The Pizza Files 2009 by the numbers.

The above collage shows 46 of the pizza's that I enjoyed so far this year, I still have one more day, who knows I may get one more in before the year is up.

According to Google Analytics The Pizza Files had
989 Visits
585 Absolute Unique Visitors
1837 Pageviews
1.86 Pageviews/visit
68.55% Bounce Rate
00:01:58 Average time on site
58.95% new visits

Visitors from 38 countries/territories

Traffic sources Of the 989 visits
6.88% Direct
51.77% Referring sites
41.35% Search Engines

The Top 4 Search Keywords:
pizza snobz - 26 visits
pizza files - 25 visits
costco food court pizza - 23 visits
costco food court menu - 11 visits

Single post with most pageviews
Costco Food Court Pizza with 108 page views.

For Browsers
Firefox - 54.8%
SeaMonkey - 0.10%

Gee'z way to many numbers, go eat some pizza already...

Chief Pizza Eater
GAW

Papi's Pizza, Subs and Ice Cream.

New to the St Louis pizza scene, Papi's Pizza opened for business earlier this year in Wildwood, MO and looks to be a locally owned and operated pizza joint.  Their menu includes Appetizers, Salads, Sandwich's, Brick Oven Pizza and Desserts (including 11 flavors of Ice Cream).  Their pizza's are hand tossed and come with Mozzarella cheese.  They have a good selection of toppings including: meatballs, red onions, artichoke and shrimp to name a few.  Aside from the standard Mozzarella you can also get cheddar, feta, Ricotta, Parmesan, and Provolone cheese's.

On this visit we started with a side salad with BBQ ranch dressing.  The salad consisted of Iceberg & Romain lettuce, spinach, mozzarella, tomatoes and onions.  It was a very good start to the meal.

The first pizza was a 12" cheese.  My fellow pizza eater (6 yr old daughter) found it so good that she refused to share a slice with me.  I was able to negotiate a single bite, but was not allowed to touch the slice with my hands.

We also got a 14" with pepperoni, meatball, ham and red onion.  The hand tossed crust was very good, it had a nice texture and did a good job holding up the rest of the ingredients.  The tip was just a little soft and the edge just a little crispy.  The toppings were all very good and generously applied.  I was especially happy to see meatballs and red onions on the menu.  The only check against was that the menu says red onions and I asked for red onions, but it looked like it came with onions of the white variety, it was hard to tell, not a deal breaker by any means.  I can also report that the left over pizza did very well in the toaster oven the next morning.

Overall I was very pleased with the food and service at Papi's, so if you find your self in Wildwood and have a craving for good pizza give them a try, heck don't wait until you until find your self there, make it a road trip.  I will return and on my next visit I'm getting a scoop of ice cream.  Papi's Pizza is located at 17209 New Collage Ave in Wildwood, MO. You can reach them at (636) 458-1313 or check out their web-site by clicking the title link.

Highly Recommended.

GAW

Cici's

That's right I'm pigging out at Cici's, and I even paid for it.  Maybe it was a couple of weeks ago, but I did have some good pizza Saturday that I will be telling you about soon.

GAW

Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays to all the pizza eaters.  May your Holiday pizza be the best.  FYI, it's a little known fact that Santa prefers a really good slice over cookies and milk.

GAW

Papa John's Pizza.

It wasn't my Money! I just want to set the record straight right from the beginning.  So how did I come about eating Papa John's Pizza you ask?  I performed manual labor for a relitive and was provided dinner in return, dinner being the pizza disscussed here.

If you have never heard of Papa John's Pizza then you must live under a rock with no TV, radio or newspapers. Papa John's is one of the Big Three Chain's, Domino's and Pizza Hut the other two.  "Papa" John Schnatter started making pizza's in 1983 in his dad's tavern.  A year later he opened the first Papa John's Pizza.  Today there are over 3,000 Papa John's Pizza Delivery and take-out restaurants around the world.

The Menu may very from one location to another, at the Papa John's in my neck of the woods you can get pizza in one of 3 crust:  original (hand tossed?), thin or perfect pan.  It looks like the normal cheese is mozzarella, but you can also order a 3-cheese blend.  Besides pizza they have calizones, bread sticks, chicken wings/strips, desserts and bottled soft drinks.

We had a order of spicy Buffalo chicken wings.  Other than they were reddish orange and come with blue cheese dressing I can't comment, I'm not much of a fan so I didn't sample them.

