Don Camillo's

We decided to have a somewhat nice date night last Saturday night so we visited Don Camillo's, an Italian Restaurant in Corinth. I had been a couple of times before but never had their pizza. I decided that I wanted to try out their pizza this time. It took me awhile to find it on the menu as it's known as Pizza Salerno instead of pepperoni pizza (made it seem very fancy!).

Jana chose not to eat pizza even though she did give my pizza a try. She ordered Chicken Napoli, a penne pasta tossed in a spicy saffron crème sauce and diced marinated chicken, shrimp and mushrooms. She enjoyed every bite! This is both her and her parents favorite dish.

Likes:

• Lots of cheese and not a lot of sauce: Just how I like it!
• Fancy name for a pepperoni pizza. The name Pizza Salerno made me feel more like a grown up while ordering a pepperoni pizza in a nice Italian restaurant.
• Good service: On a busy Saturday night everyone was working together to ensure customer satisfaction.

Dislikes:

• Bad after taste: There was something about the pizza (I think it was the crust) that left a bad after taste.
• A bit pricy for a Pepperoni pizza. Not a big deal as Don Camillo's is a nice Italian restaurant.

Pepperoni Pizza Casserole

My wife has been pinning pepperoni pizza recipes lately to make me. She found this pizza casserole and made it for us this past weekend. I hear it was super easy to make too! You can find the recipe at The Tuckers Take Tennessee.

Here are some specifics from Jana that are not mentioned in the original recipe:

She used a can of Hunt's spaghetti sauce (half on bottom & half over the noodles). She also used Sargento mozzarella cheese over the sauce & noodles so she didn't have to use the shredded to cover the spaghetti. She used a LOT of pepperonis since she knows how much I love them and then sprinkled a little bit of shredded over the top to make it look prettier (her words not mine). She baked hers at 350 for 20 minutes, it didn't technically get bubbly but she was hungry and the cheese had melted :) The other recipe mentions mushrooms & olives which I'm sure Jana would have loved, but she knows that wouldn't have been tasty for me...


And the final product...


How did I like it?

Likes:

• Ingredients. Pepperoni's, cheese, spaghetti, and spaghetti sauce = yum, yum, yum, yum!
• Cost. Very in-expensive dish that tastes as good as anything you will get at a sit down restaurant.
• Good combo. Can't beat two delicious Italian dishes mixed into one!
  

Dislikes:

• Really the only thing I can think of for a dislike is that it didn't really taste like pizza, but then again that can be a good thing.
  

ZPizza

My wife was the first to discover ZPizza. She had seen it tucked away near her office and thought that we should try it out. Sometimes she discovers these little pizza places so that we aren't eating the same one over and over again. I'm fine with the same place over and over again, but I guess she likes to have a variety. If I know that pizza is good than I am pretty content with returning a lot!

Upon entering ZPizza we quickly learned their pizza was healthy in comparison to other pizza joints we try out. They use all natural ingredients, have wheat crust available as well as gluten-free. My wife was happy to know she could eat their pizza and feel a little less guilty about it. This would soon become her guilty pleasure with many stops for lunch! She personally orders the Provence which is served on a wheat crust with organic tomato sauce, homemade roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, artichoke hearts, capers, tomatoes and fresh basil. It's only available for their special on Thursdays & Sundays so it's the only days we are allowed to go.

Likes?

1. Their combo special of 2 slices & a drink for $5.95! Plenty of food for a great price!
2. Plenty of pepperonis & I didn't even have to order double the pepperonis.
3. Wheat crust. Not a lot of pizza places offer wheat crust as an option, especially wheat crust that tastes good. Big plus!

Dislikes?

1. Overall taste of the pizza. Although I definitely like their pizza, if I had to put it up against some of the other pizza places in my area I would probably choose one of the alternatives.
2. Pizza is not made to order. Sometimes the pizza isn't completely fresh when ordered. (Disclaimer: this only applies to the daily special which is what I get)

Enzo's NY Pizzeria

So do you remember Turner's Pizza Depot from my previous post? Well it closed its doors for good awhile ago and there is now a new pizza place residing at its location. This new pizza place is called Enzo's NY Pizzeria and, in my opinion, it is a very large step up from Turner's Pizza Depot.

My wife Jana and I recently discovered first-hand the differences between the two pizza places during our visit a couple of weeks ago. Not only did Enzo's have all of the things I liked in Turner's Depot: good environment; good location; and yummy cheese bread; but it also had really good pepperoni pizza!

During our visit we had the opportunity to meet the owner Enzo and his brother Dino. Although, Enzo's in Parker Square is currently their only Texas establishment, both Enzo and Dino have been in the pizza business for 15 years in both New York and Florida. Enzo and Dino's family have been in the business for a total of 65 years and currently own a chain of pizza restaurants in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida that have made the best of Florida list several times. Needless to say pizza runs deep within this family, and I hope to be adopted soon (just kidding!).

