The Pizza Situation In Burbank Is Getting Worse

I have been working in Burbank since before I was diagnosed with my wheat/rye/barley allergies. Lunchtime pizza options have always been limited. Unfortunately, they have gotten worse. But there may be a silver lining here.

There was a Garlic Jim’s Pizza over on Glenoaks, and they have an OK pizza crust and they took care to avoid cross contamination. But they were a franchise and they became an independent pizza place called Gourmet Crust Pizza.

I probably ate there once a week, but then I started having bad experiences. Food poisoning, feeling generally icky, etc. So I have stopped eating there.

There was a ZPizza in the media district, and I like their crust – it’s not a fluffy traditional crust, but for a thin and crispy crust it’s not bad. I used to go there when I was working on Flower Street, right across the freeway overpass.

Today I was craving pizza, and since Gourmet Crust was out of the picture, I headed for ZPizza. Only to find them closed. Le sigh.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to that area, so I have no idea when they closed. It was recently enough that the sign is still up and there was still paper up in the windows. But long ago enough that there were hard hats inside installing a new restaurant.

Then I saw a couple kids with pizza boxes. And almost across the walkway (this is Palm Ave, which used to be a street that ran in front of the old AMC theater, but is now a pedestrian mall, with the new AMC theater across the way) is a Pizza Rev.

A quick bit of google-foo on my phone tells me they have a gluten-free crust. Okay, let’s go check them out.

They build the pizza in front of you, like Subway or Chipotle. And what I saw freaked me out a bit – they have vats of their sauce options on the line, and they use the ladle to spread out the sauce on the crust. And then they stick it back in the vat.

From their website:

*PizzaRev makes a concerted effort to avoid
gluten-contamination but we are unable to
guarantee against cross contamination.
Guests with gluten sensitivities should
carefully consider dining choices.

This seems like an obvious source of cross-contamination. It’s the reason to ask for spread on the side at In-N-Out – they put the spatula back into the spread after putting it on the buns. I have contacted them to ask about this, but have not heard back yet.

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The silver lining here is the restaurant that will be replacing ZPizza – AsianBox. Their poster says “Gluten Free”:

The Revolution Will Be Eaten

Aharn Dtam Sang is Thai street food, I think. It looks like they have a wide variety of rice/rice noodle dishes made to order.

Asian Box

This looks promising. I look forward to trying it when they open.