For Pizza we had three variety's, all on original crust, and each had Papa John's special touch, Garlic dipping sauce and a peppercini.  The first was cheese the second was sausage & mushroom, and the third was pepperoni, ham, beef and onions.  I sampled all three of the pizza's.  One thing they all had in common was the crust (I use the word loosely), although it was dark brown on the bottom, under the sauce there was 1/4 inch layer that was rather doughy, sort of like a steamed bun you get at a Dim Sum restaurant.  The crust, again I use the word loosly, is more like bread than a pizza crust.  The toppings were ok, the ground beef and sausage were seemed to be more uniform in shape and size than ground meat should be.  I must admit the most enjoyable part was dipping the crust in the garlic dipping sauce. 

So the big question is, Would I eat it again? Sure, on somebody else's dime.  There are to many mom and pop joints to spend my money at Papa John's Pizza.

Papa John's Pizza, for more information check out their web-site (click on the title link).  I'm not going to give you any address or phone numbers, if you really have to eat there you have to look it up your self

If somebody else is paying.

GAW

It's been forever...

It seems like it has been forever since I last had something file in the PizzaFiles.  I have had pizza a couple of times this month but it was a case of "if somebody else pays" both times leaving me a bit uninspired and struggling to commit them to the interwebs.  I will be eating somebody else's leftover pizza for supper tonight, maybe it will inspire...

I hope to put some time into the PizzaFiles and list some of the pizza and food blogs I read to your right. Look for them in the near future.

I will be having my 42nd annual holiday in about 2 months time and if anybody has a recommendation on a Pizza Joint leave me a comment.  I have one place in mind that I visited this past summer, but I could be swayed...

To paraphrase a another blogger I follow, "Blogging is a Monster that requires constant feeding".  I hope to start the feeding again soon, who knows I might even get off my lazy A## and finnish those "if somebody else pays" post's .

GAW

Shakespeare's Pizza.

Shakespeare's Pizza ,locally owned and operated, is located in Columbia, MO. Their web-site is a bit light on history, but it looks like they opened for business in 1973 in downtown Columbia. They currently have two locations, the original downtown and a new joint on the west side of town. The pizza for this review came from the original downtown location.
Their menu includes Salads, Other eats (cheese garlic bread, Brightons cookies and frozen pizza's) and Pizza. The pizza's come with a choice of wholewheat or white crust. The cheese of choice is Provolone, but you can also get pepper or Cheddar cheese. You also have a choice of toppings or Exotic toppings, but unlike many places there is no price increase for the exotic toppings.

We started with a Louie's salad. It wasn't the salad I wanted but it was the salad I ordered (when I ordered the food I was racing west on I-70 towards Columbia). I had wanted to order a dinner salad, but instead I asked for a House salad for four people. I'm not a big fan of spinach salad, certainly nothing wrong with it, just not what I wanted.

We ordered 2 large pizza's, both with white crust, the first half cheese (for my daughter) and half Canadian bacon and bacon (a favorite of my fellow pizza eater). The second had pepperoni, Canadian bacon, hamburger and onions. The pizza's had a bit of a ride in the car, but were still very warm when we busted them out of the box's. The first things I noticed was a lot of corn meal on the bottom of the crust and how light it was, almost white. It was able to support it's own weight, that might be different straight out of the oven at the restaurant. The cheese and toppings were generously applied. Although I didn't realize until latter that they only used Provolone cheese, I did know something was different with cheese. As I recall the sauce was not remarkably sweet or spicy, and on the later my daughter would have made it known loud and clear. The sauce did a fine job of mediating between crust and toppings. I found all 3 pizza's quite good, and the leftovers did very well a couple of days later after spending some time in the toaster oven.

Overall I was very pleased with the food and service at Shakespeare's Pizza. I unknowingly picked Homecoming weekend to order from them, so when we arrived we found a line going around the building, luckily to go orders have a separate door. So if you go on a MU game night you should expect long lines and limited parking. Our pizza's were ready on-time and our salad come in a really nice reusable grocery bag.

The Pizza was very good and I would defiantly pay for it again. Shakespeare's Pizza is located at 9th & Elm Streets in Columbia, MO. You can reach them at (573) 449-2454, for more information check out their web-site (click on the title link).

Recommended.

GAW