Sometimes my approach to choosing a restaurant is detailed, complicated; I might spend a few days asking around, and searching the Internet for information on a place to eat. It can be fun to see what others think, to have time to leisurely peruse a menu and to compare it to others at the same price point.
And then, sometimes, my approach to choosing a restaurant is as simple as pulling up my house on Google and searching nearby for “restaurants.”
And that approach, spurred by hunger and a fight about who was cooking dinner, is how I ended up ordering mozzarella sticks, pizza and a pound of* wings for delivery from Daddyo’s Pizza on Antoine.
*Yeah, I don’t get that, either.
Let’s start with the pros:
• Fast: Daddyo’s delivered our order well under the 45-minute estimated delivery time they gave when I called.
• Well-cooked: Although the food arrived almost 15 minutes ahead of schedule, it was all well-cooked, as well as hot and fresh.
• Honest: When I called and gave my order, the representative let me know about a similar deal special that saved me a few bucks and got me essentially the same order I would have placed.
• Well-priced: Our entire order cost $34, including tip.
• Fast: Who orders pizza before they are ravenously hungry? Not us, so speed gets two votes in the “pro” column.
You may have noticed that “taste” was not listed under “pros” — that’s not because all the food tasted bad, but because it was satisfactory (though uneven) at best. Luckily, the pizza was the best part of the whole order. With a tasty, not-quite-thin-enough for me crust, Daddyo’s pizza uses a good (if sweet) sauce, and they have a generous hand with the toppings. They also show restraint in terms of the toppings, keeping the cheese-sauce-topping ratio manageable; there was a real consistency, bite after bite.
But for pizza, like models, thinness counts, and Daddyo’s doesn’t come close to the super-thin slices of my youth. Good enough to order again, not good enough to pencil in a regular pizza night.
The only reason I can guess why Daddyo’s serves their wings by the pound is that they are goddamn tiny. I looked around for something to provide scale, and found a fun-size Hershey bar left over from Halloween — it’s about 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches, and the wing is just about the same size. Ummmm. No. They weren’t all that crispy, the hot sauce wasn’t the simple Frank’s/butter combo we all know and love, and they were so freaking tiny that every time I picked one up, I was surprised all over again.
Is this the part where you guys tell me I should have gone to Fuzzy’s?
This article appears in Dec 12-18, 2013.