week late on this review.  It was a week ago we headed to downtown Fargo to hit up historic Sammy’s Pizza.

Ok, I don’t know if there is anything historic about it, but it has been there for a long time.  And I’m only guessing that too.

Like most good pizza outings, this one started with a tiny beer.  Usually a much larger mug is desirable but you gotta take what they have.  The beer selection was kind of odd.  They had 3 or 4 of the exact same shitty light beers, and this New Belgium 1554.

They have a funky ceiling in that place.

And kinda an odd location for a little TV in the back of the place.  I think golf was on while we were there.  You can tell from the following picture how busy the place was.  For most of the time we were there we were the only people.  For a while there was one other table, but they arrived after us and left before us.

So first the meat house special showed up.  This wasn’t my pizza but I tried a piece.  This is not my kind of pizza but I had a piece and it wasn’t bad.  The place was reminding me a lot of the last place that was reviewed – Duane’s House of Pizza.

Now we get to the good stuff.  Here is the Hawaiian.  I think the pizza’s were 14 inches, I shared this with one other guy.  Just like Duane’s, this pizza was really freaking hot.  I felt it for days on the roof of my mouth.

On of my co-workers asked about different crust types.  Our server, who was also the pizza maker, told us that thick crust was an American invention and wasn’t real pizza.  And besides, you don’t need that much bread.  He hand tosses all the crusts dammit!  He did do a really good job at it I think.  It was the type of crust I like, kinda thin, not cooked too much.  But it did have a slight problem.

Here is a close up of my Hawaiian.  Can you tell what is wrong with it?

It looks like a plain old cheese pizza, doesn’t it?  It tasted almost like a cheese pizza.  There was some pineapple and ham under the cheese, but it was very skimpy on the toppings.  Very skimpy.

On the way out I asked the 1 guy working there if it was always that busy.  He said yeah it is typically pretty dead in the afternoon but gets busy in the evenings.  He said he likes it that way because there is a lot of preparation work for the evening crowd.

I would change 2 things about Sammy’s Pizza that would give them a much better rating.

• Don’t be scared to use more than a small handful of pineapple on the Hawaiian
• Larger beer mugs, preferably for the same price (it was expensive for a tiny mug)

Besides the almost lack of pineapple and ham on the Hawaiian, it was a very good pizza.

6 pizza slices isn’t bad.  It could have easily been a couple more than that.

Duane’s House of Pizza

Today Urban Spoon directed us to Duane’s House of Pizza.  The guys walking in are total strangers, or part of the normal weekly pizza crew.

We were not really sure what to do when we walked in.  It was kinda like walking into the front door of someone’s house except instead of a living room they just put a large pizza making area with several pizza making machines.  We must have looked lost because eventually the guy making the pizza just said “Just sit down somewhere if you are gonna eat here”.

So we sat down and it was immediately creepy.  Kinda like your grandma’s house in the 80’s.

This picture looks about as quality as your digital camera from the 80’s as well.  What the hell…

So eventually after we figured out that no one has an appetite small enough for a 6 inch pizza, we were all going to order individual 11 inch pizza’s.  Very well then I’ll have the Hawaiian!

Oh but wait, our waitress who is also one of the pizza making machine operators, asks us if we are in a big hurry.  Then tells us we are in behind a very big order and it’ll be 30 minutes at least.  This was after she had brought out drinks.  We decided to stay and there was plenty of complaining about the 30 minute wait.  I started a countdown timer on my phone.  We did manage to share an order of french fries that came out pretty quick.  I don’t think anyone paid for them.

My countdown timer still had just over 11 minutes when the first pizza arrived at our table. One guy got some house special, and another had the taco pizza.  I tried a slice of each of them.

There was nothing special about the house special, and the taco felt like cheese pizza with a lettuce dump on top.  There were a lot of tomatoes as well, but my piece didn’t have any.  I really wasn’t looking forward to the rest of this pizza adventure, but then my Hawaiian showed up!

Apparently Duane’s House of Pizza has the opposite policy of Happy Joe’s.  Happy Joe’s pizza is cold, this one was scorching hot.  I was able to prove that just waiting a while fixed the problem of this pizza being really hot.  Time did nothing to fix the cold pizza Happy Joe’s brought to my house.

This pizza was really good.  I think 1 minute less in the pizza heating machine would have made it better.  The crust was a little bit black in places, but it wasn’t burnt to a crisp.  Crispy crust is the #1 thing that ruins a pizza.  This pizza was good enough that I got a to-go bag, yes a bag, to take home the rest of my 11 inch pizza.

