I’m an aficionado of Pizza. I’ve had it pretty much in every continental state of the union and more than a couple countries around the world. I prefer a thin, hand tossed yeasted crust with a cornmeal dusting on the bottom, but I’ll eat almost any, just to try them — and I have enjoyed them all.
This trip had us in Des Moines (Iowa) and we ended up (as a second choice) at a place called The Other Place. They claim to have been in business selling the same recipe pizza for 50 years — and I believe them – but that means that Des Moines-ians must have a very different idea of what makes a great pizza than I do.
This Buffalo Chicken Pizza arrived looking scrumptious. Buffalo sauce spread on the puffy crust. Steamed chicken, covered with at least 2 kinds of cheese and baked. Unfortunately the crust was baked through but not long to develop that lovely flavor you get from a really browned crust!
I am hard pressed to describe this crust. It lacked any sense of salt — quite bland. The crust was do dry that there could not have been even a whiff of oil in the dough — resulting in a crust that was more like a thick biscuit with almost no color and little flavor. It tasted more like an unleavened Matzoh than a pizza crust.
The crust was thick — nearly 1/2 inch. But it was also hard — not in a crispy way, but in a hard to chew, hard to cut with a knife way.
The pizza was tasty because of the buffalo sauce, but there was no flavor to the chicken. The restaurant doesn’t say much about the cheese on their pizza. They say the Buffalo has a blend of 4 cheeses but when it came to the table hot the cheese was nice and stringy. But as the pizza cooled it retained it’s stringy texture much longer than any other pizza I’ve had — I’m unsure what kind of cheese combination might have done that unless one of them was cream cheese.
The pizza was supposed to include blue cheese somewhere in the making of it. I could not detect any blue cheese flavor at all.
It’s an odd review, I know. But as I said at the beginning, I’m not sure what to make of this. I doubt I’d order it again, but it was an interesting evening’s meal.
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