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8290 North Lake Blvd, Kings Beach, CA
530-546-2218

Steamers is practically on the beach. Enjoy a nice view while enjoying your pizza with indoor or outdoor seating.

Garlic Chips ($9.45) – small thin crust pizza with mozzarella cheese and garlic. This smells so good! It also tastes good.

Large Pizza ($24.50) – half Yukon (Canadian bacon, pineapple, and extra cheese), half For the Birds (green bell pepper, red onion, tomato, and your choice of grilled, Cajun, or BBQ chicken). The pizza was loaded with toppings. I ordered mine with Cajun chicken for a spicy kick. Whole slices of Canadian bacon were used. The hand tossed crust was soft, but a little crunchy.

One good thing is they have their own parking lot. Parking can be difficult during peak times (like 4th of July). Their sodas are a little pricey… $2.95 for a glass or $9 for a pitcher. The menu said refills are $0.75, but our waitress didn’t charge us extra. As for the service, our waitress was very friendly

5408 Koloa Road, Koloa, Kauai, Hawaii 96756. (808) 742-8881

http://www.pizzettarestaurant.com/

Koloa is a very small town and there are limited food options. Pizza sounded good though, so we decided to have dinner here.

Barbeque Chicken Pizza ($18.95 Medium) - Homemade BBQ sauce with fresh papaya and red onions. I was not impressed with the size of this pizza. It was a small. But, it was a tasty pizza. The sauce was a little tangy and the crust was in-between a regular crust and a thin crust.

Warm Brownie Sundae ($7.95) - Scoop of vanilla ice cream on a warm brownie with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Again, the portion was very small. I would say most places offer desserts large enough for two people to share. I guess I should have known when the waiter asked if we wanted two. Compare the size of the spoon to the dessert…

Unfortunately, the service was very poor. I heard the bartender say that many of their usual wait staff had called in sick. The hostess brought us to our table, but forgot to return with menus (which we finally got and they stayed on our table until we left). The bartender was very rude to our waiter and seemed annoyed when some other diners moved the bar stools around so their family could sit together.

I think something that we may take for granted is free refills. I have come to find that in Hawaii, don’t expect everything to be the same as it is on the mainland. Pizzetta does not offer free refills on their sodas ($1.95).

Overall, good food, but small portions and poor service.

Taste: 8/10
Presentation: 3/5
Service/Atmosphere: 1/5
Total: 12/20

Enjoy one free slice of pizza today at participating Pizza Huts from 3 pm to 5 pm.

12925 El Camino Real, San Diego, CA 92130
http://www.sammyspizza.com/

I’ve always heard about this place, but never really bothered to look into it. They have several locations scattered throughout San Diego. I figured that pizza was pizza, so there wasn’t anything too special. I had been told that it was like an upscale California Pizza kitchen. The moment I walked in the restaurant, I noticed there was a line of people waiting to be seated(which is always a good sign because the food is probably going to be good). The wait wasn’t too long, it was about 10 minutes.

The menu had the typical pizza, salads, and sandwiches you would probably see at any restaurant. The thing that had caught my eye was that they had tapas. That surprised me because I wouldn’t have thought that they would serve tapas style food at a place like Sammy’s. They are known for their woodfired pizza, so it would have been a shame if I didn’t give it a try.

I decided on the LaDou’s Barbecue Chicken pizza $9.95(their most popular pizza according to the menu). You really can’t go wrong with bbq chicken. You’d think that because it was cooked in a woodfired oven that there would be ash all over the pizza and the pizza would be bitter, however that wasn’t the case. Cooking it in a woodfire oven gave it a nice crispness and had a really nice crunch when biting into it. It wasn’t oversauced like the many pizzas I’ve had in the past. The red onions gave it a little nice amount of sweetness. The chicken had just the right amount of seasonings to it to balance out the sweetness of the barbecue sauce.

I would definitely pick Sammy’s over California Pizza Kitchen any day. The woodfire oven does really make the pizza a whole lot better than the everyday conventional oven pizzas. I will come back and see if their tapas are any good. For those of you who don’t know what tapas are. They are small quantities of food that are inexpensive, so that the eater could order many of them and be able to try many different dishes. It’s basically an appetizer, but I guess I’m just curious since I’ve never tried a tapa before.

Taste: 7/10
Service: 3/5
Environment: 3/5
Total: 13/20