Columbo's Pizza in Clemson, SC

Basic Information:

Pizza: Columbo’s Pizza

Number of Locations: 1

Location Reviewed: 203 Pendleton Rd. in Clemson, SC

Website: https://www.facebook.com/ColumbosClemson/

Date of Review Visit: December 2016

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

Price: $11.13 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

Photo:

Summary Review: 4 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: Columbo’s offers 2 crust options: thin and deep dish.  Inspired by the pictures of Chicago on the wall, the Chicago Cubs themed logo, and my personal thick crust preference, I went for the deep dish.  The name was accurate: what I got was a true Chicago-style deep dish crust.  Although the crust has a nice, robust taste, I found it quite hard, possibly because my pizza was slightly overbaked.  While this crust may not be the best Chicago-style crust I have ever eaten, it still ranks pretty high.  Score: 8/10.

Sauce: The sauce comes in good quantity, as it should for a Chicago-style pizza, but it is significantly overherbed.  The herbs and spices overpower the tomatoes, and the sauce tastes too herby for this to be an excellent sauce.  Score: 6/10.

Cheese: The cheese appears in very good quantity, but it leaves quite a lot of tell-tale grease.  Sprinkling on some parmesan helps on the flavor side.  Score: 7/10.

Toppings: The pepperoni is completely unremarkable.  The sausage is not the usual chunky Chicago style, but the taste is excellent, thus making the sausage the best item on this pizza.  Both toppings appear in satisfactory but not overwhelming quantity.  Score: 8/10.

Overall Taste: Maybe it was the abundance of spices in the sauce, but I kept thinking this pizza should taste better than it does.  This pizza has a lot of things going for it, but overall taste isn’t really one of them.  Score: 7.5/10.

Pizza Appearance: The pizza looks like the hearty Chicago-style pizza it is.

Dining Atmosphere: The dining atmosphere has a casual almost run-down feel.  Maybe it seemed run-down due to the vacant lot next door.

Customer Service: The service from the one poor, overworked waitress was smiling and attentive.

Monetary Value: Columbo’s is surprisingly inexpensive for good quality pizza.  They also offer 25% off a second pizza of equal value, so you can bring a friend and save more.  Their giant 28” atlas pizza (which they incorrectly claim is the largest pizza in the world) is an even bigger bargain.

The Final Judgment:

If Chicago-style pizza is your game, then Columbo’s is your pizza destination in Clemson.  For me, I like Columbo’s but slightly prefer nearby Todaro’s.  Score: 82/100.

Sciortino’s Trattoria and Pizzeria in Greenville, SC

Basic Information:

Pizza: Sciortino’s Trattoria and Pizzeria

Number of Locations: 1

Location Reviewed: 3734 Pelham Rd. in Greenville, SC (just west of I-85, exit 54)

Website: https://www.facebook.com/Sciortinos-Trattoria-Pizzeria-123512401005238/

Date of Review Visit: October 2016

What I Ordered: 12” Neapolitan pizza with sausage and pepperoni; Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $14.53 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

Photo:

Summary Review: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: Founded by an immigrant who moved to South Carolina from New York, Sciortino’s offers two crust styles: Sicilian thick crust square pizzas and Neapolitan thinner crust round pizzas.  I would normally choose the thick crust option, but the Sicilian crust is only offered in one size (16”), which is too large for just me.  Therefore, I chose the 12” Neapolitan option.  The crust is not ultra-thin, but it is nice and crispy.  The pizza has a heavy garlic taste.  I spent a long time trying to decide whether the garlic taste was due to garlic in the sauce or a garlic-laced solution brushed on the crust.  I finally decided it was both, which leads to a small deduction for an otherwise quite good crust.  Score: 9/10.

Sauce: As you would expect for a New York style pizza, the pizza has only a little sauce.  I already mentioned the garlicky taste.  Some people may like the garlic, but it does not suit my taste preferences.  Score: 9/10.

Cheese: This pizza has 100% mozzarella cheese, which means the cheese has very little flavor.  The cheese appears in good quantity and produces very little grease, so those are plusses.  Sprinkling on some parmesan helps on the flavor side.  Score: 7/10.

Toppings: The sausage is slightly spicy but not overwhelmingly so, and the same can be said about the pepperoni.  Both toppings appear in excellent quantity.  Score: 10/10.

