MycoMan wrote:It seems to me that there are two threads (so to speak) to this thread: one is value, and the other is "authenticity". It seems to be the convergence of the two that really ticks some people off.

I think that the authenticity is mainly an issue because it's a new product, and people haven't figured out how to do it right yet. After all, various members of this forum post now and again about their love and nostalgia for American cured meat products that seem borderline toxic but they've been around for a while and at least their makers have figured out how to be toxic in the right way.

Of course, a "right way" doesn't necessarily follow -- popcorn sure hasn't. I remember about twenty years ago, a co-worker invited me over to watch a movie, and I decided to score points with her little boy by bringing over some cool popcorn. Naturally, I chose Jiffy-pop! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiffy_Pop
I remember that when I pulled it out of the shopping bag she looked at me strangely and said "We usually just use the micro-wave." However, I convinced them to try the Jiffy-pop and her ten-year-old duly got deliriously excited watching the aluminum dome swell under the pressure from the consummating kernels.

I'm sure that at the time that Jiffy-pop was introduced, it also induced chest-thumping from folks who felt that it was a gimmick, over-priced, and got people out of touch with "the real experience" of popping corn (that is, the one they grew up with). And I'm sure that the actual ingredients are not any better than those flat little microwave bags that have taken over the market. But for me, making popcorn was always a special event when I was little, and the popcorn was always Jiffy-pop; so it holds a special place in my heart that makes me despise those microwave bags as a mere consumer product.

And I'm sure that ten or fifteen years from now, we'll be reading posts on this board from twenty-somethings who are nostalgic for Homemade Pizza, because they have fond memories of being a small child and being allowed to pick out their own ingredients with a parent. Some of the posters have talked here about how "heart" goes into cooking. Well, heart goes in in many different ways, and this is one of them. Sometimes I am frightened to think of how many of my own preferences were formed in this way. But maybe eventually someone will figure out how to put the heart in for adults also. It may take someone who's grown up with it...

Great post, Leon.

Since my last report I've picked up about five more pizzas (getting close to the 10th free pie on the card), and their coupons have been getting increasingly appealing - $3 off anytime, free salad with pizza, free mini-pizza with your big pizza, etc. Our experimenting has suggested that the regular crust is superior to the wheat (better crust bubbles and elasticity), and that all of their pies benefit from adding tomato sauce; those without are just too bland. The mushroom pizza with added tomato sauce is very nice. Other winners (beyond the BLT) have been the Kasbah - current faux-roccan special with harissa-laced tomato sauce - and a fall special with poblano peppers and chorizo.

It may not something I'll be nostalgic for, but these shops are kept clean as a whistle, staff in both Hyde Park and Oak Park locations has been excellent, and they're keeping my little fam fed and happy for a low-stress Friday pickup twice a month. I expect I'll be back to TJ dough and my own toppings on a pizza stone on the Weber once the weather warms up, but these do the trick over the winter, especially when one lives in a pizza delivery dead zone.

ab wrote:I'd just like to add that Papa Murphys is garbage - even worse than Homemade Pizza Co.

Same concept, inferior products. No idea what the draw is to take and bake pizza.

I'd never seen nor heard of Papa Murphy's products until I spent some time in rural Wisconsin. Out there, their niche is offering pizza to people that live in places where's it's simply impossible to have a pizza delivered due to a lack of any pizzerias.

I've still never tried their offerings, I'm spoiled enough to do without rather than settle for a questionable pizza.

The Hays family celebrates Friday movie night weekly with a pizza (although sometimes we celebrate Friday movie night on Saturday, due to the Dad's erratic schedule) We used to get the Dominick's ready-to-bake pizzas for $5 on Fridays, which I've mentioned before - a somewhat bready crust with a slightly-but-not-intolerably sweet tomato sauce and OK salad-bar-style toppings. They're even better if you do what I do and doctor up a plain cheese one - I usually saute up some spinach and garlic. Not haute cuisine by a long shot, not even in the world of good delivery, but fine for what they are and you certainly get your money's worth.

Then came this thread. Slowly, the shame of being a homemaker and not producing food at home caught up with me. I didn't produce anything worth of posting on the thread, but the Artisan in Five book actually has a relatively decent pizza dough that freezes well, and I was able to buy prosciutto and arugula and make a pie that met Sparky's somewhat exacting standards for that style. We even tested it against Trattoria D.O.C's version this week, and it held up admirably (I think my crust was just a bit better - and I dress my greens, a matter of style, but we all agreed, though theirs was fine - mine was better.)

