Stop 033: The Good Son Tap (Congress Park)

The Good Son Tap

Location:  2550 E. Colfax

When I think of the Good Son, I will always think of  Macaulay Culkin dropping a brick on a car, but now after I fight that image out of my cranium I can escape to a place with a decent beer selection and nourishing  Detroit-style pizza.   They also sport a fun patio that rests just off Colfax across the street from City Park.  During my brief stint outside I saw a CrossFit guy who looked like Tom Petty on steroids roll a giant green tractor tire past a guy who was staggering around barefoot yelling into an old boot.   I did some mild to moderate research about Detroit-style pizza, and here is how I choose to define this unique regional specimen.

Detroit-style pizza is basically a style of pizza similar to Sicilian that features a thick deep-dish crispy crust.  This unique shaped pizza is the result of it being baked in a square based pan, which was historically not  for pizza.  Most commonly, people in Detroit used industrial parts trays for baking from nearby factories that dominated the region, which gave this pizza an original shape and style.  

Let’s talk about the product.   Your pizza will appear in the shape of a rectangle, 2 slices wide by 4 slices long.  This pizza cannot run or hide from its enemies, because it will leave a greasy trail wherever it goes.  Please leave your yoga pants and $20 water bottles covered in local craft brewery stickers at home!

Breakdown of a slice:   The crust is made from a 36 hour process, but since the science of bread is about exciting as watching someone watch an entire baseball game,  let me just discuss the results…  The crust is greasy yet porous; puffy yet crispy.   To put it simple, this crust dominated my taste buds.   The Good Son makes a tasty homemade sauce, but I wish they used more.  The cheese did please, and they offer a smoked mozzarella which is not too shabby.   The toppings on my pizza were mushroom, pepperoni, green pepper, olive, and red onion.  In a solid team effort, they left a good impression.   I took my pizza home and ate it in front of a friend.   I was so selfish that I lied and said that I needed to save a few slices for dinner because I wanted to see if it held up after it cooled down.  As soon as my friend left, I ate the remaining slices.  I kind of feel like a jerk, but I did what I thought I needed to do at the moment.

Stop 032: Angelo's Taverna (Capital Hill)

Angelo’s Taverna

Location:  620 E. 6^th Ave. Denver, CO

Angelo’s wears 2 hats, pizza and oysters.  While I came here for the pizza,  I was tempted by the fruit of a mollusk.  Weird side note;   as I typed the previous line, the song “Tempted” by  Squeeze queued up in my head and I must say that tempted by the fruit of a mollusk,  would be an awful Weird Al song.  Anyways… even if my pizza tasted like absolute dung,  I would still say the service was awesome, and I would come back.  In a 5 minute span,  4 different employees asked me if I needed something, and it was not annoying, I actually felt welcome.  To top it off, the owner brought out my pizza and personally thanked me for my order.   The pizza was plenty decent.    The sauce was flavorful and the cheese was like a rugby player, thick, white, and salty.   Now let’s break down the toppings…

Meatball:  not the best I have ever had, but certainly above average        Grade:   B+

Green peppers:  fresh, must have been cut within 15 minutes of being dispersed       Grade:  A

Pepperoni:  legit       Grade:  B

Mushrooms:  not from a can, and that is all I can ask for       Grade:  B

I will say, the crust is suspect to being frozen.  There was no evidence presented during the consumption of my 12” pie that the crust was made in house or day of purchase.  It simply had no game, but everything else was good enough to propel it to a pizza train 4   (PT4)

Stop 031: Moonlight Diner and Bar (Near the Airport)

 

