Try Ze Pizza

Spotobe is on the record as generally avoiding franchised restaurants (with the exception of Wendy's. Who can resist that red-haired temptress?), but the fiancee and I checked out a new one this weekend. I'll give a chain a shot if it seems like it's trying to do something different or interesting, and zpizza fits the bill. I'd heard about it but had never been until we got hungry while running errands at the newish Target/Wegmans shopping plaza on the Carlisle pike.

The first zpizza opened in Laguna Beach in 1986, and the chain aims to create pizza that is lighter, healthier and tastier than the average pie. They use 100 percent certified organic tomato sauce, 100 percent certified organic wheat flour, Wisconsin skim mozzarella cheese and other fresh ingredients. They also offer gluten-free crust and vegetarian pizza with soy cheese. There are only three locations east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line, New York City, Columbus and Mechanicsburg.

There are a lot of really interesting pizza options on the menu in addition to standards like pepperoni and ham & pineapple. We went for the Napoli. It was a regular crust with roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, fresh tomato, Parmesan and fresh basil. With no tomato sauce, it kind of resembled a white pizza, but I usually find white pizza bland and this was anything but. The crust was extremely crispy and the dough had a faintly sweet flavor. I assume that came from the olive oil that they use. Obviously we didn’t have much in the way of toppings, but the pizza had a lot of cheese on it, and it had an excellent consistency. Sometimes when you get a lot of cheese on a pizza it gets gummy, but this was perfect. It was infinitely better than the pizza you’d get from Pizza Hut, Dominos or Papa John’s. I’d still prefer the pizza from Back Door Cafe, though.

All those wholesome ingredients are expensive, and so is the pizza. The two of us ate a large pie in one sitting, and with two cokes we ended up spending about $23. That’s cheap for dinner, but it’s kind of salty for pizza. I’d say it was worth it though. They also sell slices if you’re in the area and looking for something quick. Between zpizza, the Tropical Smoothie Cafe and The Melting Pot, it seems like Central Pennsylvania is getting a steady stream of designer restaurant franchises. I love locally-owned establishments, but each is doing something different and fresh, and that’s good for Central PA.