Our critic searches for KC's best pizza
By LAUREN CHAPIN
The Kansas City Star
TETONA DUNLAP
The crusts at Spin! are thin and easily folded. The Cipolla e Chevre pizza comes with roasted, caramelized onions and is sprinkled with goat cheese.
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Pizza preferences are personal, as personal as boxers or briefs, Pepsi or Coke, MU or KU.
In Kansas City we are blessed with an abundance of pizzerias serving all sorts of pies: thin-crust, thick crust, gluten-free or cheese stuffed.
We have the major styles covered, including several sources of original Neapolitan. And we span the country, too: from New York to Chicago, from St. Louis to California. And, of course, it wouldn’t be Kansas City if we didn’t dish up a few barbecue pizzas.
In honor of National Pizza Month, The Star checked out a few beloved pizzerias, compiled a list of even more favorites and set up a “Best of” list.
•Spin! Neapolitan Pizza: 6541 W. 119th St., Overland Park 913-451-7746 (SPIN). www.spinpizza .com.
Richard Lozoff fell in love with authentic pizzas when traveling through Italy in the 1970s, and Spin! is the result. The staff uses a real Italian flour for the pizzas, which bake in the 600-degree oven. Choose from two basic styles: the pizza Rossa (crushed tomato sauce with a blend of cheeses) or Bianca (olive oil and Italian cheeses). Mix and match your own toppings or choose from the creative list of Spin pizzas.
I preferred the Cipolla e Chevre (roasted and caramelized onions with goat cheese) with fig jam and fresh mozzarella instead of the Polpette — caramelized onions and roasted crimini mushrooms. The crusts were thin and chewy and folded easily in half. And the kitchen was generous with the toppings. But they tasted even better the next morning.
Other highlights: carafes of fruity white sangria that paired really well with the earthiness of the pizza toppings and inventive house salads. One disappointment: The gelatos, imported from a small company in Michigan, were sticky, as if they hadn’t been transported and stored properly.
(Spin! has other locations at 1808 D N.W. Chipman Road in Lee’s Summit and at 14230 W. 119th St. in Olathe.)
•D’Bronx: 2450 Grand in Crown Center, 816-842-2211.
It seems the bloom is off D’Bronx since Robert and Janet Bloom sold it. I tried slices of cheese, pepperoni and the specialty pizza, loaded with all sorts of meat and vegetables.
They were all lovely hot. The cheese stretched from slice to mouth like a telephone wire, the pepperoni had a nice bite and the toppings on the meaty slice were a nice amalgam of tastes and textures.
But they lost their appeal as they cooled off on the plate. Then the flavors seemed to disappear — like early morning fog under a rising summer sun.
The flavors revved up, at least a little bit, when slowly reheated the next day. But still, the slice wasn’t what I remembered.
(D’Bronx has other locations at 3904 Bell and at 105th and Metcalf.)
•Grinders: 417 E. 18th St., 816-472-5454. www.grinderspizza .com.
Grinders is the pizza joint equivalent of a mosh pit — loud, ramped-up and not for the faint-of-heart.
If you want to impress your ’tweens and teens, take them to Grinders. The place is a designer-worthy showcase for the reduce/reuse/recycle mantra: There’s lots of art cobbled together from salvage, covering the walls, dangling from the ceiling, adorning the back patio.
The kids making the pizzas sport more ink than the Sunday comics and more pins, needles and piercings than a dressmaker’s mannequin. The tunes are cutting-edge. The beer list, big and lusty.
Grinders does some dandy, sloppy appetizers, including Death Wings in three levels of spice: Wimpy, Molten and Absolutely Insane. Go for the Molten; even the waitress dissed the Insane as truly too insanely spicy to eat.
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| Lauren Chapin, The Star | Lauren Chapin, The Star
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