Besides the really good Hawaiian pizza I had:

• I’m glad I’m not a pop drinker as they served cans which means no refills.
• Taco pizza was just cheese pizza with lettuce on top. I wasn’t the only one who had that impression of the taco pizza.
• Creepy atmosphere with about 7 tables in the whole place.

So after all that – I gotta go with a 7 slice rating because that Hawaiian was very good.

Goodbye Duane’s House of Pizza, I’ll see you again!

Xtreme Pizza Kitchen lunch buffet

The Xtreme Pizza Kitchen (XPK) lunch buffet is kinda a normal thing for a few guys that I work with. We might have gotten there about once a month for the past year or so, but that is enough for the XPK crew to know to put in a Hawaiian when I come in! That is awesome!

So if you haven’t been to XPK, it is a very small place that has only about 10 tables. It is a fairly small buffet, but they do have a salad bar, along with chips, nacho cheese, and chili. I think they only have 2 employees working there at any time.

I usually start with some banana pepper nachos while the Hawaiian is heating up.

After one trip to the salad bar nacho bar, my Hawaiian is usually ready. The place is usually empty enough that I can make a couple trips up to get more Hawaiian slices.

They do have some good veggie options as well, but often I can get enough Hawaiian to fill myself up.

If you like somewhat thin crust pizza, but hate the crispy cardboard crust, this is the place for you.  I’ve heard it described as undercooked or weak, but it is exactly how I like my pizza crust.  One of my co-workers shared his negative thoughts about the crust unintentionally with the staff.  I’m sorry, I won’t bring him back unless he apologizes.

The giant screen TV they have in the corner of the restaurant often has some interesting choices being shown. Last week it was The New Adventures of Old Christine or something like that. Sometimes is it SportsCenter, sometimes is it a cable news channel. It is kinda weird, but that doesn’t change the fact that the pizza is really good.

Overall they get a 9 pizza rating. The pizza is as good as any in town, the nachos are great, but the drink options are lacking. I’m honestly not even sure if/what kind of beer they serve.

Keep the Hawaiian warm for me!

Domino's asks customers for pizza photos

Saw this in the FargoPizzaGuy Twitter timeline today:

Hey Pin-ners. Pin THIS!  http://t.co/Nc4TiL4q 

— Domino's Pizza (@dominos) July 5, 2012

and decided to check it out.  It will take you to a facebook page where Domino’s is asking users to send in their own photos of Domino’s pizza.  They say:

We think our pizza looks delicious just the way it comes out of the oven. It doesn’t need those fancy food photography tricks. That’s why we asked our customers, the most authentic source for pictures of our pizza, to photograph and upload their own photos. Check them out below.

Thats kinda cool.  I scrolled through the images and they started to get kinda weird.  So now I have to think of something out of the ordinary to do when I get around to having Domino’s pizza.  Any ideas?

The Pizza Ranch

This Friday several co-workers decided we should hit up the random feature of the Urbanspoon iOS app.  The first suggestion was a place that didn’t have dine-in seating.  The second was quickly rejected by one of the group.  The third was quickly rejected by a different one of the group.  Finally it was agreed that we’d just hit up the Pizza Ranch buffet.

I don’t think many buffets will score very high, but the Pizza Ranch seems very popular.  Maybe it will surpass my expectations.

Things are not looking too good for the Pizza Ranch.  Looking at the picture below doesn’t exactly make you hungry, does it?

I grabbed the last 2 pieces of Hawaiian that were on the buffet and one taco for good measure.  The taco sauce is on the very end of the buffet which make it super inconvenient to try to apply any sauce right there without just taking a bottle back to your table.  They definitely don’t have enough there that they expect you to take them though.  So I try to apply taco sauce and the bottle feels like it is plugged,  A little tighter squeeze unplugs it and I get taco sauce on my Hawaiian as well, perfect…

Like I said before, I got the last 2 pieces of Hawaiian, so who knows how long that had been sitting there.  It tasted like it had been there since Halloween.  I’m not even sure if the taco sauce on the one Hawaiian slice had a negative effect.

The Taco pizza on the other hand was pretty good.  I know that Happy Joe’s is supposed to be known for their Taco Pizza, but I think Pizza Ranch beats them in the taco department.

I could only manage to fight the crowd for one more trip to the buffet, and this time I came away with 2 different type of ranch supremes I think.  By this time I was so delirious from the shitty country music I don’t really remember these very well.  Yeah I suppose I should expect crappy music at a ranch…  That one looks like it had broccoli on it.  No – those must have been green peppers or olives.  Even with the music starting to make me crazy I’d remember if I had pizza with broccoli on it.  They must not have been too bad.

So this is what I got at the Pizza Ranch.

