LaRosa’s Family Pizzeria near Cincinnati, OH

Basic Information:

Pizza: LaRosa’s Family Pizzeria

Number of Locations: about 50, mostly near Cincinnati, OH

Location Reviewed: 5130 Camelot Drive in Fairfield, OH

Website: https://www.larosas.com/

Date of Review Visit: October 2022

What I Ordered: Large pan pizza (14”) with extra sausage and extra cheese, cherry Coke to drink

Price: $23.32 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

Disclaimer:

LaRosa’s Pizza is my first love among pizzas.  It is the pizza that got my entire pizza passion started.  Having grown up in Cincinnati, I still remember the special occasions that always involved my family getting a LaRosa’s Pizza.  I tried to be objective with this pizza review, but you can imagine how that went.

Summary Review: 5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: LaRosa’s offers three choices for crust: thin, super crust, and pan.  On this visit, I chose the pan crust, the thickest of the three options.  The pan crust was perfect thickness; it has the crunchy outside but chewy inside texture that makes for a good thick crust.  The pizza was well-baked, and the bottom of crust had that special LaRosa’s taste that I still have not quite figured out.  Score: 10/10.

Sauce: LaRosa’s sells its pizza sauce separately, and for good reason: it is a fantastic sauce.  The sauce uses high quality ingredients and has just the right amount of seasoning with spices.  I really like it.  Score: 10/10.

Cheese: The pizza is well-cheesed, and LaRosa’s uses only high quality provolone cheese, the perfect pizza cheese.  Hence, there is a very small amount of grease.  Perfecto!  Score: 10/10.

Toppings: The sausage is high quality, but unfortunately the pizza lacks somewhat in quantity unless you order the double sausage as I did.  This potential for skimping leads to a deduction here.  Score: 8/10.

Overall Taste: As you might expect given the above, the taste is fantastic.  I almost never give perfect scores in taste (just what does a perfect tasting pizza taste like anyhow?), but for my first love in pizzas....  Score: 10/10.

Pizza Appearance: The appearance is quite pleasing save for the low amount of sausage.  

Dining Atmosphere: LaRosa’s has a casual dining atmosphere, but some of their newer locations are carry out only.

Customer Service: I have always enjoyed the service at LaRosa's.

Monetary Value: The price is somewhat low given the quality of pizza and dining experience you get. LaRosa’s stacks up far better than its casual dining competitors in this category.

The Final Judgment:

LaRosa’s is a Cincinnati favorite, and it remains my favorite pizza even though I have not lived in Ohio since 2005.  If you find yourself in Cincinnati, stop by LaRosa’s so that it can become your favorite too.  Score: 94/100.

Johnny’s New York Style Pizza

Basic Information:

Pizza: Johnny’s New York Style Pizza

Number of Locations: many across 6 southeastern states; based in Atlanta, GA

Location Reviewed: 1040 Gaines School Road in Athens, GA (east side)

Website: https://johnnyspizza.com/

Date of Review Visit: May 2013

What I Ordered: Large pizza (16”) with sausage and pepperoni

Price: $17.59 (without coupon; includes tax but no drink or tip)

Photos:

 

Summary Review: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: For a pizza restaurant with “New York Style Pizza” in its name, the crust is thicker than you would expect.  It is also thicker than I remember it being on previous visits.  Even worse, the crust is completely black underneath due to overbaking.  I have eaten some good crust here in the past, but the crust on this visit was not up to their usual standards.  Score: 6/10.

Sauce: The sauce has good consistency and a good fresh taste.  Unfortunately, it is not evenly distributed on the pizza.  Some areas have thick globs of sauce, while others are nearly sauceless.  This sauce is pretty good, but the application needs improvement.  Score: 7/10.

Cheese: This pizza is slightly undercheesed, and the cheese has only average taste.  On the bright side, the cheese is of good quality, as evidenced by the lack of grease.  Score: 8/10.

Toppings: The toppings are very good.  The sausage is of the ground variety, not the pellet variety.  Both the sausage and pepperoni have just the right amount of spiciness.  Also, the toppings appear in fair to above average quantity.  Score: 9/10.

