Week 15: zpizza

This week's pizza restaurant happens to be a stones throw from the house, and with a busy weekend trip planned, we decided to stay close to home.  With the help of a pizza coupon in the mail for $5 off, we picked up the phone and ordered 2 pizzas for carryout from zpizza (www.zpizza.com) in Flower Mound, TX.  Most of you reading this probably have no idea about this place, and if it wasn't a mile from the house, we probably wouldn't either.  Originally from Laguna Beach, CA, zpizza is trying to carve out it's niche as a healthy, environmentally conscious pizza franchise.  All of the ingredients are either organic, additive free, or MSG free.  The website covers, in detail, their environmental responsibilities, etc...  But when it comes down to it - the pizza has to be good.

Our review of zpizza was practically written before we even took our first bite, and this unfortunately was not a good thing.   Without going into considerable detail, let me just say the process up to actually bringing the pizza home was a MESS. The nice lady over the phone told us the pizza would be ready for pick up in 10-15 minutes...  30 minutes later our pizza hadn't been cooked, let alone assembled.  You practically need a GPS to navigate the parking lot... To get in you need to drive completely around the Sonic Drive Thru, and when you leave you must drive all the way around LifeTime Fitness.  Alright, alright.  I'll stop there.  It's not the fault of the 3 pizza workers, but things didn't start off on the right foot.  

All of this poor customer experience could have been forgotten if when we got back to the house we were blown away by this healthy, alternative pizza creation.  Let me say we have seen healthy pizza done before, and it can be fantastic.  We really enjoy the creation of unique pizzas, and the endless possibilities therein.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention, plan on transferring over cash from your savings account, the prices at zpizza are astronomical.  Without our $5 off coupon, it would have easily been the most expensive pizza this year!  And now the truth... We ordered a large cheese pizza and one extra large 1/2 Mexican and 1/2 Thai Chicken.  The results were underwhelming.  For all of the hoopla about healthy ingredients and environmentally conscious, I would suggest donation $30 to The Arbor Day Association, and get a $5 pizza from Domino's (You would still have cash left over).  The 100% certified organic wheat and tomatoes combined with Wisconsin skim milk cheese ended up being a mediocre, dry, cheese pizza.  There were over 15 different ingredients that covered our extra large “special,” and there was nothing special about it...

Was zpizza the worst pizza we had this year? - No. It probably wasn't even in the bottom 3, but all things considered, we were extremely disappointed.  It has all of the bells and whistles to lead you into believing you will get a delicious pizza, but the final output fell flat.

The Final Report: 5.5 out of 10

Taking a look at the calendar for next week, we'll be having visitors on our next adventure.  We are excited to check out somewhere new, and forget about this week's bump in the road.