Now for the likes and dislikes of Enzo's NY Pizzaria...

Likes:

• Cheese bread: Enzo's cheese bread is top notch! Its basically just toasted garlic bread smothered in delicious pizza cheese.

• Pizza: Enzo and Dino make the pizzas themselves, they use only natural ingredients prepared in-house, they make everything from the pizza dough to the pepperonis.


• The atmosphere: Very family oriented atmosphere with friendly and helpfull staff ready to answer any questions.

• Location: Parker Square in Flower Mound! Hopefully this area will come back around!
  

Dislikes:

• My default response: not enough pepperonis on the pizza! I think what needs to happen is, I just need to start ordering double pepperoni on all pizzas. But then I won't have anything to write in the dislike column. Dilemma.

• That's about it. No more dislikes.

The wife's opinion: The crust had a unique flavor to it that I really enjoyed. I can't tell you what it was that I enjoyed about it so much, but it was tasty. I also thought the pepperonis were extra tasty. Considering how often we eat pepperoni pizza it was nice for it to taste a little different. And as usual, my half had mushrooms of course!

I was in no way compensated for my opinions.

No Longer With Us: Turner's Pizza Depot

This place has actually left the area, but I still wanted to take a minute and talk about my experience there so you could see that I don't always like every pizza place I try.

From the beginning. One day while driving past Parker Square in Flower Mound my wife discovered the most marvelous thing, a new pizza joint called Turner's Pizza Depot! Being the awesome wife that she is (no, I'm not being paid to say that), she just couldn't wait to tell me about it. And being the awesome husband that I am (yes I did pay her to let me say that) I made sure I was super happy when she told me about her news and that out of respect to her not being that big of a pizza fan, we would wait a week or so to try it out.

A couple of days later when we ventured a few blocks over to Turner's Pizza Depot, we ordered a pepperoni pizza & garlic cheese bread to share. The garlic cheese bread was really good, but the pizza was nothing special to say the least. It was covered in pepperoni (as all of you know by now I love) but something about the sauce wasn't right. Normally I order light on the sauce, but this time I so busy figuring out what to order I forgot to ask. Boy do I regret that! I still can't pinpoint what was wrong with that sauce, other than it just didn't taste good. It was kind of sweet, and much like Hulk Hogan, pizza sauce should never be sweet.

I did however like the atmosphere of Turner's and the staff that worked there, but that was not enough for us to return. We talked about returning at some point to give it a second chance and just order the same pizza with light sauce, but we never made it. As of recently that door has been completely shut as Turner's Pizza Depot has gone out of business. However, I have good news...A new pizza place has moved in to Turner's old building that we recently visited (review to come soon).

Likes:

• The Garlic Cheese bread. A toasted piece of french bread with a light garlic sauce and lots of melted mozzarella cheese.


• The atmosphere. The entire staff was friendly and helpful.


• Location. Parker Square is a fun place to take the family to eat pizza and listen to live music (on Friday nights during the summer).

Dislikes:

• Pizza sauce. As many of you know I'm not the biggest fan of pizza sauce. However, I normally always like pizza sauce on my pizza in small portions, but this particular sauce? Yeah, not so much.


• Price. Its been a while since we tried Turner's Pizza Depot, but I can definitely remember that the price that we paid for our dinner didn't not match the quality of our dinner. Although, in hind sight, that may have to do with the dinner not being good, but I digress.

So now as you can see, I am truly human and I don't like every pizza place I try. Sad day.

Lata Peeps!

Pepperoni Pockets

My wife made these pepperoni pockets (or mini calzones if your ask my opinion) for dinner on Sunday night! These are easy enough that even I can make them...

What do you need?
1. 2 Cans of Crescent Rolls
2. 2 cups of Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
3. 1 packaged of Pepperoni

Unroll the crescent rolls but don't separate them! Smush the middles together to make these rectangles. Sprinkle cheese over them & then cut up some pepperonis over each one. She did 3 pepperonis per rectangle.

Fold up the rectangles by pulling all the corners up to the middle and sealing off any holes.

Follow the directions for cooking from the crescent rolls.

Feel free to add pizza sauce under your cheese if you want, but my wife chose not to and I am glad she did.

How did I like it?

Well this is a tricky question kind of like when your wife/girlfriend asks you if you think the dress she is wearing makes her look fat. Luckily however, in this case, I can honestly say that I really liked the pepperoni pockets. I mean, what's there not to like? Crescent Rolls, yum! Mozzarella cheese, yum! And to top things off, lots of pepperonis yum yum!

Now for the nitty gritty stuff, the likes and dislike points. We'll go with the positive first.

Likes:

• The main ingredients are all my favorite things to eat. Bread, pepperoni, cheese.


