Slainte!

Alright, I started cheating and eating pizza that wasn’t on the original list.  Mr. John Scribner is going to kill me for inconsistency.  But anyway, Bill and I went to go see Drive, and in Drive there’s an Italian sub shop, and in the Italian sub shop there is a specials board, and for a split second, the camera has the specials board in the background, and for a brief millisecond in cinema history, the words “Daily Special: Jalapeno Poppers” popped up in the corner for the screen.  So obviously, that got me and Bill craving some jalapeno poppers (duh, wouldn’t you?).  So after the movie, we decided to get a beer and some jalapeno poppers and we went to Slainte.  But Slainte doesn’t have jalapeno poppers?  But they do have jalapeno-mushroom pizza.  Never one to miss an opportunity, I ordered a half-cheese, half jalapeno-mushroom pizza for us, and thus could count that $21 dollar investment in fancy beer and pizza as tax-deductable for my pizza blog (that’s how being a grown-up works, right?  Things get tax-deductable for unexplained reasons?)

Smell : I didn’t smell anything.  I was talking about Drive and drinking beer with Bill.  It’s also a bar.  It’s hard to smell things with a bar.  I tried to stick my nose up to it to get a good whiff, but the old man at the end of the bar kept distracting me by listing off all the Alfred Hitchcock movies we should see and also what makes them brilliant (did you guys know that the crop-duster scene in North By Northwest is, like, really clever?).  I really couldn’t get a gauge on smell – there was a spicy sauceness real up close, but that’s it.  2.1/5

Appearance : Eh.  The pizza itself was a personal pan pizza, and those are always really difficult to make look appetizing.  The overemphasis on crust was again, a huge problem.  It looked like dough with just some stuff on it, as opposed to pizza. 1.9/5

Cheese: Very low on cheese.  I was really disappointed.  And what cheese was there was certainly not the best cheese in town.  1.7/5

Crust:  Dear Apparently All The Pizza In Portland : Crust is not all there is to a good pizza.  I don’t know how many more times I can talk about this with you.  Stop making big piles of dough and putting a little sauce and cheese on top and calling it a pizza.  That’s dumb.  You’re dumb.  I want to eat good pizza again.  Love, Nancy.  This crust gets 1.5/5

Sauce: Nope, not enough sauce either.  The entire time I was eating it, I was disappointed.  Very, very sparse sauce.  Unfortunately, I have to put Sam’s and Slainte on the same pedestal, but guys, I have zero to say about the sauce.  1/5

Overall experience:  Yeah, Slainte’s a bar, but they are a classy bar, and they serve classy food.  Their mushroom soup is one of the few dishes in Portland that never ceases to make me happy.  When I used to work on Congress and I could wiggle out of work early enough to see open mic night, it used to make me so happy to split a mushroom soup with my friends finish it off with PBRs.  But those are memories of yesteracouplemonthsago.  Suffice to say, that with a soup that is good enough to earn a permanent spot in my memory, we need to hold Slainte to a better standard.  And considering that…guys, this was one of the worst pizzas.  Like, it was really good as a spoon for nice broiled jalapenos and chewy shitake mushrooms, but this blog ain’t about shitake mushrooms.  It’s about good.  cheese.  pizza, the likes of which I have not eaten in months.  As for overall experience…yeah, I was having a good time, sipping down beers and discussing a movie I just went to go see with my best friend…but guys, the pizza added nothing to the equation.  NOTHING.  2 for overall evaluation.

Well, we all learned a very important lesson.  Let’s not eat pizza at Slainte.  With a 1.4 average of individual components bringing it up to a 3.4, this beats Leonardo’s by a long-shot for worst pizza yet.  Sad face, sad face, sad face.  I do like Slainte as a bar, and again, please frequent and purchase their mushroom soup.  But nope.  Worst pizza yet.  Sorry, folks.