Adam & Eats: Pizza Parlour

Editor’s note: Adam Brandt is a graduate from the Cobra Kai School of Culinary Callousness, where he received their highest award, the Red Apron of Merciless Eating. Aside from eating and talking about eating, he makes pots, paintings, prints, books, photographs, and generally, a big mess. He has been the studio assistant at Mudpuppy Pottery for almost nine years and is attending a local university in a desperate attempt to earn a biology degree.

Normally, I am the type of person that is all in favor of things tasting like other things. Gimme a taco burger, or a choco-taco, or an avocado milkshake any day of the week. Sometimes, dare I say rarely, some things taste like things they shouldn’t. Pizza Parlour makes a pizza that tastes frighteningly like a McDonald’s cheeseburger. All I can say to that is: no thank you.

Located at the far-east end of Rogers Avenue, between a vet and a party supply shop, Pizza Parlour has been slinging pizza dough since 1989. Despite all of the reviews I found online that suggested it to be a well-lit dining environment, I found it to be quite dark, but not uncomfortably so. The lighting is more like that of a romantic evening rather than that of a dwelling of a cave troll.

The overall environment is your quintessential family-oriented eatery. There is always a lot of people running into each other, followed by the “Hey, how’s it going?” variety of pleasantries. It is so family friendly, in fact, that even when one of the cooks drops the next four pizzas that were supposed to be heading to the buffet, he exercises superhuman will power and doesn’t let loose a string of profanities. That is impressive by anybody’s standards. The waitstaff is friendly, even if they are frantically busy. Let us depart now from the environmental and get into the culinary.

I always find it very strange when a restaurant in this town doesn’t have sweet tea. Pizza Parlour does not have sweet tea, but their unsweetened tea is quite refreshing (especially on one of these 80 degree Spring days), even if you struggle throughout most of the meal to get those little sucrose crystals to get up off the bottom of the glass and just dissolve already. That reminds me a joke.

A chemistry professor says to his class: “Class, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate.”

Sorry, a little science joke. I couldn’t resist.

Where were we? Oh, yes, food. So, the salad bar was quite nice. I was impressed to find that most of the ingredients were actually fresh, rather than emptied from a can or plastic bag. It says a lot about a restaurant that actually boils the eggs for their salad bar. Plus, the ranch dressing is made in house and is spectacular. (Is that a hint of parmesan I tasted?)

As far as pizza goes, it was hit or miss in my book. The sausage and jalapeno was stunning (and wonderfully spicy), but the pepperoni fell a little flat. Their supreme is probably some of the best I’ve ever had, but the apple pizza pie left me wishing I had not wasted the space in my stomach on it. Perhaps I should have eaten another slice of the “Hawaiian” pizza, which is perfectly sweet and salty.

Overall, after averaging out the good and the bad, Pizza Parlour makes some decent pizza. Especially, since you can eat all that you care to. Plus two can eat for under 15 bucks and thatsa so nice.

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When he’s not beating his eggs, Adam makes time to respond to e-mails that get past his hard-ass spam filter. You can try to reach him at [email protected]

Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.