Overall Taste: The taste is better than you might expect given some of the micro scores above.  This is good pizza even if it is not New York style pizza.  Also, although this is a pizza blog, I note that the calzones at Johnny’s taste better than the pizza.  Score: 8/10.

Pizza Appearance: The appearance takes a hit due to the undercheesing and uneven distribution of toppings and sauce.

Dining Atmosphere: I have always enjoyed the dining atmosphere; it has some nice TV screens and old pictures of New York on the walls.

Customer Service: The service here is very slow, and that has been the case for as long as I can remember.  Employee turnover among servers is also a problem.

 

Monetary Value: The price here is rather steep, but the quality is only above average.  If you order carryout, the large pizza box will contain a $2-off coupon that will make the price of your next large pizza reasonable.  With the coupon, the value is decent.  Without the coupon, you can get an 18” pizza down the street at DePalma’s for about the same price.

The Final Judgment:

Johnny’s is not my favorite pizza in Athens, but it is pretty good.  Johnny’s is better than the national chains, and it makes a nice change of pace from the usual pizza fare.  Score: 77/100.

Your Pie

Basic Information:

Pizza: Your Pie

Number of Locations: many across 13 states, most numerously in Georgia

Location Reviewed: 1045B Gaines School Road in Athens, GA (Update: this location is now closed.  The closest location is on Alps Road on the west side of Athens.)

Website: https://www.yourpie.com/

Date of Review Visit: April 2013

What I Ordered: Your Pie (10” pizza) with Italian sausage and pepperoni

Price: $9.58 (includes tax but no drink or tip)

Photos:

Summary Review: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: As its name suggests, Your Pie has only one pizza-related menu item: made-to-order individual-sized pizzas.  The crust is the ultra-thin southern style, and you can choose between white and wheat.  On this visit, the pizza I ordered was rather overbaked, leaving the crust black around the edges and underneath.  In short, the crust was not the strength of this pizza, but there are still things to like here.  Score: 7/10.

Sauce: Your Pie has several sauces to choose from, but I chose the standard tomato sauce.  The sauce has good consistency and taste.  The pizza seemed undersauced, but that is in tune with the paper-thin crust.  Overall, the sauce is pretty good.  Score: 8/10.

Cheese: Again, there are several cheese combinations to choose from, but I chose the standard cheese, which is mozzarella.  The quality and quantity of the cheese were both average to slightly above average, but the pure mozzarella blend did not have a lot of flavor.  Surely there is a better “standard” blend than this one.  Score: 7/10.

Toppings: The quantity of the toppings is passable but no more, and the sausage and pepperoni I ordered here had only an average amount of flavor (as opposed to slightly above average spiciness).  Toppings are divided into two categories: standard and premium.  Of course, the premium toppings cost $1 extra, and that leads to the main complaint I have about this pizza: EVERY meat topping is a premium topping!  Since when is run-of-the-mill pepperoni a premium topping?  This pricing may be great for making a socio-political statement, but it is horrible if you are a carnivore like me trying to order a tasty pizza.  Score: 5/10

Overall Taste: The taste of Your Pie pizza is an acquired one, but I got hooked rather quickly.  The crust, sauce, and cheese work together quite well.  This would be a real winner but for some better tasting toppings and the overbaking.  Score: 8.5/10

Pizza Appearance: The pizza’s appearance passes muster except for the blackened crust.

Dining Atmosphere: The dining room has a functional feel with a nice outdoor seating area.

Customer Service: The service was quick and attentive, and it is nice to watch them assemble your pizza as you order it.  Also, every math professor has a soft spot for a restaurant where the servers wear T-shirts advertising pie day (March 14, or 3.14).

Monetary Value: I am afraid this pizza is rather overpriced, especially if you order more than 1 meat toppings.  (No, I will not let my issue about the topping prices go.)  If you have a large group to feed on a budget, forget about Your Pie.  On the bright side, the Tuesday special actually brings the price down from the amount posted here to something reasonable.

