Daddy’s Pizza - Las Vegas, NV

2103 Western Ave.
Suite A
Las Vegas, NV 89102
(702)-388-0006
Fax: (702)-386-0047
Hours: Mon-Sat 24 hours, Closed Sunday

Style of Pizza: Traditional thin crust
Service: Counter service dine-in, carry-out, delivery

Review: We were exploring some non-tourist areas of Las Vegas, trying to find decent North-South travel routes that didn’t involve the strip or the freeway, when we spotted Daddy’s Pizza, or at least the sign that said “Open 24 Hours,” “Special! Slice and a drink $1.99.” It wasn’t on our list of places to hit, but we figured with a special like that we’d have to give it a try.

We were curious what could keep a Daddy’s open all night in a clearly industrial neighborhood – till we looked across the street. It turns out that Daddy’s Pizza is right across the street from Cheetah’s, a strip club that is also open 24 hours. Now we know…

Upon entering Daddy’s, we were welcomed by bright fluorescent lights, a loud TV, a plastic tree in the corner, and a huge cloud of cigarette smoke. My brother was convinced we had interrupted a local Bulgarian mafia “sit-down, ” as the only patrons in the joint were a table full of chain-smoking, Eastern European men who halted their discussion when we walked in. It seemed like they decided to leave when they realized we were dining in.

Although the menu was packed with Italian fare, Greek dishes, burgers, ribs, subs, chicken, and more (not to mention the white board with a separate menu in Russian), we couldn’t be dissuaded from our mission. We wanted our $1.99 slice and drink. DENIED! It was a daytime-only special clearly meant for local workers. At night they take advantage of the alcohol-soaked strip club patrons by removing the special and not doing slices. They did give us the carry-out discount on a 16” pizza for $5.99. Twenty minutes later we got our piping hot cheese pie, but had to wait a few minutes longer for it to cool down to safe temperatures.

This pizza was a pretty bad gut bomb. Although it clearly looked to be well baked, the almost flavorless “pellet” cheese was overly gooey. There wasn’t nearly enough of the canned sauce and the crust was mediocre. This instantly reminded me of snack bar or discount chain delivery pizza. I haven’t eaten a Domino’s pizza in years, but this was pretty much what I remembered.

Gavin

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