A few weeks ago the team behind zpizza contacted me and offered to send a voucher so I could take the kids there and we could try out their pizza. Free pizza? And I have kids? A no brainer, and so they sent $20 in vouchers. Tonight, finally, I took my 12yo son G- and 8yo daughter K- to the local zpizza, tucked neatly between Firehouse Subs and Jamba Juice in what’s become franchise food row in the local shopping complex here in Boulder.
We walked in to a dark but attractive restaurant that was almost empty around 6:30pm on a Sunday. You can see from the photo that the architecture is pleasant and the stainless steel panels on the ceiling created interesting reflections. The restaurant was also cold – in fact, we ended up asking them to turn off the air conditioning after I realized my girl still had her heavy ski jacket on.
We were greeted by a very friendly gal with bright pink hair who shared her favorites and recommendations. We settled on a full pizza as the pies on display for individual slices looked tired and dried out (they looked like they’d been sitting out for a few hours, actually).
Our choice: half pepperoni & olive for the kids, half “Mexican” pizza, which consisted of salsa, mozzarella, lime chicken, green and red onions, avocado, sour cream and cilantro.
Took about ten minutes to cook, and when they brought it to the table, we were enthused to try it…
And the pizza was good. $18 for an 8-slice large wasn’t too bad a price, either.
But here’s the problem: Like most college towns, Boulder has a lot of good pizza options, but we also have some really excellent pizza because we’re also a wealthy foodie town, places as varied as The Mediterranean and Pizzaria Locale to Abo’s and Jalino’s. In this sort of environment, zpizza just doesn’t measure up. We were hoping for something amazing, something that’d cause us to add zpizza to our short list of favorites, and that’s not what we found.
My son said: “It’s really good, as good as Old Chicago, but Old Chicago has great salads, so they win.”
My daughter? “I prefer Abo’s. The slices are bigger.”
I found the pizza quite good, certainly better than the highly overrated California Pizza Kitchen that’s just 50yds away, but in a city saturated with really good to great pizza, none of us felt that zpizza measured up.
Disclaimer: zpizza sent us vouchers to try the restaurant. We did. Clearly a free pizza wasn’t sufficient to buy our opinion, however, and we’re a bit disappointed…
So I have to say that I agree with you and your children’s opinion, HOWEVER, my daughter (now 14) went through about a year where she was “Gluten Free” and they have a great option for this. I ended up trying a lot of GF pizza over the year and I have to say that I thought theirs was the best.
Just started reading your stuff. Keep up the good work.