Saturday, August 23, 2008

the $15 slice of pizza... Bottoms Up Pizza

What does $15 buy you in Richmond? Less than a quarter tank of gas for my truck (hey a wannabe butch girl has to have the badass ride, but I pay to play these days)... a Lemon drop martini at Can Can (ouch.. but high octane)... or how about a slice of pizza? Yep, that's right. Two slices cost us nearly $30 the other night.

Now that I have you asking yourself what kind of dumb bunny would get up off $30 for two slices of pizza, let me justify my purchase. Picture this: It's Friday night, K and I are ravenously hungry for pizza, and we are sick to death of the whole PapaJohnDominoPizzaHut crapola that gets dumped on your doorstep these days. And we just got paid, so we were feeling flush. We were camped at K's house, near Downtown, and lo and behold, Bottoms Up would deliver to us. So we got online and started perusing toppings... oh the choices... it got out of hand quickly.

My slice: mushrooms, artichokes, caramelized onions, jalapeno peppers, and goat cheese with red sauce.

My beautiful girlfriend's slice: artichokes, caramelized onions, tomatoes, and ricotta cheese with white sauce.

When our box arrived, let me clarify that the "slice" was bigger than my head. Two slices were roughly equivalent to a regular sized thick crust pie. So as horrified as we were with our lack of thriftiness, we felt a little vindicated by the sheer giganticness of our dinner. And after the first bite, any lingering sense of guilt went out the window.

To me, what separates the pizza boys from the pizza men is the sauce, and I will say that Bottoms Up had some of the tastiest red sauce I have come across- rich and tangy with just the right density and consistency to hold down the array of toppings. The toppings were well portioned out so that there was plenty of everything but not so much that it weighed it down or made it soggy. And the various cheeses tasted fresh and had the perfect gooey cheesy consistency as well. Probably the best thing was that the veggies were obviously not canned, but had been recently sliced.

If we had any gripe at all (besides the cost) it would be that the crust was a little on the thick and bready side, which is just not my thing. I'm a New York style pizza girl, but I suppose that is a personal taste issue.

In all fairness, it's possible to get a slice for much less than $15 at Bottoms Up, but we wanted what we wanted, so we went for it. In a perverse sort of way it makes me want to try to come up with the most obscenely expensive slice of pizza possible. I can't help but wonder what it would take to put together, say..a $50 slice, just so I can say I ate a $50 slice of pizza.

I guess it's a good thing I live outside their regular delivery area.

Bottoms Up Pizza
1700 Dock Street
804-644-4400

No comments: