Review: Zachary's Pizza

Stuffed spinach and mushroom pizza with sausage

Five years ago we tried Zachary's Chicago Pizza for the first time and were overwhelmed by this deep-dish concept, where it's more like a pie than a pizza.

But we liked it so much we requested to try it again and went to the north Berkeley location for lunch.

More like a pie than typical pizza

We liked the decorations on the wall -- amateur paintings that plug Zachary's, from Garfield dreaming about it, to a riff on the Johannes Vermeer painting, Girl with the Pearl Earring, and having her biting into a slice of deep-dish pizza.

We ordered a stuffed pizza with spinach and mushroom that has three cheeses in it and added sausage, which took about 30 minutes to make; so we had a side of garden salad to munch on before the pizza arrived.

The fresh vegetable produce in California is delicious -- the lettuce is crisp and tastes sweeter, in particular the tomatoes, which are incredible. In Vancouver we are stuck with ones that were picked when they were green and have hardly any flavour. 

When the pizza arrived, it was more like a pie and our server helped us dish out the pizza. It was definitely gooey from the generous amounts of melted cheese, but the richness was balanced by the sweet acidity of the delicious fresh tomato sauce!

Not only was the filling good, but also the crust! It was thick but not rock hard; it held the pizza together, but crunchy enough for texture.

Funny pizza-themed artwork on the wall

In the end I managed to eat one and a half slices; a medium-sized pizza for four of us resulted in two slices left which we brought with us.

Good thing I did a bit of walking afterwards to digest that filling pizza!

Zachary's Chicago Pizza

1853 Solano Avenue, Berkeley, CA

(510) 525 5950