Abo's Pizza of Centennial

7475-6 E. Arapahoe Rd.
Centennial, CO 80112
303-468-4700
303-468-4703 (fax)
Website

Styles of Pizza: New York-style thin crust
Servce: counter, carry-out, delivery

Standout Tidbits: Alarmingly bad pizza

Review: I was so excited to learn there was an Abo's Pizza near my office. There aren't many places around the office to get decent pizza that wasn't delivery-only. Also, I heard such good things about Abo's. It has received some Best of Boulder awards, there are some good reviews online for other locations, and it is supposedly authentic NY-style pizza. So, fellow founding Zealot, Eric, and I set out to give the place a shot.

Allow me to set the scene...

This Abo's location is set back in a shopping center at the corner of Arapahoe and Quebec. The location is a good size and has plenty of seating. All in all it looks fairly new, clean, and what I think is overly "fancy" for a NY-style, counter-service pizza joint. Instead of a half-full cooler with a couple Coke products and one standard brand of bottled water, there is a cooler full of fancy waters, juices, and teas, as well as another cooler on the counter with pre-packaged, individual Ben & Jerry's ice cream treats. The blackboard menu is ornately hand-painted and in the back are SIX beautiful, gleaming pizza ovens. On all of the tables are custom, artsy-fartsy, welded iron napkin and condiment holders. As I said, it is a little more than I expected. Upon taking all this in, Eric and I were feeling optimistic.

Abo's offers up NY-style pies as big as 18 inches and by the slice. The menu features many specialty pies with NY-themed names like "Manhattan", "Soho", and "The Village", a butter sauce za with chicken, spinach, garlic, tomatoes, and artichoke hearts.

We ordered and soon received our food, 2 slices of pepperoni for Eric and 2 cheese for me. I consider the cheese pie to be the foundation of a pizza joint. If you can't get this right, there is no use adding anything on top. The Abo's slices were good-sized, seemingly well cooked, and served on the fine china of a good NY-style pizza place -- the scalloped-edge, bleached-white, paper plate. Then we took our first bites...

This pizza was horrible. Tasteless. I thought I had accidentally taken a bite out of the plate. I waited a minute to see if maybe the heat of the fresh slice was overwhelming the flavor. I took another bite and decided there wasn't any flavor to be overwhelmed. Next I sampled a little chunk of just cheese on its own, then a dollop of sauce, and finally and bit of bare crust. Besides getting only a hint of tomato from the sauce there was nothing. Bland, seasoning-free, tasteless. Eric felt the same way about his slices with pepperoni. Adding tons of parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes only made the meal taste like spicy cheese from a jar.

I know we should go back a second time to make sure it wasn't a fluke, but I am scared. I sincerely hope not all of the Denver/Boulder area locations are like this, but I went back online afterwards and saw a couple customer reviews of different stores that fell inline with our opinions. I think we will have to at least go check the original Boulder location on the Hill. Wish us luck.

Gavin

Wyman's No.5

2037 East 13th Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
303-996-0842
303-996-0841 (fax)

Styles of Pizza: Pan (claims to be Chicago Style)
Service: table/bar service, carry-out

Standout Tidbits: PBR for HAPPY HOUR! Wyman's is right next to Lik's Ice Cream (formerly Lickety Split) at 13th and Vine.

Review: Wyman's No. 5 is a neighborhood tavern-type establishment located just east of the Capitol Hill neighborhood (and north of Cheeseman Park) in Denver. The decor is dark hardwoods, pool tables, a few stained-glass windows, and several TV's showing various sporting events. The simple menu offers up whole "Chicago Style Pies". In addition to build-your-own options with either red or spinach pesto sauce, there are a series of specialty pies with names like "The Tree Hugger" (pesto & veggies), "The Phat Brando", and the "Dazed & Confused". The menu I saw (and brought home for reference) is just one sheet and didn't even list a salad or dessert. But hey! It's a bar. The staff, or at least the bartender who took our order and brought our beers and pizza, was very pleasant. He even joined in our pie-related conversation when he asked why we were taking pictures of the food.

