I was getting gas at a Wawa in Casselberry. I was using their rewards app to get discounts on gas when I noticed they had dropped a coupon for a free 14" pizza into my account. I was aware that Wawa sold pizza, but I wasn't about to go out of my way to try pizza from a gas station. If the pizza was free though, that was different.
I ordered a pepperoni and sausage pizza. I selected the garlic crust option when ordering. Upon first glance when opening up the box, it had the look of a chain pizza similar to Hungry Howie's or Little Caesars. The crust/sauce/cheese/topping ratio was good. Everything seemed well balanced and the pizza held together. The garlic taste/smell on the pizza was surprisingly strong for gas station food.
Overall, I went in with very low expectations. The pizza was okay, on par with other fast food pizzas. Definitely wouldn't be my first choice of pizza in Orlando, but I might pick Wawa if it was between them or a Little Caesars...
The Piefather was a food truck parked in The Wharf in Las Olas. I ordered a pie called The Pepperoni. Pretty self explanatory. Nice thin crust with good proportions of cheese and sauce. The pepperoni curled, as hipsters at The Wharf would expect their pepperoni to do. I enjoyed the pizza...
Way back in the day, I listed Hungry Howie's Pizza pretty high on the pizza chain hierarchy. Of the big chains, Papa John's was near the top. Domino's was near the bottom of the list. Hungry Howie's was second or third on the list. Then all the nearby Hungry Howie's near me closed.
I was out in Volusia County and ended up at the Hungry Howie's in Deland. The pizza was very different than I remembered Hungry Howie's serving. The crust was thick and puffy. I remember it being much thinner than this pizza was. The flavor of the cheese and sauce were fine. It seemed like they drenched the entire pie in a disgusting amount of some sort of butter sauce. I very much did enjoy the sesame seeds on the crust.
Hungry Howie's (or at least this Hungry Howie's location) was not what I remembered at all. It was worse. If this was a good representation of the chain's pizzas, they have moved way down in my hierarchy of pizza chains.
Something else that bothered me: I ordered this pie in the days of COVID-19, but before Deland's mandatory mask order - not that it would probably make a difference since people aren't following the rule in Seminole or Orange County). Not a single person working in this store who I saw, both front of house and who I could see in the kitchen, was wearing a mask. Seems like a standard safety thing that all restaurants should be following. If Hungry Howie's ignores masks, I can imagine there's other food safety things that might be ignored. Not saying they were violating any other rules, but that seems like a logical next step...
I had dinner at Stavro's Pizza House in Downtown Daytona Beach. There seem to be lots of Italian restaurants in the area that use the Stavro's name. It's very confusing because they all claim to be completely independent and not connected to the other Stavro's in any way. The menus and foods at each of the Stavro's seem to vary a lot from location to location as well. I wonder what the story is here how so many Italian restaurants in the area all ended up with the same name?
We ordered a pizza topped with half pepperoni/half meatball. The pizza here was pretty average. The crust had a nice texture that I liked, but there was too much cheese in my opinion. Never good when there's so much cheese that it can't be supported by the crust and it floods off of the slices. Otherwise, this pizza wasn't too bad. I might stop here again at some point...
I had pizza right outside the University of Maryland in the town of College Park at a restaurant called Pizza Autentica. This is apparently a local chain in the Washington DC area that seems to specialize in pizza and gelato.
We ordered a pepperoni pizza. While the pie wasn't bad, I did find it to be undercooked. The crust was still very doughy and really didn't have any crunch. We were at the restaurant about an hour before they closed. I wonder if this had anything to do with the rushed cooking of our pie with the employees wanting to get the cooking over with and the restaurant cleaned up sooner? The cheese & sauce were tasty and they were generous with the amount of pepperoni on the pie. This would have been a pretty good pizza if only they cooked it longer!
It's been a very long time since I've had a pizza from Pizza Hut. After my latest experience with the pizza chain's Deltona location, I was reminded why it's been so long!
When Pizza Hut delivers their overly greasy pizzas, shouldn't safe food handling practices be extended to the time when the pizza is in the delivery driver's car? I was outside when the pizza was delivered and watched the driver sit in the car with the pizza and finish smoking his cigarette before getting up and bringing the pizza to the door. Gross...
As for the pizza itself, there were large areas on the pie where there was no cheese and only crust. It had to be one of the greasiest pizzas I can remember eating. The huge amounts of grease on this pizza had the thick crust almost waterlogged. Needless to say, I won't be ordering from Pizza Hut again any time soon.
Not long after my initial experience with Giordano's Pizza, I ended up eating at one of their other touristy locations with some visiting relatives. This Giordano's is in a Chinese themed strip mall on 192 in Kissimmee. The mall is near the former site of Splendid China, and although the park has sat abandoned for years, the mall still looks very pagoda-like. From the outside, it felt like Giordano's should have been a Chinese restaurant.
