Puleo’s Grille in Knoxville, TN

The Facts:

Pizza: Puleo’s Grille

Business Category: Regional Chain (6 locations, mostly in Knoxville, TN)

Website: http://puleosgrille.com/

Location: 7224 Region Lane (Strawberry Plains; I-40 Exit 398)

Date of Review Visit: April 13, 2013

What I Ordered: Pizza Creation (10” pizza) with Italian sausage and pepperoni; Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $13.77 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

The Micro:

Crust: Puleo’s makes flatbread pizza, hence the thin and crispy crust. The pizza is well-baked, as evidenced by the speckled brown crust.  The crust also has a nice fresh taste.  Although this crust is different, it is quite good.  Score: 9/10.

Sauce: The sauce has a fresh, pleasant, sweet taste, which suits my taste buds perfectly.  The sauce appears in good quantity, and it has some spices without being overspiced.  Score: 10/10.

Cheese: The cheese is a nice blend with good taste, but the adding some parmesan cheese really steals the show: it is hand-grated from a chunk of parmesan, not the powdery stuff you get at most pizzerias.  Excellent!  Score: 10/10.

Toppings: The sausage has excellent spice and taste.  I would prefer some thicker pepperoni, but the thin pepperoni actually works well with the thin crust.  Score: 9/10

The Macro:

Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The pizza has an odd appearance because the toppings are clustered in the middle.  The dining room has a standard casual-dining atmosphere a la any of the national casual dining chains, and Puleo’s offers much more than just pizza.  The service was very good.  Score: 9/10.

Value: The quality is excellent, but you will pay for it.  Save this one for a special pizza occasion.  Score: 4/10

Taste: Puleo’s sprinkles some Italian spices on top of its pizza, and there were a few bites that I found to be slightly overspiced.  Otherwise, the taste is excellent.  Score: 18/20

The Final Judgment:

Puleo’s has won several local awards, and if you come here once you will likely see why.  I will be back again the next time I find myself in Knoxville.  Score: 69/80

Fox’s Pizza Den

The Facts:

Pizza: Fox’s Pizza Den

Business Category: National chain (375+ locations in 28 states)

Website: http://www.foxspizzaden.com/

Location: 200 N. General Daniels Ave. in Danielsville, GA (on US 29 2 blocks north of the old courthouse)

Date of Review Visit: April 5, 2013

What I Ordered: Small (10”) pizza with sausage and pepperoni; Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $10.34

The Micro:

Crust: This crust has the odd property of being thick and bulky around the edge but thin and wimpy in the middle.  Some corn meal baked into the crust adds texture and flavor that would otherwise be lacking.  Overall, there is nothing stellar but nothing horrible about this crust.  Score: 6/10.

Sauce: The sauce has a very strong taste of garlic, way too strong for my anti-garlic inclined palette.  The taste wears on the taste buds: I noticed it very much at first and then less and less as I ate more.  There is an adequate amount of sauce on this pizza, but that may only be a good thing if you really like the taste of garlic.  Score: 4/10.

Cheese: The cheese also has a garlic taste to it, but it is not nearly as strong in the cheese as in the sauce.  Even the sprinkle-on parmesan cheese contains a mixture of garlic and herbs.  The pizza is well-cheesed in terms of quantity.  Were it not for the sauce, this cheese would be a tasty blend.  Score: 7/10.

Toppings: Toppings are the strength of this pizza.  They appear in good quantity and have good taste.  The sausage is especially tasty.  Score: 8/10

The Macro:

Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The pizza has an attractive appearance, but elsewhere this area presents some problems.  The large dining room has a lot of open space and feels somewhat like dining in a warehouse.  The service was also quite slow: the pizza took a longer than expected time to arrive even though I was the only customer in the restaurant when I arrived.  Score: 7/10.

Value: Fox Den Pizza is underwhelming in this area: the price is not particularly low, but the pizza is not particularly good.  There’s nothing to really fault here but also nothing to really like.  Score: 5/10

Taste: The garlic overpowers everything else, I am sorry to say.  If you like the taste of garlic you will probably like the taste of this pizza.  I do not like the taste of garlic, so I don’t.  Score: 12/20

The Final Judgment:

In fairness, this pizza has some merit to the right set of taste buds.  Nevertheless, the garlic taste is too strong to score well on my ranking system.  Score: 49/80