Overall Taste: The garlic really overpowers everything else.  If you like the taste of garlic, you will like the taste of this pizza.  I very much don’t like the taste of garlic, so I don’t like the taste of this pizza.  Score: 7.5/10.

Pizza Appearance: The toppings dominate the pizza’s appearance, which is excellent.  

Dining Atmosphere: The dining atmosphere is upscale casual with more refinement than a typical strip mall pizza place.  Sciortino’s also serves free garlic knots as a pre-meal appetizer that tastes almost as good as the pizza crust.

Customer Service: The service is prompt and attentive.

Monetary Value: The price is higher than average, but the pizza is good quality.  Also, this pizza is huge: it easily feeds 2 normal-sized people or 1 of me.  Thus, the value is not as bad as you might think. 

The Final Judgment:

Sciortino’s offers a touch of class for a reasonable price.  I can see why some people think this pizza restaurant is top-of-the-line.  By my reckoning, it is very good but not quite elite.  Score: 87/100.

Uno Pizzeria and Grill

Basic Information:

Pizza: Uno Pizzeria and Grill

Number of Locations: about 50 across 14 states

Location Reviewed: 5304 Sunset Blvd. in Lexington, SC (Update: this location is now closed.  There are no remaining locations in South Carolina.)

Website: https://www.unos.com/

Date of Review Visit: September 2016

What I Ordered: individual (7”) deep dish pizza with sausage, pepperoni, and extra cheese; Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $15.57 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

Photo:

Summary Review: 5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: After almost 4 years of keeping this pizza blog, I finally made it Uno’s, the original and most famous entry in my favorite pizza category: deep dish Chicago pizza.  The pizza is only 7 inches across, but the crust is nearly 1 inch thick.  My crust was nice and crispy on the outside but chewy on the inside and baked to perfection.  Score: 10/10.

Sauce: The sauce is Uno’s signature ingredient: it comes with huge chunks of tomatoes spread over the top of the cheese and toppings.  I don’t like chunks of anything in my sauce, not even tomatoes.  Thus, I went with a minor deduction here even though the tomato chunks are actually quite juicy and tasty.  Score: 9/10.

Cheese: My pizza had plenty of cheese, possibly because I ordered extra cheese as one of my toppings.  (Side note: their “create your own” pizza comes with three toppings, so my usual diet of sausage and pepperoni pizzas did not fit until I added the extra cheese as my third topping.)  The cheese tasted like pure mozzarella, and the little extra grease it produced led to another minor deduction.  Sprinkling on some parmesan helped the bland mozzarella taste.  Score: 9/10.

Toppings: Attention all pizza makers: these crumbled up chunks of sausage have the taste many of you are trying but largely failing to imitate.  The pepperoni is nice and filling too.  Score: 10/10.

Overall Taste: This is the classic robust Chicago-style pizza taste everyone else is trying to copy.  There is no such thing as a perfect tasting pizza, but Uno’s is close enough to earn, for the first time ever from me....  Score: 10/10.

Pizza Appearance: The pizza looks like the classic Chicago-style deep dish pizza that it is.

Dining Atmosphere: The dining room has a nice casual dining atmosphere with pictures from Chicago on the walls.

Customer Service: The service was prompt and friendly.

Monetary Value: This pizza’s price is the most I have ever paid for an individual sized pizza, so if this criterion were price I would be looking at a very low score.  Fortunately for Uno’s, this metric is value, not price, so the super-high quality helps a lot.  Uno’s does not make bargain basement value pizza, but it scores better than you would expect for a pizza of this price.

The Final Judgment:

Everyone should eat at Uno’s at least once.  I may not become a regular due to the price and lack of locations in my area, but I would come often if there was an Uno’s in upstate South Carolina.  Score: 93/100.

Lamppost Pizza

Basic Information:

Pizza: Lamppost Pizza

Number of Locations: about 20 across California and Nevada

Location Reviewed: 3290 Northgate Blvd. in Sacramento, CA (south of I-80, exit 89)

Website: https://www.lamppost-backstreet.com/

Date of Review Visit: June 2016

What I Ordered: small (10”) thick crust pizza with Italian sausage and pepperoni

Price: $11.09 (pizza only; includes tax)

Photos:

Summary Review: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: Lamppost Pizza offers several crust options, but I paid the extra $0.50 to spring for the thick crust.  In fact, the “thick crust” is less than an inch thick, and the thickness is mainly around the edges.  Nevertheless, the slightly crispy crust gave the pizza a robust tummy-filling feel even if the crust’s taste is unremarkable.  Score: 7/10.