The meal started out with everyone at the table sharing cheese covered garlic bread and a chopped salad. On this visit, two pizzas were ordered. One was a small stuffed pizza filled with green peppers and pepperoni. The other was a thin crust pizza topped with half mushrooms and half ground beef. I focused mainly on the stuffed pizza since that's what Giordano's is famous for. I liked the topping combination and noticed that their sauce was really tasty while eating this pie. The pizza was still really cheesy, but wasn't overflowing like on my last visit to their other location. Perhaps the pizza had a bit more time to set, or maybe they used less cheese and more toppings.
As for the thin crust pizza, don't bother. I tried a slice of the pie and it reminded me of Donatos Pizza. Donatos was the (former) McDonald's owned pizza chain that was very short lived in the Orlando area, and for a good reason too. Donatos' pizza was horrible. Definitely go for what Giordano's specializes in and get the Chicago Style stuffed pizzas.
I have heard good things about Giordano's Pizza. It is Chicago style stuffed pizza with multiple layers of crust with the sauce on top. I really have very little experience with Chicago style pizza, and I had never tried a pizza quite like what Giordano's sells. The restaurant was on my list to try for a while, an I finally made it to the location on Apopka Vineland Road near Disney.
The meal started out with some garlic bread. There was a decent amount of garlic on here, unlike some other Italian restaurants that just use garlic butter and no actual garlic. Although I was planning to just have a cheese pizza, I realized that would defeat the purpose of the stuffed pizza if it had nothing but cheese. It was agreed that my half of the pizza would have ground beef, pepperoni, and black olives. The meat was baked into the pie in between the layers of crust along with cheese. On the top layer, Giordano's put more cheese, sauce, and the black olives. I came across this video of how Giordano's makes their pizzas:
The pizza was definitely unique, but I think I still prefer the more traditional New York Style pizza. This pizza had far too much cheese that all oozed out of the slices. Perhaps if it was given time to set, the oozing wouldn't be as big of a problem, but it was still too much. One slice on this pizza probably had just as much cheese as a few slices of a traditional pizza. The crust on this pizza was pretty good though. It was sort of flaky, sort of like a pie crust rather than the bread that normally makes up a pizza crust. I didn't think Giordano's pizza was anything great compared to traditional pizza, but it's definitely a novelty. Because of the uniqueness, I would gladly return and give their pizza another try. This visit to Giordano's also introduced me to another Chicago specialty that I now need to try: The Italian Beef Sandwich...
I'm a big fan of the various Umberto's Pizza up in New York (although my last visit was disappointing). About a year ago, I was driving through Deerfield Beach, FL and spotted a place called Umberto's of Long Island. I really wanted to give the place a try based on the name alone, but I had already eaten for the night. Fast forward a bit, and I am in Deerfield Beach once again, and this time I know exactly where I was going to get food. I stopped by the restaurant and the initial feeling wasn't the same as a visit to one of the actual Umberto's Pizzas in Long Island. No one was speaking Italian. There wasn't a huge selection of pizza choices either. The choices consisted of the standard pie or Grandma pizza. I ordered a slice of cheese pizza, and it turned out I got the last slice. My dining companion also wanted a plain slice, but the options were to wait for a new pie to be made or make another selection. We didn't have much time left in the parking meter, so a slice of pepperoni was selected. After being reheated, we received our slices and ate them as we walked back towards the car. My cheese slice wasn't as attractive as I would have liked (too many collapsed bubbles in the center of the slice), nor did it compare to a slice of pizza from an Umberto's up north. It tasted acceptable, but not exceptional. The same was said about the pepperoni slice. It was good, but nothing great. The pizza definitely wouldn't be worth making another special trip to get, but if at the beach, I could see myself getting another slice. The one thing that the Long Island Umberto's can't compete with is being able to cross the street to eat pizza on the beach...
Last I heard, the Fazoli's Italian Fast Food chain was going out of business and closing up all of their stores. It seems that isn't the case though, because although some of the stores did close, there are still several Central Florida locations that are still open.
I returned to the Altamonte Springs Fazoli's and ordered Pizza Baked Spaghetti. It was one of their featured menu items and consisted of spaghetti in tomato sauce, pepperoni and sausage, topped with melted cheese. I normally don't like pasta with tomato sauce, but this was better than I was expecting. They were very light on the sauce and the spicy pepperoni and sausage took away from some of the tomato taste. I'd get this again.
I ate a Pizza Pasta Sampler from the Fazoli's Italian fast food restaurant in Altamonte Springs, Florida. It came with spaghetti with marinara sauce, Fettuccine Alfredo, and a slice of pepperoni pizza. I'm not a big fan of tomato based sauces, but the marinara was edible. The fettuccine was good, but the slice of pizza reminded me a bit too much of high school cafeteria pizza. That's not necessarily a good thing in my opinion. For $2.99 though, you can't complain too much...