The Final Judgment:

Customization is the selling point here.  If you like exotic (by my standard) vegetable toppings, then this may be your pie, pun fully intended.  Most of us “regular” folks will find better value and quality elsewhere.  Score: 76/100

Fox’s Pizza Den

Basic Information:

Pizza: Fox’s Pizza Den

Number of Locations: many across 25 states

Location Reviewed: 200 N. General Daniels Ave. in Danielsville, GA (Update: this location is now closed.  The closest one is in Bogart, GA.)

Website: https://www.foxspizza.com/

Date of Review Visit: April 2013

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

Price: $10.34 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

Photo:

Summary Review: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

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

Overall 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: 6/10

Pizza Appearance: The pizza has an attractive well-balanced appearance.

Dining Atmosphere: The large dining room has a lot of open space and feels somewhat like dining in a warehouse.

Customer Service: 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.

Monetary Value: Fox's 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.

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: 69/100

Domino’s Pizza: Pan Pizza

The Facts:

Pizza: Domino’s Pizza

Number of Locations: many nationwide

Location Reviewed: 1006 N. Main Street in Anderson, SC

Website: http://www.dominos.com/

Date of Review Visit: February 2013

What I Ordered: Medium (12”) pan pizza with sausage and pepperoni, plus a side of stuffed cheesy bread

Price: $14.96 (pizza only, no drinks)

Photos:

Summary Review: 3 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: Domino’s offers 4 choices of crust, everything from pan to thin.  As will be no surprise to regular readers of this blog, I chose pan.  The pan crust was crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside as it should be.  In an effort to improve quality, Domino’s drastically changed its pizza recipe a few years ago.  I liked their old pan crust, and this one is slightly better.  Score: 9/10.

Sauce: The taste and consistency of the sauce are quite good but not stellar.  My only complaint here is that the pizza is slightly undersauced.  Score: 7/10.

Cheese: The cheese on the pizza appears in plenty of quantity, but I found it to be quite greasy.  Also, the cheese is all mozzarella, so it has a bland flavor.  The cheese blend on/in the stuffed cheesy bread is much better.  I wonder if there is any way to order the cheesy bread cheese on the pizza.  Score: 7/10.

Toppings: Toppings have always been a weakness of Domino’s pizza.  I still remember getting one piece of sausage per slice in the old days.  The new recipe is better than the old one, but the toppings still lack taste.  Also, they still only appear in average quantity.   Score: 4/10

Overall Taste: The taste is rather palatable, and it is significantly better than it was a few years ago.  Only the grease drags this score down somewhat.  Score: 7.5/10

Pizza Appearance: This pizza has a nice symmetrical appearance.  Domino’s may have gone to a new recipe, but they still use the odd-shaped hexagon box.  Also, I miss the classic blue and red domino logo on the box.

Dining Atmosphere: (not applicable due to no dining room)

Customer Service: Recent improvement have made the customer service at Domino's quick and accurate.

Value: Somewhat unusual for a national chain, the quality/cost balance does not grade out well here.  The quality is decent, but the cheesy bread costs $6, and the pizza is only a medium 12” pizza. There is much better value to be had elsewhere.

The Final Judgment:

Did Domino’s new recipe improve the quality of their pizza?  To at least some degree, yes.  Is this the best quality pizza or the best value for your dollar?  Certainly not.  Score: 73/100

Paparonni’s Pizza in Danielsville, GA

Basic Information:

Pizza: Paparonni’s Pizza (pronounced PAW-PAW-RAW-KNEE)

Number of Locations: 1

Location Reviewed: 200 Gen. Daniel Ave. N. in Danielsville, GA

Website: https://paparonnis.com/

Date of Review Visit: February 2013

What I Ordered: Small (10”) pizza with sausage and pepperoni; 0.5 liter Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $8.54 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

Photo:

Summary Review: 4 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: The crust on this pizza has some good qualities.  It is not too thick and not too thin.  It has good consistency.  The taste is quite good at first, but the more I ate the more I noticed a salty taste that seemed to be due to the crust.  I will revisit the saltiness in the “taste” criteria, but overall this crust grades out pretty well.  Score: 8/10.

