Empire State of Mind

Holy shit. We're back. And drunk. In reverse order, actually.
It's been 4 years since our last post. Sorry. We got busy. And married. But not to each other. Sorry, Buck/Ryan shippers.
So, despite our absence, we've kept our pizza tasting skills honed. And after much Captain Morgan's and terrible beer, we decided to bring the blog out of retirement. We could regale you with tales of exotic pizza from across  the world, like pizza from Germany (with eggs and salmon), or pizza from Norman (that you drop to knock the grease off), but instead we will berate you with our opinion of Empire Slice House in the Plaza District.
So, combined we make a run of the mill hipster. One of us is the world's worst hipster, and the other is (unjustly) labeled the King of the Hipsters (I don't wear skinny enough jeans or no-lens glasses). We exploded onto the scene (hey...that sounds way too much like a porno into)...uh...arrived (better) at Empire Slice House roughly drunk:thirty on Sunday afternoon. While we loved singing along to Kanye West's best album ( Graduation Day...yeah, I said it), the music was so loud we decided to play the curmudgeonly old man card (which is getting way to easy to do), and asked for the sound to be turned down. It was. Twice. But when we eat pizza, the sweet sounds of the early aughts are the last thing on our minds. We are there to consume pizza. In large quantities. With lots of Dr. Pepper refills.
Though they traditionally are known for selling pizza by the slice, Empire offers full pies. Or half and halfs (the years haven't been good to our once epic metabolisms). We used to hubristically (is that a real word?) order three pizzas. One cheese. One pepperoni. And one wildcard. This time, we are, to quote Murtaugh, we are to old for that shit. Instead, we ordered a half Fat Tony, half Dougie Fresh. So, how did it stack up?
The foundation of a good pizza is a good crust. Empire's crust was a combination of too thin to adequately soak up the grease while simultaneously being to thick for a New York style pizza. If you are a glutton for gluten (ha!), this could very well be your thing, but for New York style pizza we want a *Crunch!* and a a funnel for our grease. The not-quite-pillowy-not-quite-crunchy crust left us thinking of a Pillsbury crush (which, trust us, we have a lot of experience with).
 So, the Fat Tony (one of the styles we decided to rend in twain for our personal enjoyment) comes with house-made Italian sausage, red onion, ricotta, and (allegedly) marinara (the "allegedly is there because one of use claims there was no marinara, while the other swears up and down. And also swears there was red sauce on it). We have a bunch of trite sayings we could use, but we we'd rather go with "grease is the word." Now, it's pretty delicious, but it simply missing the *Crunch!* needed to combat the grease or some sort of acid (possibly from the "marinara") to cut the fat. The red onions would ideally provide some sort of crunch, but were so thin they made a reference we wouldn't understand because we were never compared to something thin. To quote our better half/self, the Italian sausage tasted like "a meat...not that meat, but meat."
The Dougie Fresh comes with roasted garlic, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil. The pizza was almost too fresh, like waaay too fresh for a first date fresh. The garlic over powered the pizza (which is saying something, because we both go to the church of garlic, and pray to it daily). The Cherry tomatoes were supposed to be tomatoes confit, but were obviously cherry tomatoes cooked on the pizza. The fresh basil was good, but there was a Sherwood forest of basil, which stole from the richness, but gave to the poor combination all around.
In addition to ordering a pizza, we also ordered garlic knots(see previous statement on garlic), which never arrived (though we weren't charged for). We don't want to be the hate filled rage bloggers that dislike the things they love most, as most tend to do. We genuinely wanted to try pizza that came highly recommended to us, but it may have been the highness of those recommending it that lead to the downfall of expectations. We are no rebels out to topple the empire (vote Organa 2016), we are drunken assholes who have a blog, so do with that what you will. If we used a star system to rate pizza places, we'd rate it we'd label it a Timothy Olyphant on a scale of Corey Feldman to Brad Pitt.

Also, we saw an issue of Marvel's New Universe Psiforce #6 on their decoupaged wall, which, if you are going New Universe, come on...at least go Star Brand.

Sauced

This week we finally had schedules that synced up, and so, loyal readers, we were able to once again sacrifice our bodies and our health for your edification and education. After weeks of abstaining from our favorite food, we hungered for a truly adventurous pizza. And so this week we chose Sauced because after we write these pizza reviews, we tend to get that way. So, was the adventure as good as the name?

Italia Express

With our hectic schedule of late, we decided to make up for not reviewing anything on Sunday by hitting up Italia Express on 122 and MacArthur. A regional chain, Italia Express also has a location in Penn Square Mall and lots of stores in Texas. But we're getting a bit tired of the usual review format, so today we thought we'd spice things up.


The Cheese Pizza:
Crust of sour dough,
the cheese could be flavorful.
Sauce is barely there.

The Pepperoni Pizza:
Not like its brother,
spicy grease melts in cheese.
Tube meat saves the day.

The Chicken Pruscuitto Alfredo Pizza:
Chopped up flesh of fowl.
Creamy sauce rich and tasty.
I think it needs salt.

So, in all seriousness (ha!), hit the jump for a slightly longer review.

Dan's Pizza

To our faithful readers, you may have noticed that we have posted pretty much weekly since the inception of this blog. You may also have noticed that for the past two weeks we have posted nothing. Why? We accidentally went on an Odyssey. In the last two weeks we survived eight rounds of International Bear Fighting, a great flood, hours and hours of being pestered by radio personalities, at one point we thought Ryan had been turned into a toad (he got better), and sought a great fortune, which led us down a road of great peril, which eventually led us to our salvation: Pizza.

We here at New World Pizza pride ourselves on being Dapper Dan men. We drink Jack Daniels, we read Dan Slott comics, and we’ve even watched every Dan Aykroyd movie (yes, including Crossroads). This week, we ate at Dan’s Pizza, located at 121 W Waterloo Rd. Ste. 13 in Edmond.

Was the journey worth it?

Othello's of Edmond

On the recommendation of one of our twitter followers, we went to Othello's in Edmond. One of the biggest draws for us was the fact that on Sundays they offer half price pizzas. Turns out that it's half off on only the first two pizzas. And the cheapest two pizzas. Ryan learned this the hard way. Oh, and adding pine nuts, basil, and sun-dried tomatoes to smashed avacados does not make guacamole.

What other lessons did we learn?

The Wedge, Deep Deuce

This week we had some guests in town, and decided to show off some of the best of what Oklahoma City can offer, so we took them to The Wedge's Deep Deuce location. If you want a short review, here it is: Go there. Now.

A longer review follows.

Cafe 7

This week we had made plans to hit up Othello's, but there was a problem. Tonight, as if you didn't already know, is the Lost finale. And as nerds, we are honor bound to watch (even if 50% of New World Pizza hasn't seen a single episode). So we called an audible and swung by Café 7, on N. May and WEST Memorial. Café 7's shtick is that the sandwiches, the salads, the pastas, and pizzas are all $7 (actually, $6.46, plus tax). Oh, and everything comes out within seven minutes. And if you're the seventh son of a seventh son you get your seventh meal free (we think, you should probably check with them before you try this one).

How'd it hold up?