Restaurant Review: 'Pizza Fusion' Blurring the lines between healthy and junk food

When it comes to establishments that serve pizza, you essentially have two kinds. There is fast food pizza, and the proper restaurant pizzerias. Generally speaking, you can expect fast food pizza to be heavy, filling, and greasy, and under the right circumstances, that can hit the spot quite well. Then there are the pizzeria style pizzas, which tend to be on the thinner side and made with more care and better ingredients. Of course, the fast food establishments tend to cater to convenience and spur of the moment cravings, the option of delivery to your door epitomizing the ideal. Pizzerias, on the other hand, tend to be more in the style of your proper restaurant, not just offering a meal, but an overall dining experience.
Pizza Fusion seems to lie somewhere in between these two categories. The idea being that they offer quality restaurant style pizza with the convenience of fast food. A glance at one of their pizzas makes it obvious that they are not in the greasy fast food category. While the option to sit and eat at the establishment is certainly available, it does not discourage the take-away or delivery order either, the way it might at a full-blown pizzeria.
To separate it from all the other pizza joints out there, Pizza Fusion has decided to focus on the organic. Their main selling point is that they offer the customer a pizza that is made by hand with organic ingredients that are not only better for the consumer, but also good for the earth. The back of their menu displays their company’s mission and talks about all the effort they go through in order to provide the customer with quality ingredients. They venture as far as California to import their pesticide-free tomatoes. There is even a segment highlighting that organic foods offer a higher concentration of some nutrients. As the whole issue between organic foods and genetically modified organisms is still an open debate, I did appreciate that they cited the last bit about nutrients from an organic center at Washington State University.
The menu offers a pretty diverse selection of pizzas, catering to all classes of customers from the carnivores to the vegans. Some of the items are more typical in restaurants, like the Bruschetta, four cheese and sundried tomato, or the organic eggplant and fresh mozzarella. Others lean more to the fast food side of things, such as the BBQ chicken, Philly steak pizza, or the Big Kahuna. Once again emphasizing that Pizza Fusion really lies somewhere in between. Naturally, there are also offerings of pasta, sandwiches, and salads.
For my meal, I decided to try the organic pepperoni and the sausage and tricolor pepper pizzas. The first thing one notices is that their pizzas are less round and more elliptical in shape. While not a huge note, it does add a bit of character and suggests that the dough is actually kneaded by hand.
The pizza itself was good, while not the best I have ever had, it does beat the other fast food pizza options out there. The ingredients themselves were of good restaurant level quality. I cannot say, however, if their being organic or not really contributed much to the overall flavor. Then again, it should be noted that I am not totally sold on the ideal that anything organic will always taste better than something not.
In my opinion, the highlight of the pizzas was less the organic ingredients and more the quality of the dough. It is thin and soft with a touch of crunch at the end, and simply enhances the overall flavor of everything else put on top. An extra nice touch is that all pizzas are available in white or multigrain dough. While I may still carry some doubts on much of the current hype around organic goods, I do believe that multi-grain is truly the healthy choice. I tried both and could tell very little difference between the two.
Pizza Fusion has chosen their name wisely and has lived up to it. They have done so by fusing the healthy with the unhealthy and the fast food with the restaurant. The service was both friendly and quick. Add to all that, you get to feel like you aren’t treating your body too badly, especially if you go with the multi-grain. Now I just wish I lived close enough for delivery.