| Indian and Italian pizza merge to make culinary fusion experience |
Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1020
Reviewed: 1/10/2007
Rating: 8
My photo gallery
|
We rolled into Crazy Frank's Desi Pizza for a 1st time restaurant visit and tasting of Indian Pizza. I've never had Indian style pizza before nor have I've seen it on any of the menus of the 70+ pizza joints listed on jatbar. The restaurant appears new and clean. The interior is spacious and for a lunch visit, vacant enough for the crickets to come out and sing. Terry and I were the only ones inside and it would take more than a lack of people to deter us from enjoying a meal. Who knows, maybe we're here to uncover a gourmet secret?
The restaurant serves buffet for $10.99, it's an all you can eat soup, salad, and pizza. The soup for today was broccoli and thankfully Crazy Frank's salad mix has spinach/fancy greens. We didn't see any dressings on the table so we improvised with using the Sricha in the yellow bottles. If the owners are reading this, from our experience in restaurants, if the bottle is yellow, I'd say 90% of the time, we're going to assume it's mustard. I'd recommend placing the hot sauce in a clear or red container. The buffet was well organized but the main dish, pizza was no where to be found.
We're eating our salads and noticed the piece of paper under the glass. It describes this magical pizza cart will roam the floors like dim sum where you pick and choose the slices. We waited ~10 minutes to see one of these carts and I believe it was pushed by Crazy Frank himself. He asked which one I wanted and I pointed to the pesto. He placed 1 slice on my plate and one on Terry's and wheeled the cart away....noooooo!!!
Image 8 is my 1st slice and it's pesto, pine nuts, pineapples, paneer, mozzarella, and zucchini. The crust (image 9) tasted a little like naan? Crust cracks and dough is entirely cooked. It's a thinner style pizza but not quite a New York or Neapolitan. Wow, this pizza is really something special. Gourmet tasting and ingredients were top notch. Crazy Frank's Pizza is crazy good!
The main problem now is getting another slice. Crazy wheeled the cart to the back and not sure if we're suppose to wait for them to service us or we walk back there? We're confused at this point and wait around another 5 minutes. The lady sees we have finished our 1 slice and wheels the cart (image 7) back. New pizza and I think it's tikka massala with fried ocra (image 10). This one is awesome and my favorite of the lunch. It tasted like I was eating Indian food sitting on my pizza. I wanted more but wait....the cart is situated in the back again. This is getting frustrating...they are unloading great slices of pizza but we're limited to eating 1 slice every 5 minutes.
It repeated another time but this time she left the cart in front of us to pick our own slices. I sampled a thai panaang curry pizza and something broccoli (image 11). By the time I had finished my 4th slice, stomach was saying, hey, I think your 30 minutes is up, time to stop eating.
The whole purpose of a buffet is for the customer to serve themselves. About 99% of the pizza buffets I've visited in my lifetime will place the pizzas under a heat lamp for customers to come and go as they please picking slices to their likings. Placing pizza on a cart and having the waiter ask us what we would like defeats the whole purpose of self service. It makes it awkward for customers like Terry and myself to repeatedly ask for slices again and again. Place the pizzas on the buffet table. Since you guys have an unlimited combinations of pizzas, it would probably be helpful to describe which sauce is used and let the customers figure out the toppings by sight, smell, touch, or taste.
Maybe offer 2 types of lunch offerings? Buffet with all you can eat soup, salad, and pizzas under a heat lamp. The other option is a pizza meal with 10-20 fixed combos for easy ordering. Although it's admirable to offer 30 sauces and 60 toppings, it's a daunting task to figure out which pizza I would want. Ordering by numbers helps decisions and gets the customer out of the restaurant faster.
Hopefully the ordering and servicing of the pizzas will improve over time. The use of exotic sauces and toppings is a definite plus in my book and love the creativity of the combinations. Paneer with pineapples and pine nuts, tikka and ocra? oh man it was super good. Crazy Frank's Desi Pizza knows how to bake up fine pizzas but they need to learn how to deliver them.
|
| |
Reviewer: Terry
Total Reviews: 738
Reviewed: 1/10/2007
Rating: 8.5
My photo gallery
|
Very rarely do I find an original restaurant after many hundreds of restaurants that Jatbar has reviewed. And so very rare to find it in the same complex as an adult book store and an auto shop. And even more rare to actually find a decent place that truly is refreshingly original. Its a shame Crazy Franks Desi Pizza has to resort to a man in Monkey Suit waving a PIZZA sign to attract customers- - as it would probably be one of the last places I would want to go for the pizza experience.
Think of your standard pizza place. You got the oven, and a guy behind the counter. If you're lucky, they sell pizza by the slices and you pick your slice and are eating it in a minute or two. You pay your $2 and either sit down or eat it on the go. You got your cheese, your tomato sauce, and your crust. Your standard pie. Sure there are very good ones and very bad ones. But really you know what to expect.
Crazy Franks Desi Pizza isn't like that at all. You walk in and go straight to the salad bar at the back of the restaurant. The salad isn't the freshest, but its passable. There is also soup (which today was a delicious broccoli base). I would get the soup again, but probably skip the salad.
We were the only ones there, so didn't have a clear idea of what was supposed to happen now. The placard at our table informed us that there was no menu. And sure enough it was correct.
A few minutes later, a tray is wheeled over to our table. On it is a medium sized pizza, divided in half with two different flavors of pizza. That probably isn't hte proper way to describe it. They are really gourmet creations. The mixture you would experience is not quite anything you can prepare for.
Most of the pizzas contain an indian based sauce, perhaps a bit on the spicy side. Since the sauces and the other ingredients are from the indian cuisine, I would classify this pizza as Indian. I would not want to eat here if I was in the mood for a pizza, but I definitely would if I was in the mood for indian food. The delicious mixtures excite your senses and really get you excited about what the next cart would wheel out for you to sample.
And its a buffet, so you can hang around as long as you want to. They will keep sending out more unique pizzas. They are all vegetarian, and all super flavorful. While most of the ingredients are Indian, there are classic pizza ingredients that make themselves known, like Pineapple, the cheese, and the crust (which to be honest tastes more like Naan than traditional pizza crust)
I would encourage Crazy Franks to branch out to more than just indian flavors to get a wider range of cuisines involved. Really break down the boundaries. Tho the pizza with the thai peanut sauce, while not original (Mission Pizza offers this), was a welcome change.
My complaint was the tray. The kind chef brought it by and asked us what we wanted to try. Well, if you know us, you know we wanted it all. But he left one slice and then carted it away. Whats up with that good sir? This is a buffet, and we are here to conquer. So next time just leave the tray and step away. We will finish it off.
I think this place favors the slow eater. While you end up getting full and not wanting to eat as much, you get to experience a lot more. It seems like a new pizza arrives every 5 minutes (and remember each pizza is 2 flavors). So if you arrive and hang out for awhile, you are really in for some treats. And I do recommend you hang for awhile. At $10 for the buffet, its not exactly a cheap lunch, since you really aren't master of your portions here.
A good lunch, in a unique location. I give it 8 stars. But for the originality of the place, I bump it up another half star. This place is a must experience if you are into Indian food.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