Moonlight Diner and Bar

Location:  6250 Tower Rd.  Denver, CO  80249

With the concept of grabbing lunch at a random place on the back roads to the airport, my friend and I  stumbled across Moonlight Diner.  It’s shiny silver exterior nearly blinded my hungry eyes as it reflected off the fantastic solar display of  a traditional Colorado afternoon sun.   The moonlight diner drew us in like a giant space egg resting in the middle of a mundane nest of  cookie cutter homes and predictable shopping strips.  My initial idea was to get some classic diner food, but the fact that there was pizza on the menu got a 2^nd look from me.  After analyzing the pros and cons of not eating pizza, I decided to pull the trigger on pizza.  I considered the thoughts and feelings of my companion before I opted to order the Hawaiian.  A Hawaiian is a tough pizza to judge an operation by, but sometimes you gotta go with the moment.  My partner had an interesting  theory  that any decent breakfast place has a good shot at making a solid Hawaiian pizza  because they should have a decent house ham, which is 75% of what matters on a Hawaiian.  The pizza came out with a good look, and Damn!  That ham!  His theory proved to be right, the ham was excellent!   The pineapple was nice and tangy, good enough that we had a conversation about if it was fresh or not… but due to its even cut, it’s probably from a can, or cut by a man with a robotic arm.  The crust was good enough to play the role of crust, and had the charred feel of a wood fired pizza.   The sauce had decent flavor, and was prominent enough to differentiate this pizza from a loaf of ham and pineapple bread.   It’s always a treat when you get a good pie at a place that does not specialize in pizza, because there are so many places that focus exclusively on pizza, and totally suck at it!

Stop 030: Edgewater Inn (Edgewater)

Edgewater Inn

Location:  5302 W. 25^th Ave.  Edgewater, CO 80214

Howdy Paisano!  That is the catch phrase of Edgewater Inn, a cozy neighborhood bar and pizza shop that was established in 1953.  The Edgewater Inn has a great atmosphere which will bring me back regardless of what comes out of the oven.  The pizza is made from scratch, I just don’t think they use the best scratch in town.   If you look at the picture above you can see that this is not the most attractive pie, but I’m not a pizza watcher,  I’m a pizza eater.   Yet, as I approached the pizza  I could not  help but think it looks like the someone squirted a bunch of ketchup all over my pizza!   Right out of the gate my companion took an anti-mushroom stance, so after a brief discussion we opted for pepperoni, black olives, and green peppers to top our pie.  What can you say about black olives, they were fine because I like black olives.  I have never heard someone recommend a place and say you really got to try their black olives… The pepperoni was nothing special, but I must say that I was very fond of their green peppers.   I believe they were grilled prior to the baking of the pizza, and sometimes you just gotta spend a little more time on a topping.   The sauce on top of the pizza was bogus.  It had the consistency of warm ketchup and the taste of a slightly doctored  Spaghetti -O’s sauce.  The crust was on the thicker side of things, which I like, but it could benefit from a little more zest.  During our meal, my companion mumbled “its better than frozen pizza” as he reached for his 2^nd slice… and that is where I will leave it

Stop 029: Abo's (Centennial)

  

Abo's Pizza

Location:  7475 E Arapahoe Rd, Centennial, CO 80112

First off my picture is accidentally awesome!  See how it looks like the girl on the Westword Magazine is hoisting the pizza plate? 

I want to start off by saying that there are at least 2 total dicks that work at Abo’s, and I met both of them in my 15 minute visit.   Trust me, it’s  hard to have an opinion about your service when you order pizza by the slice because the window of forming a negative opinion is miniscule... but this pair of jackass teens showed that you can be rude, arrogant, and flat out sloppy while simply jocking a register and warming up a couple slices of pizza that have already been prepared.  Anyways, let’s talk about the product.   Abo’s offers decent NYC style pizza,  nothing  amazing here, but Abo’s is at the same quality level as your average NYC corner shop, around the corner from the NYC pizza shop that your friend says is the best because it is on the way from his/her apartment to the subway and its the only one that he/she consistently gets,  therefore it is heavily endorsed...

Which by the way,  I love reading pizza reviews of people from NYC because somehow that makes them experts on pizza  even though 75% of NYC slices taste the exact same; which is decent, but nothing that would warrant the use of the word phenomenal.  In fact, most NYC corner shop slices would receive a“3” on the Denver Pizza Train rating system

Abo's uses enough cheese and distributes their pepperoni in an acceptable ratio.  Their crust gave me no reason to run to the mountains and praise the lord, in fact one of my slices cracked in half after my first pull, forcing me to finish it in 2 separate conquests.  Abo's uses a decent sauce, which I kicked into 2nd gear  by using  a fair shake of Abo’s very own hot sauce (pictured above).  Abo's hot sauce has pretty good chemistry with their particular brand of pizza.   However,  I understand that when a consumer uses too much hot sauce on their pizza, they might just be hiding from the fact that their pizza has no game.  One huge strike against Abo’s is their  location, buried deep in a strip mall engulfed by steady suburban traffic around the corner from a hellish strip of I-25.  Although, in their favor is a mini-mini arcade that hosts a Last Action Hero pinball machine.