The Facts:
Pizza: Mesa Pizza
Business Category: Regional chain (3 locations in MN and IA)
Website: http://www.mesapizzamn.com/
Location: 1323 4th Street SE in Minneapolis, MN
(in Dinkeytown)
Date of Review Visit: June 13, 2018
What I Ordered: 2 slices of sausage and pepperoni pizza; can
of Dr. Pepper to drink
Price: $9.25 (includes drink and tax)
The Micro:
Crust: The crust at Mesa Pizza has a very hard texture; it
is hard to bite and chew. It tastes
reheated, as is usual for pizza by the slice.
I’ve had worse crusts, but this crust does not do much for me. Score: 3/10.
Sauce: This pizza has very little sauce, although what sauce
does exist has a nice tomatoey flavor.
Score: 5/10.
Cheese: There is not much to say about the cheese’s flavor:
even sprinkling on some parmesan helps only a little. It does appear in decent quantity. Score: 4/10.
Toppings: Mesa has a wide variety of ready-to-reheat pizza
types to choose from. On my pizza choice,
the pepperoni is unremarkable and low in quantity. The sausage is strange: it comes in big rectangular
slices and tastes more like goetta (for those of you from Ohio who know what goetta
is) than the Italian or pork sausage you normally find on a pizza. I really didn’t recognize it as sausage at
first. The slices of sausage cover
nearly the entire pizza, which I guess is a plus. Score: 6/10.
The Macro:
Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The block-shaped sausage
dominates the pizza’s appearance. The
dining atmosphere is the typical crowded downtown atmosphere except that it was
nearly empty at 12:30pm on a Wednesday. The
service was counter service and was fine.
Score: 7/10.
Value: The price is low at 2 slices of pizza plus a drink
for less than $10, but the quality is also below average. Score: 6/10.
Taste: The overall taste is pretty nondescript; enough
said. Score: 10/20.
The Final Judgment:
The Dinkeytown part of Minneapolis has a college town feel,
and Mesa Pizza is a college town pizza.
While not the worst, it is definitely not the best. Score: 41/80.
