Marco's Pizza

Sorry for the lapse in blogs! We haven't been able to do pizza night the last 2 weeks due to schedule conflicts, and we'll miss pizza night again this coming week since I'll be traveling for work, but we do have 2 posts that I've been lazy on getting up. So, here's the first one, from 4 weeks ago. I braved the snowy yucky weather to head up north a little bit to pick up a couple of pizzas from Marco's Pizza in Deer Park. I had gotten a Living Social deal for Marco's a couple of weeks before this pizza night, so I was able to use it and get and hardly pay anything! On top of that, Marco's always has really good coupons on their website. Despite a little slipping around, I made it up to Marco's safely. When I pulled up to the strip mall that Marco's was located in, I expected it to be you're typical take-out pizza place and was pleasantly surprised to see it had a nice, stone wall and a little sitting area where they actually served you.

I picked us up a Pepperoni pizza (classic crust) and a White Cheezy pizza (thin crust, no bacon). Here's what the pizzas looked like (after sitting in the oven for 30 minutes since Nik & Kevin had to work later than they thought they would):

And it was mine and Nik's 4 year dating anniversary, so I surprised him with a (delicious!) Palermo torte from Servatii's (and he surprised me with flowers :)).

Here's what we thought of Marco's Pizza:

(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)

Appearance (overall): 3.42
Aroma (overall): 3.88
Taste (overall): 3.92
Crust - 4.33
Cheese - 3.25
Toppings - 4.00
Sauce - 3.83
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 3.75
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 4.42
X-factor: 4.08

While Marco's Pizza isn't our new overall favorite pizza place in Cincinnati, it is my new favorite "not too expensive" pizza place. I really like both of the crusts and the sauce, but unfortunately the cheese brought the pizzas down. Kevin agreed, saying that it was otherwise very good pizza, especially given that with coupons it's relatively inexpensive. I thought that the crusts were perfectly done, and Nik thought that the thin crust was like a Ritz cracker and that the cracker help up in the oven pretty well. I thought that the Pepperoni pizza was salty (in a good way) and a little greasy (but it did sit in the oven for 30 minutes once I got home). And I thought that the White Cheezy pizza was REALLY good with a nice crackery crust. What really helped out the Specialty Pizza & Menu Options and the X-factor was all the crust options and the on-line ordering system. The on-line ordering is super easy and you get to choose:

• type of sauce
• amount of sauce
• crust topper: garlic butter, parmesan, or roma (for free!)
• bake style: regular, well done, etc.
• pizza side: garlic butter, marinara, ranch (for free!)

I would definitely pick up pizza from Marco's again, I just wish it was a little closer.

Mellow Mushroom

Happy 2011! Now that we're past the holidays, we'll finally get back to our normal Thursday night pizza night schedule. This post is coming a few weeks late though as we ventured down to Mellow Mushroom in Wilder, KY the week before the holiday travel began. Mellow Mushroom was one of our (Nik and me) favorite pizza places when we lived in Durham, NC, so we were excited to take Kevin (Lilly's Pizza in Raleigh is our favorite!). We decided on the Pepperoni Pizza (I forgot the camera, so we had to use Nik's phone and the picture turned out blurry), Kosmic Karma, and Mellowterranean.

(Kosmic Karma, with the Pepperoni in the bottom right corner)


(Mellowterranean)

Here's how they scored:

(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)

Appearance (overall): 4.58
Aroma (overall): 4.38
Taste (overall): 4.25
Crust - 4.58
Cheese - 4.17
Toppings - 4.50
Sauce - 3.67
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 3.83
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 4.33
X-factor: 3.58

Mellow Mushroom has one of our favorite crusts, our favorite toppings, and some of the most attractive pizzas so far in the quest! Here's a more in-depth look at what we thought of the pizzas - they looked like hand-tossed pizzas and we all loved the outer crust, which was covered in parmesan goodness. Unfortunately, the crust in the middle of the pizza didn't hold up very well and got pretty soggy. Luckily for Mellow Mushroom, the outer crust was so delicious that we forgot about the soggy middle. There was lots of cheese (always a good thing), so much that it would slide off (but that may have also been due to my hunger/impatience to start eating). The pepperoni were a little thick, not the typical really thin ones you get, but definitely good. Kevin thought that the marinara was on the sweeter side while I just didn't like it much. I thought that it had a weird, maybe metalic, flavor to it and needed more spices/herbs/(good) flavor. On the other hand, the pesto on the Kosmic Karma is delicious! They had run out of the tzatkiki sauce that was supposed to come with the Mellowterranean (we only found out because we asked, they didn't actually tell us), much to our disappointment. Nik and I still really liked the Mellowterranean though, while Kevin wasn't a big fan of the olive oil and garlic base.

Mellow Mushroom offers a good beer selection, which helped in their score a bit. Nik's last comment is DRUGS!!! Mellow Mushroom apparently was started by some hippies, and if you visit them, you'll understand :)