Why am I posting here? This Friday, I got caught up in a number of things, and we decided to give this place a whirl. First I asked if I could just buy the raw dough and was told that I could, but it would cost THE SAME AS A LARGE PIZZA. (!) Well, OK - I purchased the plainest composite pizza: the "Miesian" which was their version of margherita, but sauced under the tomatoes and with shredded mozzarella (at least the basil chiffonade is "fresh") and a small sausage pizza for Sparky. All told, it cost $21 - $16 for the large and $5 for the small - the wood-fired prosciutto and arugula pizza at Trattoria D.O.C was $15 (albeit slightly smaller, but their vegetarian pizzas are comparable in size and price to the Homemade regular size.)

So, we got them home, fired them up, and ate them. The dough was bland and crackery instead of hearty and bready, the sauce almost exactly the same as the Dominick's and the toppings, though available in a broader variety, were about the same in quality - although the sausage was significantly worse (they're advertising a pizza with harissa, which looks an awful lot like BBQ sauce.) The large Dominick's is about twice the size of their large. I don't get it.

IMO, as far as take-and-bake goes, go to hell is an extremely appropriate sentiment.

As far as the "I don't get it" thing is concerned, people who don't think that they can cook can feel very empowered and excited when given a chance to make something, even if it isn't very good.

A case in point from my childhood: chocolate-covered bananas. There used to be these kits in the supermarket when I was little -- they sold you about six popsicle sticks and a pouch full of what was basically carageenan with cocoa suspended in it. You impaled bananas on the sticks, froze them solid, melted the "chocolate" and dipped the frozen bananas in it, whereupon it instantly froze and presto! -- you had a chocolate-covered banana.

It wasn't very good. Even though we were quite small, neither I or my sisters could really see much point in it. We just went along with it because it was a pleasant family activity. It was my dad, who had a cooking repertoire of about three dishes (in my teen years, when the Erica Jong book came out, I used to say he had a "fear of frying"), who really got into it. Here was one more thing he could "cook", he got to do it with us... Somehow it was a big thing for him.

Actually, anytime he cooked was a big deal for him. And he never amassed a terribly large repertoire, now he cooks for himself and my mom when they want to lose weight, since he sticks to the healthier ingredients and it's less tasty so they eat less.

Or to give a more contemporary example, over the years I've tasted about 200 species of wild mushroom. Many of them are pretty tasteless, and I don't bother with them anymore. But there are always people on these walks who are so excited about getting their own food from "the wild" that they are thrilled to find these things and they always report good experiences eating them. Which is fine for everyone -- I give them the bland stuff that I find; they get happy and tell me about spots or give me things that I consider more tasty... At least nobody's paying money for it!

I'm with you on that...except that you can have the exact same (well, marginally better) experience at your local grocery store for one-third the price. Hey, power to the non-cooking people, but even if you don't cook, you don't have to actively throw your money away.

Not to mention that we went to Whole Foods in search of supplies for Sparky's science project and got a slice: they have very, very good pizza, available in equally customized take-and-bake style, and you can buy the %*&^* dough for $2.99. The pizzas are about $10 and from my (admittedly narrow) experience, are well worth it. You can even get a ball of dough, tub of sauce and tub of cheese along with toppings from the salad bar and make the entire thing yourself, though I'm guessing it won't be less than $10. And they have parking.

Pretty sure this got a mention upthread somewhere.

So I still don't get it.

...i think the other missing issue with Homemade pizza company is a matter of convenience. it's assumed that homemade pizza company is convenient....you're in a hurry, call it in, pick it up, and bada boom you cook. my two experiences there show otherwise. On my first visit, i phoned in an order ahead. they said 10 minutes. fine, i was at a bar and ordered and drank another drink. we then crossed the street and tried to pickup our pizza. when we arrived they knew of the order and said "you just called it in?" as if we literally did just call, which of course we didn't. 20 minutes later our pizza was ready. in that 20 minutes of waiting, not a single pizza went out ahead of us. I don't know what they were doing, but it was ridiculous. and it was insanely expensive--a large, a salad, and a cookie came out to be about $35, and that was even with some "special" they had. Homemade Pizza Company fail. i actually e-mailed their e-mail address complaining of their slowness in Lakeview, they sent me a $25 gift card. i really didn't care to go back, so my friends ordered it for delivery.

