Yesterday I was craving pizza at lunch and my go-to place was closed. A trip into the new Pizza Rev restaurant scared me a bit seeing the opportunity for cross-contamination. Despite the assurances on the web site.
They have a contact form on their web site so I asked if there was something I didn’t see. Within a couple hours I had a response!
Hi Theron, Yes, we use a totally different process. When you order gluten-free crust at PizzaRev, we ask you whether you are ordering for "Preference or Allergy". When you respond allergies, we have all of our sauces in bottles and never use the ladles. Our staff will walk your pizza down our line using fresh gloves, then it goes into our oven on a special pie-tin to avoid contamination from the oven. We take our guests safety very seriously, but of course, we can't make any guarantees despite all these extra safety measures. Next time you're there, maybe you can ask a manager to explain the process and we will show you how we do it so you can decide for yourself. Thanks for your email, Theron! Best, Jeff Zuckerman PizzaRev - Guest Relations www.pizzarev.com
Well, that certainly sounds promising. So I decided to wander in after the lunch rush today.
Everything went the way Jeff described. It is very refreshing to see a restaurant differentiate between people wanting to reduce the amount of wheat they are eating for personal preference and those who have medical reasons to avoid it (allergies or Celiac).
Pizza!
After I said I had an allergy, the server immediately changed her gloves (without being asked!), went down to the end of the line and grabbed a clean pizza tray and put my pizza crust on it. The sauce came from a squeeze bottle, and they had a stack of clean ladles to use for spreading (one use only!). Very nice.
The pizza was pretty good. The rice-based crust is actually very similar to ZPizza – thin and crispy, with a slight spongy texture. I had a red sauce pizza with mozzarella and pepperoni (I always have a ribeye the first time at a steak restaurant just to compare the basics). The sauce was a tad sweet for my taste, and the cheese is a bit plasticy (low moisture mozzarella can get that way). But it was pizza and it was yummy.
I will be going back and trying some of the many choices they offer. It’s good to have a lunchtime pizza option.
