Papa Angelo's

This week we ventured over to Papa Angelo's, tucked away at 3921 N. College Avenue across from Southern Nazarene University in Bethany. Papa Angelo's is home of the Empire Pizza challenge - where they dare you to eat a 6-pound pizza in 45 minutes. We didn't take their challenge, but considered attempting it at a later date, for scientific purposes only, of course.

Want to know how it turned out?

The Cheese Pizza
Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). All three pizzas were on the same type of crust - a thin New York style. On the plus side, the crust provided a surprising amount of tensile strength. On the negative, it had variable degrees of doneness (some parts very crispy, others slightly chewy). And on the slightly odd side, it tasted a lot like toasted white bread. We won't say it's bad, but we can't say it's good. The sauce was smooth and evenly distributed, but tasted like canned spaghetti sauce. We started taking bets on which brand we thought it was. The cheese had a deeper mozzarella flavor than we were expecting, which was nice, but was surprisingly greasy. Unfortunately, the flavor of the cheese wasn't enough to save the pizza.

The Pepperoni Pizza
It was just the cheese pizza with pepperoni added. The pepperoni brought some subtle heat, but it made the already greasy pizza even more greasy. Some of the pepperoni turned into what one could call "discs of grease." Everyone's familiar with oil paintings, right? Well, let's say just say that we've developed a new method of creating art called grease painting. Seriously. We're not kidding.

The White Pizza
No, it's not a member of the Klan. It's just a pizza with garlic glaze, ricotta cheese, mozzarella, and fresh tomatoes. One of the great things about this blog is finding new and exciting things to put on pizzas. We've tried feta cheese, cream cheese, and sugar and spices on pizzas because of this. The ricotta cheese added an interesting dimension to the pizza. It didn't add a whole lot taste wise, but in place of the sauce it added a creamy texture. We wouldn't recommend adding ricotta to every pizza, but we're glad to have tried it. The garlic glaze was surprisingly good, with small bits of real garlic. The tomatoes were fresh, but the pizza would have benefitted if they had been sun-dried. They were poorly distributed and even cold in a few places. Overall, it was like eating bruschetta in pizza form.        

This review has been tough for us, and partly so because Papa Angelo's came highly recommended. Generally we try to find at least one excellent thing about each place to talk about, and we're really having trouble with that this week. Papa Angelo's doesn't make bad pizzas, but we can't really say anything more than that. Maybe we hit them at a bad time or an off night. Like most places, we were only able to scratch the surface of what is offered, and perhaps we missed their strong points. We're more than willing to give them another shot. And to be fair, the idea of the 6 pound pizza challenge does intrigue us.

Also, we want to say thanks for reading. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback, and as always, we welcome your questions and comments. Plus, we'd love to hear your suggestions of places to try. We can be reached at newworldpizza.okc (at) gmail.com.