zpizza party + a giveaway

Update: This giveaway has ended. Congrats to the winner, Susie! Hooray!

zpizza recently invited me to have a pizza party in my own house (or in this case, Jake’s house) and I gladly accepted. (A night of no dishes, woo!) zpizza wanted to showcase a few new pizzas from their tasting kitchen. These are all experimental pizzas that might be making it onto their menu soon. Let’s see what they brought over and after you read this, you can enter a little giveaway (or… you can skip to the end. It’s okay. I won’t know. Sniff.)

[mediterranean plate]

Appetizers first! I’m going to be totally honest and tell you that I didn’t notice when we ate this that it was pizza dough. Looking at it now I can see that it is not pita bread, but I did not read the menu description of this until later. Oops! Jake says he knew it was pizza dough but we kept telling him he was wrong and that it was pita bread. I actually don’t remember that part. But hey, that could be selective memory. (Sorry, baby.)

We were supposed to (I assume) add a layer of hummus and then top it with these items above (cucumbers, greek olives, feta cheese and roasted pepppers). I actually just ate the hummus with the bread and it was delicious. I thought the above were extra toppings for the salad, haha.  The hummus was really delicious though – nice and creamy and well seasoned. So, that was a nice idea I guess.

[avocado arugula salad]

We got this big tray of salad. The salad had arugula, romaine lettuce, cucumber, feta cheese, basil, and housemade lemon vinaigrette. I loved the big chunks of avocado in the salad – they were so creamy and fresh. The lemon vinaigrette had a good punch of flavor and was a nice light dressing for the salad. There was maybe a little too much arugula for my liking, but luckily the avocado and feta helped balance it out for me.

[gluten-free pear and gorgonzola pizza]

One of the pizzas featured was a new gluten-free pizza. It’s on a crunchy gluten free crust and topped with mozzarella, pear, gorgonzola and fresh thyme. The pear and gorgonzola was actually quite nice – playing a bit off of the sweet-salty flavors. The gorgonzola is a little light though but I loved the flavor of the thyme with the cheese and pear. The crust was … okay. A little too crisp and a bit overcooked in my opinion.

[carnitas and roasted tomatillo]

I loved the idea of this one – roasted carnitas on a pizza? Yes, please! But… there were only little bits of carnitas here and there. It needed a bit more carnitas since a couple of slices didn’t seem to have any on it. I loved the onions and cilantro on top as well but I didn’t really taste any tomatillo, either. I think with a little more carnitas this would be better. Maybe even a little sour cream type sauce?

[salami and roasted tomato pizza]

The salami pizza was a favorite of the group with the thin slices of delicious salami on top. This one had dots of fresh, creamy, mozzarella with roasted cherry tomatoes and oregano. Red pepper flakes are also thrown in making it a touch spicy. We liked the flavors on this one. I prefer salami to pepperoni any day of the week!

[wild mushroom and squash pizza]

No one really ate this one but me, but that’s fine since this one was my personal favorite. The menu said it was supposed to have sausage on it but I didn’t see nor taste any. What it did have was a housemade roasted garlic sauce (YUM), mushrooms, zucchini, feta cheese and thyme. The roasted garlic sauce was delicious and so flavorful and I loved the veggies on top (since mushroom pizza is my favorite kind of pizza anyway). I prefer this without the sausage, really, but I tend to like mostly veggie/cheese pizzas these days anyway.

Z Pizza also included a few gluten free desserts for us to sample, including three types of cookies and a chocolate brownie. There were four of us and we each choose one. Jake’s mom got the snickerdoodle, T got the chocolate chip, Jake got the oatmeal and I got the brownie.

I only tried the brownie. I found it to be really flaky for a brownie, which is a really weird thing to say. It crumbled very easily after each bite and almost had a chalky-like consistency to it. The texture was weird but the chocolate flavor wasn’t terrible. It’s not really something I’d want to eat again since the texture was too weird to me. I prefer my brownies to be soft and fudgy! I’ll keep my gluten if that’s okay with you.

We also got a bottle of wine and I had about half a glass before my head started to say, “Whoa, nelly.” I have no other insights to offer you on this wine subject since I started to feel out of it pretty quickly. This was just more proof of how much of a lightweight I am.

It was fun trying out their experimental pizzas – even more fun that they actually delivered all of this and we didn’t have to go anywhere. Thanks, zpizza, for sending us this little pop up pizza party!

zpizza, generous folks that they are, are also giving away a pizza dinner to one of my readers. One lucky winner will receive one large pizza and a one salad from zpizza. You, too, could win a night of no dishes!

To enter the giveaway please tell me: Which of the experimental pizzas above would you be interested in trying?

Additional entries are available below in the PromoSimple box. Please note that I will be checking entries and any false entries will result in all of your entries being disqualified (aka, please don’t cheat). Contest open to US Residents only. Contest runs until September 2, 2014 at 8PM PST. One winner will be generated via random.org and contacted via email. Winner has 48 hours to respond otherwise another winner will be generated. Thanks and good luck!