Bellacino's Pizza & Grinders, May 2011. Binge Stop 1.

The Binge 2011 has officially begun...er.. actually it began 3 weeks ago, but I'm just now getting  caught up on all my blogging.

Bellacino's Pizza & Grinders in St Charles was the chosen as the first stop on a whim.  We were hungry and it was across the parking lot from The Bass Pro shop, where we were checking out outdoorsy things.

We started with a small Greek salad and for pizza we had pepperoni, meatballs, ham and onions.  The pizza I was told is first cooked in a pan then finished off on the oven floor.  The crust is of  the thin variety, yet not as thin as a St Louis style, and is cut on the square.  The pizza was great.

Bellacino's is what I would call a regional chain with most locations in the mid-West and mid-Atlantic states.  If your interested check their web-site (title link) for a location.

Recommended.

Chief Pizza Eater.
GAW

Guido's Pizzeria & Tapas, May 2011

Guido's Pizzeria & Tapas

5046 Shaw Ave., St Louis, MO 63110 (map link);  (314) 771-4900 ;  http://www.guidosstl.com/

Pizza Style: St Louis thin crust

Oven type: Stone deck.

The Skinny:  Ask for Mozzarella and don't forget the Tapas!

Price: $7.50 small (9in) cheese to $20.95 family (16in) speciality pizza.

Chief Pizza eater says:  Recommended. 

We set out on Mothers day with a car load of mothers to get pizza, and nearly went hungry.  We went to joint after joint finding them all closed, that is until we thought of Guido's Pizzeria & Tapas on The Hill (St Louis's Italian neighborhood).  It turns out that a large number of restaurants are closed on Sunday's in the City of St Louis and The Hill is closed down tight with one exception, Guido's.  As they say "All's well that end's well".

Lesson:  if you aren't 100% sure, call ahead to find out the hours of operation.

Being the only place open on The Hill seating was scarce, so we chose to dine al fresco, which was perfect as it was a beautiful day.

Because not all of the pizza eaters are as dedicated as the Chief, we had quite the mix of food.  Things we had other than pizza included:  House Salad, Caprese Salad and Ensalad Mixta.  from the Tapas menu we had Gazpacho Madrileno, Croquetas Caseras (chicken), and Empanadillas (tuna).  By now you must realize Guido's is bilingual, a little Italian and a little Spanish.

For pizza Guido's offers traditional St. Louis style pizza, with the option to have mozzarella cheese instead of  provel.  We had a large with half cheese (for the youngest pizza eater) and half with pepperoni, salami, Canadian bacon and red onions.  We also chose mozzarella over the provel.  The pizza crust was very thin, crispy and cut on the square as one should expect from a St Louis style pie.  The pizza was very good, if not a little messy.  The inner squares are the messiest as the cheese has no anchor and tends to slide around.  My choice of toppings wasn't the greatest, no problems on Guido's part, just my combination.  I like salami on pizza's but  it doesn't work great with Canadian bacon in my book, next time I will pair it with something a little less salty.

Over all the food was very good, and worth a visit.  And if it's Sunday Guido's is your only option on The Hill.  Recommended any day of the week.

Recommended

Chief Pizza Eater.
GAW

The Cheesecake Factory, March 2011.

The Cheesecake Factory.

Multiply locations see web-site;  www.thecheesecakefactory.com

Pizza Style:  Hand tossed.

Oven type:  Unknown.

The Skinny:  Save room for Dessert!

Price: $10.95 for Cheese to $12.95 for The Everything Pizza.

Chief Pizza eater says: Recommended BUT.  

I don't always choose the places that I eat pizza at, some times life just toss's me a slice.  The Cheesecake Factory is not the first place that comes to mind when you want pizza.  Because members of my family like it, I end up there a couple of times a year, and although the food has been good  I dread going.  It has always been a daunting task for me to figure out what I want.  Not sure if you have every seen their menu, but it looks like the New York City phone book.  On this visit the Menu was something like 15-20 pages, and the print is quite small!

The Cheesecake Factory just list 10 different specialty pizza's in their menu and don't really have a build your own topping list.  I guess you could ask to have one made just the way you like, but not sure what the out come would be,  I may try on a future visit.  I usually like to start with a salad, but knowing the portions The Cheesecake Factory servers and wanting to save room for dessert I passed on the green stuff.

For pizza I ordered the B.B.Q Chicken pizza.  It had Smoked Gouda, Red Onion and Cilantro along with the B.B.Q. Chicken.  The BBQ sauce taking the place of pizza sauce.  All that goodness was atop what appeared to be a hand tossed crust of about 12-13 inches.  The crust was done up crispy on the bottom and edge.  There wasn't to much sauce or cilantro (little goes a long way in my book),  If anything it could have used a few more onions, but then again I love those red onions.  Had I not been saving room for dessert I would have probably ate the whole pizza even thought 1/2 or 3/4 would have been enough to satisfy my hunger.