• No pizza sauce was added to the recipe. As you guys will see in future I'm not much of a fan of an excess of pizza sauce.


• Lots of cheese! Basically the more cheese on pizza the better!

Dislikes:

• Not enough pepperonis added to the recipe. This dislike was actually brought up by my wife, believe it or not, so I have no regrets in sharing.


• Umm. The only other thing than that I can think of to put under the dislike column is the pepperoni pizza pockets themselves could have been a little bit smaller. That way I could eat three of them at a time and not have to worry about my figure. ;)

I need a slogan or something to end my blogs with. Anyone have any suggestions? Send me a message or a tweet (@thepizzaguydfw).

Lata peeps!

Carmine's Pizzeria

I first discovered Carmine's Pizza 3 years ago when I was visiting a friend at University of Texas at Dallas. This specific Carmine's is located at the corner of Coit and Campbell in Richardson, TX. However, for the purposes of this post I will be critiquing the Carmine's I know best, the one located in Lewisville, TX.

Stuffed

I will always remember the first time I tried the Carmine's Pizza in Lewisville. It was a happy yet painful day. I had been living in Lewisville for about 6 months and was in the process of exploring all of the pizza places that the little town had to offer. Jana, my wife, is not the biggest fan of pizza, so most of this exploring has been done on my own time. One Sunday afternoon Jana had a shopping date with her mom and I was left to fend for my self for lunch. After two seconds of contemplating what I wanted to eat, I went with the obvious choice, Peperoni pizza! Shortly after I came to this revelation I was off on my quest to find some of this yummy goodness. At first my plan was to just venture to Little Caesars and get a $5 pizza, but my nose had other plans. Right around the corner from my house, I discovered something that made my day, Carmine's Pizza! There was only one problem, it was 11:30AM and Carmines wasn't scheduled to open until noon, but the owner, Marcio, seeing extreme sadness and defeat on my face, opened the door for me anyways. Like I said earlier, I had been to the Carmine's location in Dallas, but never by my self, so naturally I was hesitant what to order. The owner asked me how hungry I was and I quickly responded with, "I'm always hungry for pepperoni pizza!" so he suggested I get the one slice lunch combo. I just kind of looked at him as if to say "do you know how much pizza that I can eat??", and then proceeded to order two slices of pizza. I was proud of myself, I had stuck to my guns and obeyed my tummy. Now it was time to play the waiting game, and after semi-patiently waiting 10 minutes (seemed like 2 hours) for the pizza to cook it was finally ready and I was headed home to enjoy! By the time I got home the pizza was at the perfect temperature and ready to be eaten. So I started my second quest of the day, eating my yummy pizza! The slices were HUGE each slice was about 6 inches in diameter (from one side of the crust to the other) and 7 or so inches long, so needless to say this quest was going to be quite a bit harder than the first, but I was ready and determined to complete it! By the time I finished one slice I quickly came to the realization that I should not have stuck with my guns and just ordered the one slice lunch deal, but I pushed on. About 20 grueling minutes later I was done with both slices, my quest was complete! However, instead of celebrating all I wanted to do was unbutton my pants and lay down on the couch. I kept thinking to my self, "this must have been how Joey felt after he ate the entire Thanksgiving turkey on an episode of Friends, and man where are my stretchy pants when I need them!" And that's the story of my first time at Carmine's Lewisville and needless to say I was STUFFED!

Yes, I did return and I took my wife. In fact, we spent several Friday nights there where the owner knows our faces. What's Jana get? Canadian bacon.

Now that I'm finished rambling, I will get down to business with the likes and dislikes of Carmine's pizza..

Likes:

• The pizza: New York style thin crust with not very much sauce and a lot of cheese, exactly how I like it!
  
• Garlic Knots: Yummy little pieces of bread tied up in small knots with a garlicky butter goodness draped all over them. (Quick tip; when you order the lunch combo ask to substitute the salad for garlic knots, they are the same price on the menu so you should not have any problems, and I promise you, you will not regret it)
• Atmosphere: Small area with about 6 tables. Very family friendly.
• Owner: Very friendly & makes a special effort to get to know his customers!
  

Dislikes:

• Side salad: Lets just say I would rather have the garlic knots instead of the salad, its better for you ;)
  
• Lack of pepperonis on the pizza. The pepperonis are the sole reason that I eat pizza and in my personal opinion there should be far more pepperonis on the pizza slices.
  

Another one of my favorite things about Carmine's Pizzeria Lewisville is that it is affordable. Below are a few specials that they are offering. Enjoy!

Specials? They have plenty. Check them out here: Carmine's specials. Our favorite? 1 slice 1 topping, garlic knots (or salad) & 1 drink for $4.99 (Add $1 after 5pm)

I was not compensated in any way to share my opinions.