Sauce: The sauce has a good, fresh taste, and it appears in good quantity.  The company Paparonni’s buys its sauce from is advertised on the walls of the dining room: it is based in California.  This sauce is among the better sauces I have ever tasted.  Score: 10/10.

Cheese: The cheese is quite good here as well, both in terms of taste and quantity.  The cheese under the top layer comes out in small chunks because it never completely melts.  Score: 9/10.

Toppings: Unfortunately, this is not the strength of this pizza.  The sausage is small processed balls with plenty of spices but little flavor.  The pepperoni is only a little better: the taste is passable, but the slices are thin and greasy.  Score: 5/10

Overall Taste: The salty taste is somewhat prevalent, but it is not as bad as Pizza Hut.  The toppings are quite a shame because everything else works together pretty well.  Score: 7.5/10

Pizza Appearance: The pizza has pleasant symmetrical appearance, but it is served in a box even if you dine in.

Dining Atmosphere: The dining room is purely functional and needs some sprucing up, especially the old ugly carpet.  On the bright side, Sirius XM’s The Message is played over the speakers in the dining room.

Customer Service:  I have never had a problem with the service.

Monetary Value: The price is low and the quality is rather good, but this is only a 10” pizza.  Exceptional value would demand this be a 12” pizza.

The Final Judgment:

Paparonni’s website says they want to make the best pizza you have ever eaten.  While it is not the best pizza I have ever eaten, it is pretty good.  Paparonni’s is worth a short drive to Danielsville.  Score: 84/100

Jet’s Pizza

Basic Information:

Pizza: Jet’s Pizza

Number of Locations: many across 25 states; based in Michigan

Location Reviewed: 216 Scuffletown Road near Simpsonville, SC

Website: https://www.jetspizza.com/

Date of Review Visit: January 2013

What I Ordered: Large Deep Dish pizza with sausage; shredded parmesan flavored crust

Price: $13.02 (includes tax but not drink)

Photos:

Summary Review: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: Jet’s offers 3 styles of crust: deep dish, hand-tossed, and thin.  Being the thick-crust lover that I am, I chose the deep dish.  The deep dish lives up to its billing: it is a robust northern-style thick crust that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, just as it should be.  The only downside is the silly “flavorize your crust” option, which I exercised to add some shredded parmesan cheese.  Memo to Jet’s management: good pizza does not need “flavorized.” 

Sauce: The thing that stands out about this sauce is that nothing stands out.  The pizza has adequate sauce, but the sauce does not have a strong taste, nor does it have a strong consistency.  It’s just kind of there.  Overall, it is not a bad sauce, but it doesn’t make you scream for joy either.

Cheese: Oddly enough, the same thing I said about the sauce could be said about the cheese.  The cheese is 100% mozzarella, which means it has the standard somewhat bland mozzarella taste.  The cheese is of good quality and quantity, but it does not bring with it much flavor.

Toppings: I’m trying not to be redundant, but the sausage falls into the same taste category as the sauce and cheese.  There is plenty of sausage on this pizza, and you can taste the Italian spices in the Italian sausage.  Nonetheless, the spices seem to add heat without adding much flavor.  As a cut of meat the quality is decent, but the taste does not stand out.

Overall Taste: After reading this review, you can see why they allow you to flavorize the crust: very little else on this pizza adds any flavor.  If you like thick hearty pizza as I do, then the taste is at least passable.  If you prefer a rainbow of flavors on your palette, you will need to go elsewhere.  Truth be told, the bacon Jet’s bread (cheesy bread topped with bacon) might taste better than the pizza.

Pizza Appearance: The pizza has a robust appearance, and a deep dish will fill the entire box. 

Dining Atmosphere: The small dine-in area has little to say for it except for some nice TV screens.

Customer Service:  I have never had a problem with the service.

Monetary Value: This isn’t the best pizza around, but it isn’t the highest price either.  Overall, the quality-price balance grades out pretty well here.

The Final Judgment:

Jet’s is standard, run-of-the-mill northern pizza that made its way south.  Being from Ohio myself, I give it 1 thumb up, but you may want something with a better blend of flavors.  Score: 76/100