Sauce: This pizza is slightly undersauced, but what sauce does appear has a nice tomatoey taste without being overspiced.  I like this sauce, but I would prefer to have more of it, especially on a thick crust pizza.  Score: 8/10.

Cheese: Lamppost uses 100% mozzarella cheese in sufficient quantity, and the cheese has the somewhat bland taste you would expect from 100% mozzarella.  This cheese does not produce too much grease, so it does have that going for it.  Score: 7/10.

Toppings: Both toppings appear in excellent quantity.  The pepperoni has excellent flavor and is cut thicker than average.  The Italian sausage is spicy but only spicy: it has no independent flavor.  Score: 8/10.

Overall Taste: The quantity of toppings and spiciness of the Italian sausage really dominate the taste buds and give pizza a robust, hard-hitting taste.  The overall taste is not bad, but it does not give the flavorful combination some people expect.  Score: 7.5/10.

Pizza Appearance: The high quantity of toppings dominates the pizza’s appearance.

Dining Atmosphere: The location I visited features a medium-sized, nice-looking, functional dining area with a single TV for your dining entertainment.

Customer Service: I was somewhat concerned by the fact that this location had only 1 employee present on my visit, and she spoke only broken English.  Nevertheless, my order was accurate, and I got my pizza quickly.

Monetary Value: The price is a little high for a 10” pizza, even after you take the thick crust into consideration.  The pizza’s quality is also good, so the value is about average.

The Final Judgment:

Lamppost Pizza offers a lot of different pizza options, so you can return often without repeating an order.  This pizza ranks slightly above average in my book.  Score: 78/100.

Original Pizza House in Sacramento, CA

Basic Information:

Pizza: Original Pizza House

Number of Locations: 2, both near Sacramento, CA

Location Reviewed: 661 San Juan Road (Update: this location is now closed.  2 others remain open.)

Website: https://originalpizzahouse.com/

Date of Review Visit: June 2016

What I Ordered: medium (12”) pizza with pepperoni

Price: $6.50 (on special; includes tax)

Photos:

Summary Review: 4 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: The crust made by the Original Pizza House has a nice texture: it is brown and crispy on the outside but chewy on the inside. The crust has a fresh bready taste, as it should.  My pizza was baked exactly the right amount.  This is a solid crust, though nothing makes it stand out from its peers.  Score: 9/10.

Sauce: The sauce appears in good quantity and has a fresh tomatoey taste, which is not surprising given that California is the top tomato producing state.  Overall, this sauce is near-perfect.  Score: 10/10.

Cheese: The pizza is slightly undercheesed, but only slightly.  The cheese does not have a lot of flavor, but it produces quite a bit of grease, hence the mediocre score on this criterion.  Score: 5/10.

Toppings: The thin slices of pepperoni appear in good quantity.  The meat features just barely enough spices to let you know you are eating pepperoni as opposed to mystery meat.  I only ordered 1 topping for the reason given under the “value” criterion below.  Score: 8/10.

Overall Taste: Everything comes together pretty well.  The only real downside is the large amount of grease produced by the cheese.  Only ordering one topping might have hurt this score a little as well.  Score: 7.5/10.

Pizza Appearance: The pizza has a balanced clean-cut appearance.

Dining Atmosphere: Original Pizza House has a small functional dining area with a single TV for your dining entertainment.

Customer Service:  The service was quick and attentive.

Monetary Value: On my visit, they were running a special for $5 off a 1 topping medium pizza.  This deal made the value extraordinarily good, and it is the reason I ordered only 1 topping.  At full price, the value is still decent.  They offer a large number of pizza sizes to help with the value as well.

The Final Judgment:

The Original Pizza House offers a slightly boring pizza but does so with good quality and value.  If I lived in Sacramento, I would come here often.  Score: 84/100.

Yia Yia’s Pizza in Lincoln, NE

Basic Information:

Pizza: Yia Yia’s Pizza

Number of Locations: 1

Location Reviewed: 1423 O Street in downtown Lincoln, NE

Website: https://www.facebook.com/yiayias/

Date of Review Visit: June 2016

What I Ordered: 2 slices of pizza (see below for details); Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $11.48 (includes drink and tax)

Photo:

Summary Review: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: The crust at Yia Yia’s has a very thin, tough, almost cardboard-like texture.  The crust has no flavor whatsoever except for some burnt cheese spilled over the edge of the crust.  While not a total disaster thanks to the cheese, this crust is not good. Score: 3/10.

