The Super Bowl Junk Food Challenge : Acres of Pizza

The best pizza I’ve ever had in Los Angeles--heck, anywhere--was the white-truffle pizza at a book party at Spago eight years ago, a small slice of pizza with several very large slices of truffle that an acquaintance managed to snag directly from the hand of Puck.

The wisp-thin pizza at Alto Palato is nearly as good as the stuff at the best pizzerias in Rome, but is probably too delicate to travel even as far as the parking lot.

Casa Bianca in Eagle Rock, which may be the best regular pizzeria in the Los Angeles area, 1) doesn’t deliver; 2) doesn’t open for lunch; 3) doesn’t accept credit cards; 4) doesn’t open on Sundays. (It is, however, delivering all day Super Bowl Sunday, if you happen to live in the area. Call (213) 256- 9617. Try the pizza with fried eggplant and homemade sausage.)

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Nationally advertised takeout pizza, obviously, is a compromise. Then again, it’s sometimes the only kind you can get without getting out of your bathrobe. We tried a half-dozen of the most popular last week in The Times Test Kitchen--one large pepperoni pizza was the order, though at a couple of the places we could have gotten two medium pies for a buck or two less--with about half the pizzas delivered to Downtown and the other half picked up nearby within 15 minutes of the tasting.

Disclaimer: Pizzas at other locations may vary.

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California Pizza Kitchen does actually serve--and deliver--regular-guy pepperoni pizza, though you won’t find it on the menu among the Peking duck pizzas, BLT pizzas and Thai chicken whatever. Sure, it has the pallor of Pizza Man’s product, except it costs more and is about one third the size. But the crust is chewy, the sauce sharp and honest with actual chunks of tomatoes and a strong top note of oregano that tames the pepperoni’s bite. The cheese tastes more of the dairy than of the test tube. CPK is expensive, and ex-New Yorkers may sneer at it, but in the company of these pizzas, it might as well be Alto Palato. 81

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Round Table’s pizza had the usual sodden crust, a sweetish tomato sauce, and a bit of what seemed to be Cheddar thrown into the mix--ordinarily, one wouldn’t approve, but in this case it did give a little more flavor to the cheese than the rest. But the most exceptional thing about this pizza, which wasn’t bad, was the sort of porcupine effect caused by the many pepperoni that ended up perpendicular to the pie. It’s one of the mysteries of modern science: Do they bake it that way, or just cut the pizza into slices with a dull blade? 74

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Pizza Hut is kind of the McDonald’s of pizza--not exciting, not inexpensive, but dependable, whether in Pico Rivera or a Sydney airport lounge. As much as competition with the bargain chains may have pushed Pizza Hut into the sparsely garnished world of the Bigfoot, the regular pie is fine. The pizza we ordered had a soft, yeasty crust, a smoky, almost bacon-y back taste, and sauce detectable only as a kind of slightly acidic slime. You couldn’t, of course, if you had been blindfolded, have discerned whether the pizza had pepperoni on it or not, but the fried-tasting, risen rim of the crust, Pizza Hut’s signature, was still crunchy an hour after delivery. 71

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Pizza Man might deliver the lingua franca of bad pizza. There’s a slightly scorched flavor to the cheese, an undercooked, almost raw-tasting damp-cardboard crust, a sourish but slight tomato undercurrent and lots and lots of garlic. Bright wafers of pepperoni are approximately as relevant as the sprig of parsley that comes with a chicken dinner at Denny’s. This is the American pizza of everybody’s childhood: carnival pizza, bus-station pizza, the pizza at your junior high school cafeteria. 66

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Domino’s. A beautiful golden-brown appearance, an appealing first smack of hot pepperoni oil, but the crust had the texture of wet Wonder bread, and there was a powerful unpleasant aftertaste. It was, if you’re interested, delivered several minutes quicker than any of the others. 62

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Little Caesar is, I believe, the originator of the acres-of-pizza concept, great football fields of doughy crust thinly dotted with tomato paste and cheese. If tonnage is what you’re after, Little Caesar might be the place. But the regular pepperoni pizza is distinctly on the far side of wonderful: soggy crust with the flavor of a disagreeable health-food cracker; cheese annealed into a tough film over the oddly spiced, candy-sweet tomato sauce; meat perceptible mostly as a mild crunch. Cool commercials, though. 53

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Scorebox

100-90 Outstanding.

89-80 Good. Has special qualities.

79-70 Fair.

69-60 Acceptable.

59-50 Not recommended.