• horrible music
• large crowd fighting for a medium sized buffet
• terrible sweet tea
• cold Hawaiian
• some supreme looking slices I don’t really remember
• one pretty good taco slice

The taco saved the Pizza Ranch.  I will say that I can’t think of a better taco pizza in town.  The taco by itself adds 2 or 3 onto the total score which is a whopping 4 pizza slices!

Next time I’ll skip the buffet and order a taco pizza for carry out, they’d probably get a good score then…

Rhombus Guys Pizza for lunch!

This past Friday I got out to Rhombus Guys for lunch with a few of my real-job co-workers. Rhombus Guys is fairly new to Fargo but quite popular already, and I know why.  People seem to agree that they make good pizza.

The crayons aren’t just for kids.  Every table is covered in blank white paper and has a collection of crayons.  It isn’t just for the kids, but my kids have liked that better than the little kids menus they’d get at other places.

First of all, it starts out beer from a large selection of excellent beers they have on tap.  Ever time I ask and hear something like “Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Light…” I want to throw up a little bit.  Rhombus Guys has real beer choices, 24 on tap and 30 bottles!  I had some IPA I had not heard of before, and it was excellent.  Maybe beer at work lunch made it taste a little better, but it was great no matter what.

We started out with an order of beef nachos.

They were very comparable to the nachos that I had at another pizza place recently.  Both have the distinction of being nachos that are not as good as the shitty nachos that I make in my home microwave.  I’m here for the pizza (and the beer) so I won’t hold it against them too much.

Rhombus Guys has a very impressive menu.  Pizza isn’t all they do, but they have a good selection of pizzas.  I finally convinced the guys I was with that we needed at least one of my favorites, Hawaiian.  We got the Hawaiian and the T-Rex, an all meat monster.  The Hawaiian was one of the best pizzas I’ve had recently!

Any round pizza cut into square pieces has to be good, right?

Even though the Hawaiian is my favorite I had to try the T-Rex as well.  This is the pizza they say has won “The Peoples Choice Award” for 5 years in a row up in Grand Forks.  I don’t know exactly what that means, but the Hawaiian wins “The My Choice Award” for every years I’ve given out that award, which just started right now.

If there was such a thing as a choir of angels having a pizza orgy in your mouth, that is what this Hawaiian was like.  Damm good!

The T-Rex is a meaty monster.  I would almost never choose a meat only style pizza, but this was actually pretty good.

This was so good I wanted to stay there all afternoon eating pizza and drinking beer.  I did have to get back to my real job, so I only added one small beer before heading back for a super-productive afternoon.

So Rhombus Guys has some of the best Pizza in town.  They have one of the best beer selections in town.  They have a great downtown atmosphere that includes live music and foosball tournaments, and (I’ve heard) later this year a rooftop deck.  It is going to be very hard to beat all that, so I’m pretty confident in giving out a 10 pizza slice score.  Maybe I should even change my ranking from pizza slices to pizza squares!

I could eat here every day!

Happy Joe’s delivered

I left the choice of pizza up to the rest of my family just saying that I need to try them all eventually. Happy Joe’s Hawaiian pizza is what showed up. That was very odd because usually they go for just the Canadian Bacon. I suspect Hawaiian was chosen today because my wife knew it was going to be the first pizza review for this website and that it is my favorite.

So apparently Happy Joe’s is the originator of the taco pizza?

Yep. Is that supposed to mean their taco pizza is still any good? If so, we should have ordered that instead.

Just like any Happy Joe’s pizza I’ve ever had, it was not hot. I don’t think I’ve had hot pizza even when I’ve gone to them and eaten right there. Why can’t they deliver a hot pizza? At least it had pineapple.

Why is the canadian bacon so popular at Happy Joe’s? It is supposed to be ham right? This stuff is kinda beef jerky-ish which is good and all, but not on my pizza.

I figured I should try one slice of the pepperoni that we had too. There was something wrong with that one. I know why the rest of my family always wants the canadian bacon. This pepperoni tasted like some kind of homemade french bread pizza experiment gone wrong. I don’t know how else to explain it, but I was worried for the safety of my stomach after eating one piece. That’ll be the last time I try that.

I felt like I was eating leftover pizza that hadn’t been heated properly. That is usually not a good thing. Happy Joe’s gets a score of 3 pizza slices.

So my quest for the best pizza in Fargo didn’t start off too good. Better luck next time Happy Joe’s.  I’ll make sure to try the taco pizza.

Hello pizza!

The first review in my long quest to find the best pizza in Fargo will be here shortly.

So you’ve got some time to kill until the reviews start pouring in, go read about pizza!  Just don’t forget to come back here to find out who makes the best pizza in Fargo.