Sauce: This pizza has a low quantity of sauce.  When I did get my tongue on some sauce, it had almost a salsa-like flavor with extra tomatoes.  This sauce may appeal to some people, but it is definitely not my style.  Score: 3/10.

Cheese: On the other hand, the cheese comes in good quantity, especially if you order some of the several extra cheese types.  The extra cheese options also add to the flavor.  I like this cheese blend.  Score: 9/10.

Toppings: All toppings appear in good quantity.  The Italian sausage is just on the spicy side of good, as are the thin slices of pepperoni.  The slightly sweet taste of the ham balances the flavor out nicely.  Score: 8/10.

Overall Taste: The overall taste would have been too spicy were it not for the cheese and ham.  As is, the taste is decent but not extraordinary.  Score: 13/20.

Pizza Appearance: The pizza’s appearance is fine, but the hunk of bread served with each pizza slice is odd.

Dining Atmosphere: The atmosphere is a typical college-town pizzeria with blaring music (80’s rock on my visit), a dark dining room, and an older building with some nice artwork in the ceiling.

Customer Service: I found the menu quite complicated, so I had a hard time ordering.  That’s unusual for me because I usually walk into a pizza place with a pretty good idea of what I want, as I did this time.  But I could not figure out how to order what I wanted from their menu.  I tried to order 2 slices of Italian sausage, pepperoni, and ham pizza with 2 extra cheeses (parmesan and provolone), but I got 1 slice with said toppings and 1 slice of cheese pizza.  The man behind the counter did not help my ordering attempt one bit, hence a downgrade on the service criterion.

Monetary Value: The value is hard to judge because I am not still sure quite what I ended up ordering.  The price is more than I usually pay for 2 slices of pizza and a drink, but how did they price the slices?

The Final Judgment:

If you are a student at nearby University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I would sanction coming here occasionally just to get off campus, but there are better pizza options around.  I can see how this pizza might appeal to some people, but it does not appeal to me.  Score: 65/100.

Big Daddy's Pizzeria in Pigeon Forge, TN

The Facts:

Pizza: Big Daddy’s Pizzeria

Number of Locations: 3, all near the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee)

Location Reviewed: 3053 Parkway in Pigeon Forge, TN

Website: https://www.bigdaddyspizzeria.net/

Date of Review Visit: May 2016

What I Ordered: small (10”) Boo Boo Bomber pizza (i.e. pepperoni pizza)

Price: $11.06 (pizza only; includes tax)

Photos:

Summary Review: 3 stars (out of 5)

Detailed Review:

Crust: Big Daddy’s crust has the not-too-thick not-too-thin style that can be rather unappetizing, but it comes across pretty well on this pizza.  Some flour baked into the crust provides nice texture.  This crust is not fantastic, but it is not horrible either.  Score: 7/10.

Sauce: I could barely taste the sauce, and not because it doesn’t exist.  In fact, the quantity is slightly above average.  The sauce just doesn’t have much flavor.  I also found small chunks of tomato in the sauce, a personal pet peeve of mine: I don’t want to find chunks of anything in my sauce.  I have had far better pizza sauces than this one.  Score: 4/10.

Cheese: The cheese comes in a thick yummy layer.  The 100% mozzarella blend does not have the most flavorful taste, but the excellent quantity makes the cheese the strength of this pizza.  Score: 9/10.

Toppings: The pepperoni appears in average quantity.  I could taste the spices in the pepperoni, but they are not overwhelming.  For only a one-topping pizza, the toppings are decent overall.  Score: 6/10.

Overall Taste: The cheese really saves what is otherwise a fairly dull-tasting pizza.  Nothing about this pizza really offends the taste buds but nothing really impresses them either.  Score: 7.5/10.

Pizza Appearance: The pepperoni was not evenly applied, so the pizza looked a little bare.

Dining Atmosphere: Big Daddy’s offers a casual family-oriented dining atmosphere with a nice video game arcade for the young and young-at-heart.

Customer Service: The service was quick and attentive.

Monetary Value: The quality is slightly above average and the price is slightly above average, so the price/quality value ratio grades out about average.

The Final Judgment:

Big Daddy’s Pizzeria makes a just slightly different than average pizza.  It is worth coming here occasionally for a change of pace, but there are better pizzas around.  Score: 53/80.