Saturday, February 7, 2009

The Anti-Marie's Pizza

Earlier in my blog, I posted about a hometown pizza favorite of mine, Marie's. Homemade dough, homemade sauce, just the right blending of herbs, spices, and toppings makes for an excellent finished product.

On my visit to Lembo's last week, I saw a table next to me order a pepperoni pizza that looked pretty darn good. Looking at the menu, I noticed that Lembo's also makes their own dough and sauce. Thinking that this might be something good to order the next time I dined here, I kept it in the back of my mind. Earlier this week, as I was driving home from work, the pizza again popped into my head. So I decided to give Lembo's a shot.

Skipping their enormous (and quite run-of-the-mill tasting) salad bar, I went straight for the gold: a large pepperoni pizza.


If someone ever tells you that something must be good because the ingredients are homemade, don't believe them. This pizza was the complete opposite of a Marie's pizza. The dough was bland, the sauce tasted like it was made with Campbell's Tomato Soup and sorely lacked the presence of any herbs and the pepperoni was extra oily. I had to spend about 5 minutes just soaking up the layer of orange grease off the top of the pizza before I could even start eating it. A little grease is okay, but not large pools of it.

The pizza lacked any sort of character whatsoever. It was not assertive in the least. In fact, I think it ranks lower than most chain store pizzas and some of those are truly awful indeed (Pizza Pan anyone?). It really made me rethink my newfound excitement over discovering Lembo's. I may go back one more time to try the homemade gnocchi, but honestly, this visit has left me with a significant doubt that they will even be good. There seems to be more not to like than to like here.

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