Bay Area's best pizza?

i finally got some Zachary's Chicago-Style pizza. it was meh... im not really sure why theyre always packed and how they won so many awards for their pizza, i guess people in the bay area have never really had great pizza. i noticed that the NYTimes article isnt a review but about their business model and how it got started, so really, only the bay area likes the pizza.

what every pie looks like... is it spinach or some kind of meat?

this guy apparently is a transplant from chicago and was happy with it... i dont know if i can trust his food blog because his taste obviously sucks.

anyways, we got a spinach pie and the zachary's special (sausage, green pepper, onion, and mushroom. A classic combination!!!). these pizzas are fuckin loaded. each pie probably weighed 5 lbs. i dont think ive ever carried a heavier pizza pie in my life. unfortunately, theyre mostly loaded with tomatoes and tomato sauce. the ingredients had the usual cali freshness but the pizzas still fell flat.

as you can see in the picture above, the pies are big, deep, and have a lot of sauce on/in them.

first up, the spinach pie. not bad, lots of tomatoes and sauce so that was pretty much all i could taste on the pizza. the spinach was fresh but it was undercooked as a pizza ingredient. i prefer spinach to be raw so that theyre crisp or overcooked til theyre popeye-style mush. in between is no good because its just tough to chew through.

second was the special. sausage, peppers, onion, mushroom, it sounds great. it wasnt that good. i think i had maybe 2 slices of sausage, at most, on each large slice i had. and the rest of the ingredients? i dont know, i could only taste the copious amounts of tomatoes. for a meat pizza, it tasted almost like the spinach pizza. thats not good.

what zachary's does do right is the deep dish crust. its just thick enough to carry all the toppings and the gallon of sauce on top and there's a nice crisp to the sides and the bottom. if i could have zachary's crust and extreme pizza's toppings, i would be in pizza heaven.

it wasnt all bad. if i wanted a tomato pizza, zachary's would be awesome. i will definitely go back at least one more time to try their chicken pizza though. this guy i met while playing bball works there and said its the best one... so zachary's will have one more chance to impress me with its 'bay area's best pizza'. i wonder if i can ask for less sauce?


good: crust, cali freshness, extremely filling
bad: all i taste is tomato, bay area's taste in pizza, expensive!!!