Finally it was time for dessert and it just happens that Cheesecake is one of my favorites.  My fellow (non)pizza eater and I shared a slice of Ultimate Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake.  If your a sweet tooth and this doesn't make your mouth water I don't know what will.  Layers of Red Velvet Cake and Cheesecake covered in Cream Cheese frosting finished with White Chocolate...  It was excellent, but I probably should have saved a little bit more room for it.

Overall the pizza was pretty good and I would get it again if I'm there with family.  I wouldn't pass a regular pizza joint just to eat pizza at The Cheesecake Factory, So Recommended But, only if I'm there at the request of others.  Just don't forget to save room for the Cheesecake!

Recommended But

Chief Pizza Eater.
GAW

What's the deal Chief?

It would appear that the Chief has been absent, or more likely absentminded lately.

I find it hard to believe that I haven't posted in over 2 months!  Sorry to all my Faithful listeners, ah... readers.  Here is my plan:

• Over the next few days I will get my self busy and finish up several post that have been in the wings since early May.
• Then the Binge 2011 will begin.  I know I said it last year but I really mean it this year.  The Binge will be smaller this time.
• I will do my best to have at least one new post a week for the next 10 weeks, really!

The Chief Pizza Eater.

GAW

Little Caesars, March 2011

I can't help myself...  My coworkers say "Were getting a Hot-N-Ready, you want one?"  I just can't say no...

I have to tell you the Little Caesars down the street from work puts out a pretty good pizza for $5.  I've heard about less than desirable results with the Hot-N-Ready, but the only complaint I've ever had was that they didn't get the pizza cut all the way through in a couple of spots.

I'll take a Hot-N-Ready any day over a fast food burger joint. Plus for $5 I can have left overs for lunch the next day.

Recommended, YMMV

Chief Pizza Eater

Stefanina's Pizzeria & Restaurant, March 2011

Free Pizza at work, Just about the best kind.  Stefanina's was the pizza of choice.  We had Pepperoni with Mozzarella cheese.  For a St Louis style pizza it was pretty good, I will defiantly be taking a more in-depth look at Stefanina's in the future.

For now Recommended But,  get Mozzarella cheese instead of Provel.

The Chief Pizza Eater.

Schlafly Bottleworks March 2011

Schlafly Bottleworks

7260 Southwest Ave. (map link);  (314) 241-BEER x2;  www.schlafly.com

Pizza Style: Hand tossed

Oven type: ??

The Skinny:  Great Pizza, but save room for Dessert.

Price: $8 plus $1 per topping

Chief Pizza eater says: Highly Recommended.

Late last year I posted a question in the Missouri section of CityProfile.com asking, whats your favorite pizza joint?  I've got a whole slew of responses, one being Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood, MO.  So last week when the Mrs. Pizza Eater asked if I wanted to go out for lunch, I said I have just the place.

We arrived around 2 P.M. for a late lunch and we started with Ice tea and Chopped Salads.  The salad has romaine lettuce with red wine vinaigrette, Salemville bleu cheese, Volpi salami, pickled red onions, hard-boiled egg and kalamata olives.  The salad was excellent, I loved the pickled red onions.  


The Mrs. Pizza Eater choose to be a non-pizza eater and ordered the soup of the a Tomato Bisque.  It was rather good too, but not pizza.


For pizza Schlafly makes a Pilsner dough fresh daily,  they are a brewer first and pizza joint second.  Then you have a choice of sauces, cheese and toppings.  Your choice of sauce includes a tomato sauce or a smoked Gouda cream and garlic oil.  For cheese there is the House blend (Mozzarella, smoked Gouda, Provolone, Jack and Prairie Breeze), Mozzarella, Feta, goat or vegan mozzarella.  The topping list isn't huge, but it is interesting.  For example they don't have hamburger or beef, instead they have Bison.  It should also be noted that all pizza's are about 10 inches, filling a dinner plate.


For my pizza I ordered tomato sauce, House blend cheese, pepperoni, Bison, onions and roasted red peppers.  The pizza was very good.  The crust was fairly thick across the whole pie and cooked to give it a crispy crunch.  The toppings were all very good to, but I couldn't tell a big difference in the Bison verses fresh ground beef.  The House blend cheese probably has more Mozzarella than the other cheese's, at the table with the pizza still pretty hot the flavors melded together.  As it cooled you could start to taste the different flavors. I ended up with a couple of slices left over and they passed the breakfast test with flying colors,  nearly as good cold the next day.


I took pizza home because I had to save room for dessert.  The dessert menu is not large, but huge in quality. We ordered the Sticky Toffee Pudding.  Straight from the menu: Pudding in the Scottish sense – a very moist, dense cake. Served with warm caramel sauce and freshly whipped cream.  Let me just say this, You must save room for Dessert!  I have never had whipped cream this good before, ever!  Put it all to gather and it is Wicked good.


Schlafly Bottleworks is most defiantly worth a visit.  The service is great and if you are a beer connoisseur, they have you covered, you can even tour the brewery on certain days.  They also work at being green from sourcing ingredients locally to the building they are located in (recycled supermarket that had just been sitting empty).

Highly Recommended.

Chief Pizza Eater.
GAW