Delivery of a raw pizza. now there's a mind boggling concept. you call it in, and 45 minutes (at best) later you still have a raw pizza that you have to cook. it was about $25 delivered for a large pizza. I'd argue that their large is actually closer to what most places call a medium.

Both experiences, pizza is meh. it's passable. generally "my" homemade pizza tastes better and has more flavor. on an off day my home-made pizza is still probably better than what they're churning out, and judging by the pizza threads we've had here on LTH much of this forum can produce something better.

Mhays wrote:I'm with you on that...except that you can have the exact same (well, marginally better) experience at your local grocery store for one-third the price. Not to mention that we went to Whole Foods ...The pizzas are about $10 and from my (admittedly narrow) experience, are well worth it. You can even get a ball of dough, tub of sauce and tub of cheese along with toppings from the salad bar and make the entire thing yourself, though I'm guessing it won't be less than $10. And they have parking.

...and on wednesdays they're $8.99 for a 1 topping at whole foods. I'd estimate that's probably half the price of Homemade Pizza Company, and WF's pizza is a few inches larger in diameter. they have pre-made pizzas (raw to cook at home) in the deli section (or you can just ask them to make it fresh if you want customized toppings). or they'll make it and cook it in their pizza hearth. if you're wanting it cooked and it's the wednesday dealy, call your order in so you don't have to wait an hour, they get super busy in the pizza dept on wednesday. in my opinion it tastes better than homemade pizza company (and it's organic and all that jazz), homemade pizza is not organic anything. they have some more interesting toppings than some typical pizza joints, too. my favorite topping from WF is chopped sun-dried tomato, which they put on top and it kind of carmelizes into salty goodness. apparently it's ordered so rarely that nearly every time i order it i have to reassure them that yes they do have it.

Every once in a while when visiting my mother-in-law in Evergreen Park we make a trip over to S&T Provisions at 3804 W 111th in Mt Greenwod for their pizza set-ups. They run about 12 for three pizzas (12 inch I would say) that you make yourself. Not as good as most pizzaria's but for the price a great deal. They have three crusts; cracker, thin, and thick. and you can have either sausage or pepperoni. They give you the crust, sauce, meat and cheese. Like my mother would say, I doctor them up a little and well, not Burt's or Nick and Vito's quality, way better than and way less than you say it costs at Homemade pizza, and you have way more input into the product as you put it together.

dddane wrote:...i think the other missing issue with Homemade pizza company is a matter of convenience. it's assumed that homemade pizza company is convenient....you're in a hurry, call it in, pick it up, and bada boom you cook. my two experiences there show otherwise. On my first visit, i phoned in an order ahead. they said 10 minutes. fine, i was at a bar and ordered and drank another drink. we then crossed the street and tried to pickup our pizza. when we arrived they knew of the order and said "you just called it in?" as if we literally did just call, which of course we didn't. 20 minutes later our pizza was ready. in that 20 minutes of waiting, not a single pizza went out ahead of us.

Yes, we experienced this as well - we walked in to an empty shop, ordered a pizza, were told it was a 15 minute wait. Two pizzas went out ahead of us. I watched them; they make every single pizza "fresh" from a dough ball at the second you order it - nothing is prepped except the toppings are precut and set out as mise. This time includes the time it takes to stand on the pizza shrink-wrap tray, of which there is only one, so it can take about 3-5 minutes just for them to put the packaging on. I don't think it would have been faster even if we were in front of the other two; I can't imagine what it would be like if there was a rush.

Giant rip-off.

So the consensus is that there is utterly no culinary or economic reason to go there; it's basically for situations when it is somehow the most convenient non-toxic outlet around, and perhaps some other psychological motivations like having a whole store-front that tells people who are afraid to cook "Yes! You can make your own pizza!"

So maybe their actual customer base is really small and they will fold. I rarely see people in the Hyde Park one, though I could just be missing the dinnertime rush.

b t w, i have a $5 off any time coupon, any purchase. the promotion code is y5FN2, which expires december 31, 2010. i don't know if they require the coupon, but they do online ordering on their web site and i know you can put the code in there and it deducts it, so I don't know if the people working are required to get the coupon or not (it doesn't specify you do need it in person though...) ... they were giving out stacks of them at a party i went to where the host had apparently bought like 30 of these. i had planned maybe to just try a simple salad some time w/ it, under an assumed name, of course :]