Black Plague Pizza

In my quest to catch up, I'm going to just copy and paste an email about a recent experience I had a new local pizzeria. So if you were the one who received this email, you might want to skip reading this and go back to your normal job duties.

This experience took place on Friday the 13th. Apparently not just a bad day for Templar Knights.

Earlier in the week, Jay brought up wanting to try this new pizza joint in Ames. I had heard the story of how it opened because it was on CNN. I had heard two reviews of the place. One from Jon who loved it. One from Corey who hated it. Corey’s main hatred was generated from the fact that they claimed to serve the pizza with “sauce” on top of the pizza. In actuality the sauce was diced tomatoes. I told this to Jay because he does not like tomatoes as a warning.

Originally we started with 3 people. During the day I sent an invite out to Jen and Derrick to see if they were interested. Then I went home from work to meet the cable guy.

That afternoon, Monica called and wanted to see if she could join us for FNSC since she wasn’t doing her normal birthday dinner.

I called Jay and we worked out a time for when we would meet there. He told me that Willy was not coming because he had run 35 miles that day and felt he should take it easy. He also had big plans for Saturday night. He was going to a birthday party on Saturday night for his friends that he goes to the fights with.

So it was going to be me, Monica and Jay. About this time, my internet was turned on and I saw that Jen had sent me a message saying that she would be interested, but Derrick was out because he was running sound for Dennis’ surprise birthday party at Deano’s.

I called Jesse to tell him what time we were meeting because he had expressed some interest in trying the new pizza place, plus he had my new speakers in his car. Jesse said that he was in.

About 5 pm, my doorbell rang. I went to the door and was surprised to see Willy there. I told him that Jay said that he wasn’t coming.

He said that he had decided to “Man up.”

Then he gave me a partial bag of ice. The rest of the ice from the bag he was using to ice his legs.

Then Jay came over. He was insistent that we leave right at 5:30 to hold to some schedule that he had made in his head. Willy and I told him that wasn’t “the way things worked”.

We eventually left and met Jen and Monica at the pizza place. FNSC was supposed to consist of Me, Jay, Willy, Jesse, Jen and Monica. 6 people. On the way there, Willy started to get sick.

We ordered two large Chicago Style pizzas. Mr. Meaty and Louie’s Supreme. The price: $69. That is not a typo. That did not include drinks. They told us it would be 1 hours 15 minutes. We asked if we could change the order to delivery and we would eat at Jen’s place. They said that would add 30 minutes to the time we got our pizza.

There was no place to sit, so we ordered the pizza as Carry Out.

Order was placed at 6:20.

Jesse called to say that he had called home and found out that he couldn’t come out.

Jen went home.

Jay, Willy, Monica and I went to Wal-Mart. I needed to buy a toaster and some microwave popcorn. Monica (not making this up) bought a rake so that they could rake up all of the cigarette butts in their yard.

Jen called and said that Jill would be joining us. Willy continued to get worse.

We went inside. There were some tables available. I ordered some drinks and changed our order to Dine-In. They gave me a number after the lady stared at a computer screen for quite some time. I had no faith that the number she gave me was somehow connected to anything on her computer screen. Jay said that if the pizza wasn’t ready in 5 minutes, he was going to leave and take Willy home.

The pizza wasn’t ready in 5 minutes. Jay left.

Jen and Jill arrived. FNSC turned into Me, Jen, Jill and Monica. With two large Chicago Style Pizzas.

A little after 8 pm we were still sitting there (talking about hair) when one of the owners approached our table. He shook my hand and introduced himself to me. He asked how long we had been waiting. I said that we placed our order at 6:20. He asked what time it was. I didn’t not know. He looked at his cell phone and said “Is it really after 8?”

“If you say it is.”

He gathered some information and then went back and came back with a pizza. It wasn’t exactly hot. We told him we had two pizzas. He said, “I hope those dumbasses didn’t accidentally give it out.”

He came back with another pizza. It was not Chicago Style. Somebody pointed this out to him. He took it back and came back with the right pizza.

When he brought back the right pizza he said, “You must have thought we were running a special: 1 pizza for the price of 2!”

The Mr. Meaty pizza had next to no flavor. The Louie’s Supreme wasn’t bad. I like tomatoes, but I could have done without them on top of the pizza. Tomatoes are not a substitute for sauce, which the pizza had none.

At the end of the night, we had 9 slices of pizza left. I took 3 of them to Deano’s for Derrick. I later found out that he took 1 bite and threw the rest away.

Although this experience was very negative, I would be willing to give Black Market Pizza one more chance. I am not willing to give their Chicago style pizza second chance though.