Just Off the Trolley Tracks: Zpizza

Place:
Zpizza
5175 Linda Vista Road, Suite 106
(619) 272-0022

Time:
Sunday, 9 August 2009
Approximately 16:30 on our way home after leaving midway through a Padres game (they were losing 4 to 1 to the Mets by the sixth inning).

Investigation Led By:
Agents Nader and Joe

Overall: 5 out of 10

Pizza: 5.5 out of 10.

Bread: The crust was thin and not too crispy; it had a "healthy" taste to it. Zpizza apparently prides themselves on being healthy, but I don't know if health and good pizza will always go together. To their credit, there were no bubbles or any major issues that would ruin a pizza, like those those gigantic bubbles in the pizza bread at Pizzeria Luigi's, an earlier investigation.

Cheese: Nothing out of the ordinary. We decided to split our large pie into to different types. Agent Nader chose the Provence and I chose the Santa Fe. Both styles used the same typical mozzarella cheese and, of course the same pizza bread since they were both one and the same pizza. The toppings and sauces was where all the difference were.

Sauce: Thin layer of tomato sauce. To be honest I don't recall even seeing any pizza sauce, but I would have been able to tell if there was a complete lack of sauce. Either way, the sauce was not anything extraordinary.

Toppings: The Santa Fe consisted of chipotle pesto, mozzarella, chicken sausage, red onions, corn, fresh avocado, sour cream, and cilantro. At least this is what the menu lists. The reason I chose the Santa Fe was precisely for the chipotle pesto. Come to think of it, the chipoltle pesto most likely replaced the tomato sauce, which would explain the mysterious lack of tomato sauce I just mentioned. I hope this was the case because the pesto sauce was not easily visible, or tasteable for that matter. I was fairly excited to taste this chipotle pesto and my anticipation turn to mild disappointment after hardly noticing any pesto at all. The pizza reminded me of a vegetarian pizza except for the tasty chicken sausage slices dealt out on top of the mozzarella. The above description of the Santa Fe is a little misleading. The pizza appears much more plain then the menu description. One surprise was the light sprinkle of corn, yes, corn. The menu, on a second glance, does mention that corn is one of the toppings. The corn topping provoked agent Nader into mentioning an international pizza investigation he once led with Agent Munir in Israel. They were shocked to find that pizza makers there never mixed cheese with meat, an apparent violation of the the old Jewish adage: "Never boil the calve in the mother's milk". Needless to say, they knew that the best pizza in the world must be sought out in other regions of the world.

Agent Nader opted for the Provence style pizza, which consisted of organic tomato sauce, roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, artichoke hearts, capers, tomatoes and basil. There were noticeable little seed/pod looking things sown across the pizza. I didn't venture to try one by itself, but Agent Nader did and thought they were decent. Assuming that these pod-like things were intentionally place on the pizza, I figure that they must be the capers.. Maybe a little google research on capers would settle this mystery. Both pizzas were not bad. They may be just the right pizza for vegetarians who would thrive on bread and plants.

Sauce: The Provence half was tomato and the Santa Fe half was chipotle pesto.

Condiments: The standard: Pretty good Parmesan, crushed red peppers and salt and pepper.

Drinks: No beer. Not even a fountain selection. They did have a selection, but this was more of a health conscious pizzeria, so naturally they offered bottled drinks from behind the counter. For some reason there seems to be a tendency to equate healthy drinks with bottled drinks. Agent Nader bought a bottled Arnold Palmer. The company that manufactured the drink was called something like Manson and Sons Inc., which sort of gives a off a vibe that the company is some small farm family hand crafting each drink in the barn. But I think Manson and Sons is more properly equated to some major corporate law firm with a name like Bariben and Sons Inc.

Atmosphere: 4 out 10

Eye-candy: There wasn't much for visual stimulus. The pizzeria was located in a low traffic plaza right off the trolley tracks. The place seemed more like a neighborhood than a market, directly across the parking lot was a condo or apartment complex. Inside Zpizza there were what looked like mass produced poster-size pictures of pizza ingredients. One was of an avocado sliced in half with the pit still intact. There was one TV screen around the top corner nearest to the window ( the only window, the place was built in the hole-in-the-wall fashion ). There was one red sofa, the rest of the furniture was black tables and chairs. Zpizza was apparently trying to offer a more relaxed vibe with the sofa, but it wasn't working. In fact, the sofa seemed out of place enough so that it got me thinking about the future of Zpizza in this plaza: I concluded that it won't be in business for much longer than a year.

Music: This was the worst aspect of Zpizza. It would have been better if they hadn't played any music at all. By playing what they did, they showed that they had no deep concern for music. The music was playing on some sort of radio program that intermittently and fairly frequently ruined the flow of music with commercials. When there wasn't commercials they played worn-out, tame, and commercialized rock such as Stained. Who do they expect to come and lounge on their single red sofa looking forward to this music? The masterminds behind Zpizza may or may not know how to run a business, but it is clear that they are out of touch with culture.

People: We were the only people in the joint that afternoon, and we were the only people in there the entire time we stuck around to eat our pie.

Service: We were helped by a cute Latin girl wearing an all-black uniform. She also delivered our pizza to our table. There was one guy working on the pizzas, or pizza, singular, since we were the only ones buying pizza, and another guy who came out from the back a few minutes later. I wondered how Zpizza could afford to staff 3 people while they manage to sell at best one pizza an hour. This became another reason why I don't think Zpizza will be around next fall.

Price: We got a large pizza split into two of their "Zpizza Creations" and a bottled Arnold Palmer for $23 and change.