Pizza Joint!

The start of this entire crusade began when my friend Tom could not stop talking about how Pizza Joint was the single best pizza in Portland.  So, we opened with a bang and began our quest with it.  Lexie, Tom and I rushed in to grab a pizza after work and ate it in the park.

Smell : Lexie was not even planning on staying, but the smell in the car dragged her in.  Best smelling pizza I’ve experienced in awhile.  5/5

Appearance : It was so beautiful I snapped a picture with my camera phone.  The cheese section had the perfect distribution of air pockets and browned cheese, whereas the pepperoni looked as pepperoni should be.  Not neon perfect circles the size of smiley faces, but small little dark red circles, curled up around the edges, sliced thick and browning on the sides.  5/5

Cheese: The cheese had wonderful flavor, and at first bite, I remembered shouting “I’m sold”.  But the issue with the cheese is that it was primarily provolone.  As Lexie pointed out, we needed *some* more mozzarella in order to exact a certain satisfying stringiness that the cheese lacked.  It did the thing where you would take a bite in, and all of the cheese would come off in a disgusting cheese flap that would hits you on the chin and makes you feel so degraded.  So, delicious cheese, not so much for texture.  Texture is *really* important in pizza cheese, so I give it a 3/5.

Crust:  We had some debate.  The outside crust rim was a bit too thin/crunchy for my tastes.  I like either a very small, very thin crust, or a thin crust middle with a nice, billowy crust on the outside.  This outside crust was a bit too crunchy.  Lexie thought the outside crust was delicious, but the inside crust was a bit doughy.  This is a fair assessment.  However, this is a difficult balance to strike.  And it was not a horrendous crust by any means.  3/5.

Sauce: The sauce was the utter tragedy of the entire experience.  That is to say, it was good!  Great spikes of oregano, nice and tomato-y and flavorful.  But there simply was not enough.  I understand a thin layer of sauce, but I needed a bit more.  However, too many gooby globs of red sauce are no good either.  It’s a tricky balance, so I’ll give some leeway.  The sauce itself, though?  Tastewise, fucking magnificent.  3.5/5.

Overall experience: To be fair, we ordered the pizza at 9:15 and picked it up at 10.  It was also the last pizza of the day.  And I will say that the whole was more than the sum of its parts.  Each individual part *tasted* great, but the proportions and textures were off.  But it was still a hell of a yummy pizza.  In other news, we got half pepperoni for Tom, and I, being the loose vegetarian that I am, had a bite in order to fully evaluate.  Oh my god, guys.  Very flavorful pepperoni, sourced locally, very spicy, and very hearty and meaty tasting.  Not like the flimsy slices of bagged pepperoni that I remember from my childhood.  This stuff was the heavenly.  

So, props.  A solid tasting pizza made with really great and flavorful ingredients.  Proportions of all such ingredients weren’t the best, and there were some tactical decisions that I disagreed with.  But overall, an average for 4 for the overall evaluation.

Math says that brings this total up to 7.9 (3.9 being the average of individual parts plus the overall average).  This feels right.  I think that over 8 would bring the pizza into overall utterly fantastic category, and this was not.  But it was solid.  Almost, but not quite there.  The flavors were on, which was key, and the textures and proportions weren’t *completely* off.  A solid 7.6 goes to Pizza Joint!