This was a pretty good tasting pan pizza, but the construction of it reminded me of a regular pan pie, like you would find at Pizza Hut (but tasted far superior). It had a very flavorful, moderately-seasoned sauce, yet, it wasn't quite as chunky with pieces of tomatoes as I normally expect from a Chicago pie. There was a healthy amount of good mozzarella. The main issues I have are with the deepness of the crust and the amount of toppings. The base and sides of the crust were only slightly thicker than that of a tradtional thin crust. This allowed for a "lip" around the edge of the pie that hardly stood above the other ingredients. The amount of toppings were adequate, but certainly not the copious layers we were anticipating.

I visited Wyman's on a Tuesday with another Zealot before we attended our weekly poker game. Our plan was to enjoy a couple $1.50 Happy Hour Pabst Blue Ribbons and get temporarily filled up on a slice or two while we warmed up our poker faces by watching the World Series of Poker. We were hoping to be savoring our leftovers during a mid-tournament break later in the evening. The proportions of this pizza were so "normal", however, that we wound up finishing the whole thing then and there. It turned out ok, as we both got knocked out of the game and went home early. We blamed it on the cheap PBR.

Please let me re-iterate, this is good bar pizza. My only issue is that, in my opinion, I think its' style is being misrepresented. I need to make a point of going out and trying more Chicago-style pizzas, and if I find I have been in error I vow to come back and update this post.

Gavin

Two-Fisted Mario's Pizza

1626 Market St
Denver, CO 80202
303-623-3523
Hours: 11am-2am Mon-Thu, 11am-3am Fri, 12pm-3am Sat, 12pm-2am Sun

Styles of Pizza: traditional (some call it East Coast-style) thin-crust, Sicillian
Service: counter service, carry-out

Standout Tibits: 1) LOUD staff-picked music at night, which can range from punk, to hardcore, to hip-hop. 2) Instead of calling out your name when your order is up, or giving you a number to place on your table, they give you a large children's toy so they know where to bring your food. Last night we wound up with a Sesame Street kiddie ATM. 3) There are 3 old-school tabletop video games: Centipede, Ms. PacMan, and Asteroids. 4) Mario's is connected, via a heavy black curtain, to Mario's Double Daughter Salatto, a very cool, non-smoking bar/lounge that looks like it was decorated by Edward Gorey or Tim Burton. You can order pizza any time while on the other side of the curtain.

Review: Conveniently located in downtown Denver, Mario's is only a few steps from 16th street mall on Market Street. This joint is good for a quick lunch and great for the late-night bar-hoppers as it is open till 3am on the weekends and till 2am during the week. The menu is straight and to the point: slices or whole pizzas with toppings that don't stray from standard fare, calzones, salad, beer, and sodas.

We went last night at about 11pm after a few cocktails elsewhere and I can honestly say that I have had much better pizza here before. The crust was pretty good, with that just right combination of crispy on the outside and somewhat chewy within. The toppings seemed fresh and tasty but lacking in good coverage. We got the Shrooms and Spin pie which features mushrooms, spinach, and "fresh Transylvanian garlic". There was plenty of spinach, but I couldn't count more than 5 mushroom bits on the whole pie and Robin was halfway into her second slice before she exclaimed "oh, there's the garlic." The sauce wasn't completely flavorless, but I couldn't detect many spices either, and this wasn't one of those sauces where I am happy to let the tomatoes do all the work. The only condiments I could find to enhance the flavor were the little packets of parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper. OH!, my left ear for a dash of salt!

The decor is bright and colorful, but tends to feel like a college freshman's dorm room. This is due in part to the aforementioned music, multi-colored lights, upcoming concert posters, and various stickers peppered about the place. The staff is young, tattooed, and hip and seem to be having a good time when not overly busy, which it can get during the later hours.

Overall, I can just say that Mario's pizza was just OK this time around. We did get a good couple games of Centipede in, and another patron gave me his date's full beer when she decided it was time to start sobering up. I am pretty sure he hadn't slipped the roofie in yet.

Personally, I would rather chill to the DJ music next door and order the pizza from there. Not that I think it would have mattered this night, but we usually do order pizza when hanging out at Double Daughter and have really enjoyed it in the past. Just an off night I guess.

Gavin

Update 01/13/2006:
I hung out at Double Daughter last night with friends and ordered a couple pies. These pizzas were much better than my last visit to Two-Fisted Mario's. The sauce was delicious and I had no issues with the coverage of toppings. Be aware that the jalapños they put on the pies here have quite a bit of heat. Oh yeah, the happy hour drinks till 8pm are a big plus as well. - G