Thursday, March 8, 2012

California Pizza Kitchen

Price: $$$$
Atmosphere: 3 out of 5
Quality of Service: 3 out of 5
Food Overall: 3 out of 5



Chains. Some people swear by them, while others (read: my wife), not so much. But chains can be useful, no? Chains restrain murderous criminals from choking you to death in a courtroom. Chains keep that heavy machinery suspended so when you walk under it you’re not instantly destroyed.

But of course, this is a food blog, and the chains we talk about here are food related. Chili’s. Duffy’s. La Bamba. While these places are good for the quick fix (La Bamba is actually one of my favorite Mexican joints), they’re not necessarily ‘unique’. Today’s spotlight is on California Pizza Kitchen (CPK).

This place has multiple locations across this great nation of ours, and although it is a chain, it’s one of those ‘higher end’ chains. For example, McDonald’s is a chain, but it’s a bottom feeder and not worth another mention on this blog. It serves a purpose, but mostly to late night drunkards and recreational narcotics users.

CPK is a chain in the realms of Grand Lux Café or J. Alexander’s. Better quality of food, finer quality of service (usually), and it definitely comes with an amped up price tag. However, I’m a firm believer that you get what you pay for, which is why I don’t eat at CiCi’s.

My wife had received several gift cards for CPK as a holiday gift, so we decided to have dinner on the fine students at Ideal Middle School. We started with these little BBQ tacos, part of their Small Cravings menu. Simple enough: Two flour tortillas, stuffed with cilantro, Korean style BBQ’d beef in this nice soy-based sauce. They were a tiny bit dry for my tastes, but the flavor profile was definitely present.

We had our dinner salads which were just salads (good, but not worth a paragraph here), but they’re a ‘Pizza Kitchen’ for a reason. I ordered their new Habanero Carnitas pizza with thin crust. This was a really good pizza. It’s got layers of slow roasted pulled pork, tangy red onions, a mild cilantro pesto that only comes through at the end of your bite, quality cheeses that add that creaminess you’d expect in a pie, without being overly cheesy.

The key to this pizza however is the habanero salsa. It comes on the side so you don’t have to worry about igniting your tastebuds on bite#1, however, you’re really gonna want to dive into this stuff. It’s spicy, don’t get me wrong, but it brings a new level of flavor that really takes the pizza to another plateau.

The service was good enough and the décor is appealing to the yuppie crowd (we were in Boca, after all).My wife ordered the spinach and artichoke pizza, which was delightfully creamy with the perfect amount of spinach flavor flowing through the entire dish. Again, while chains may not be ‘diamonds in the rough’, you can find a gem or two if you hit the right ones.

After all, it’s just Da(m)n Good Food (For a chain).

California Pizza Kitchen
http://www.cpk.com

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