Adventure #19: Niki's Pizza

This was a random adventure, friends and followers. Not only did Karin just happen to spot this pizzeria/Italian eatery as she was out shopping, but we didn't intend to go here this week! Karin had proposed one destination that I had denied due to a rules violation, so she had suggested another. When I pick her up, she desired to go to yet ANOTHER pizzeria, so off we went to the barren north - Tech Ridge.

Niki's Pizza is located in a nondescript shopping center over by Tech Ridge. They serve slices, and one gets the impression that there's a booming lunch crowd given the proximity of Dell. At dinnertime, we had a few other guests dining in with us, and a few others came in to grab their pies to-go. Although the menu online lists some specialty pies, there were none on the menu in-store, so we made pizza ourselves.

We decided on pepperoni, onions, and green peppers due to a) a special on an XL 3-topping and b) a misunderstanding between Karin and I about black olives; turns out we both like them. For starters, we had some garlic bread, as usual.

The garlic bread was appropriately garlicy, but the marinara was thin and generic. We were starving, so there wasn't much to complain about.

How about that pie?

Component #1: Grease - Pools of it!

Component #2: More Grease - Seriously, this is one of the greasiest pizzas we've had. You can see it in the upskirt crust pic.

Component #3: Nicely cut tasty veggies - These were cut in a way conducive to being on a pizza and were pretty fresh. For sure they were a high point.

Component #4: Generic pepperoni - Not much to say about this. Basic salty pepperoni, kind of thin.

Component #5: Cheese and sauce? - The grease, cheese, and sauce seemed to all blend together to form a cheesy substance on the pizza. Not much flavor to comment on.

Component #6: Crust - Not firm enough to stand up to the grease, but appropriately chewy on the ends.

Altogether, this wasn't the greatest pizza, although for the price (9.99), there's not much to complain about. It could easily feed 4 people if you include the garlic bread we got. Last but not least, Karin and I each had additional insights during the night after our adventure:

Karin - "The cheese and grease did a number on my stomach. 10 dollar tummyache"

Ian - "This is much better after some time in the fridge, at 1am, when the grease has congealed."

-Ian

Adventure #18: Yaghi's Pizza

For once, I think we picked the right "weird" specialty on the menu. We got the gyro pizza, so those delicious nuggets of meatiness you see above were incredibly tender and flavorful. It came with cucumber yogurt sauce. I know that you're thinking that this sounds really gross, that cucumber yogurt sauce should not go anywhere near a pizza, but to me it was a lot like dipping pizza in cucumber-slaw ranch. The pizza was fantastic without it (I personally am not wild about cucumber so, after a few tastes to make sure that I got the full experience, I ate mine almost exclusively without), but the cucumber sauce actually added to the pizza. The crunchy (crispy? What is the correct adjective for the way vegetables crunch?) bits in the sauce added some texture to a bite and the creamy yogurt added unique flavor.

As to the "pizza" bits of the pizza, the sauce, crust, and cheese. They were all there, nothing really stood out but nothing was bad either. Crust was chewy but crisp where it needed to be; The sauce was present and complimented the meat; The cheese was salty and abundant.

-Karin