My last pizza review was in Los Angeles at the Rose Bowl, breaking CBS Sports’ men’s college basketball reporter Jon Rothstein’s second rule to live by: “Never waste calories on pizza outside of the Eastern time zone.”
Like redshirt freshman quarterback C.J. Stroud in Pasadena, California, I had to call an audible on the review for Friday.
The place I was originally going to review didn’t open until 4 p.m., so I headed to Portofino’s for this edition of Pie Day Friday.
Despite the whirlwind day, I journeyed to the corner of High Street and West Ninth Avenue and was pleasantly surprised with the result: a cheap price tag for a pretty decent product.
I was greeted with a 12-slice circular pizza in a generic brown box — like a basic white plate, this is an underlying tell that the pie will most likely be solid.
This pizza looked largely like a traditional pizza, but the one key factor that set it apart from looking almost too basic was the cheese.
Not only did Portofino’s drizzle cheese below its layer of pepperoni, but also on top, which is an aspect that not many other pizza places execute. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that, and it tasted as good as it looked.
I’ll never say no to more cheese: it is, by far, better plentiful than lacking. The staff handled the copious amounts of cheese on the slice to perfection, as it did not slide off the slice all at once and was able to be enjoyed all the way through to the crust.
The pepperoni was not the small, crispy, curled-up variety that has been featured at Tommy’s Pizza and in some of the on-campus dining halls. Instead, they were bigger circles that had some flimsiness to them, but they were still cooked — when I ordered the single slice at Sicilia, they had similar pepperonis but were a little underdone.
The crust could have had a little more crunch to it, as it was a big, fluffy piece of dough. However, it was still fairly enjoyable despite the slice having a downward flop to it.
After taking my slice off the brown box, there was a negligible amount of grease buildup, the only stain on the cardboard being a product of the heat’s condensation. Not having to use excessive amounts of napkins to wipe any grease splatter off the sides of my face was certainly an added bonus.
Overall, it was a pretty good slice that had me continually taking bites throughout the review out of pure enjoyment. I’ve taken a few bites in other reviews to ensure I was getting the most accurate gauge of the slice, but nothing past that.
For all of this, one might think the pricing on a large, 12-slice pepperoni would be somewhere in the range of $20, right?
Luckily for my wallet, this pie only cost $10.50.
Portofino’s took approximately 12 minutes to prepare my food, providing a good slice for a more-than-reasonable price — something that proves advantageous to college students who need something to satisfy their hunger after a night out or when they don’t feel like cooking.
Rating: 7.4/10
