Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Restaurant Review: California Pizza Kitchen (Maple Grove Location)


Lunch date at California Pizza Kitchen
Every Sunday we take Chloe to the dog park because it's our day off from running and she deserves to be able to sprint at her speed every once in awhile. We usually take her to the Fish Lake dog park over by where we go grocery shopping. It’s a nice fenced in area within a big park, but sometimes we like to spoil her and make the drive over to the massive Elm Creek dog park.

The Elm Creek dog park is 30 acres of fully fenced dog paradise. It also has a swimming pond for the dogs to cool off in so yes, this is quite the treat for Chloe.

One Sunday at the beginning of June (6.3.12) I needed to go to Victoria’s Secret to look for a strapless bra and there just so happened to be one located relatively close to the Elm Creek park meaning on this day Chloe would be a lucky dog.
Getting ready to run into the pond
Cooling off at Elm Creek dog park
Fast-forward past wet, smelly dog and success at Victoria’s Secret and it was lunch time. We usually try to plan when we eat out as it keeps us conscious of the fact that we are doing it. Something that has helped our overall physical and financial health, but when hunger calls we listen.

After doing a quick circle around the area we spotted California Pizza Kitchen and thought it would be a great opportunity to review more pizza (don’t skip on the chains just because they are chains). Since it was a nice day out we opted to eat outside (are you sensing my love for eating outside in nice weather?) and began examining the menu.

Even though we came for pizza something else caught my eye. Since I knew Mark would be ordering a pizza I decided to get something else and try some of his pizza for review purposes. I ended up ordering a roasted vegetable salad with balsamic dressing on the side. It was described as a “hot” salad with roasted artichoke hearts, eggplant, corn, avocado, sundried tomatoes, and asparagus on a bed of greens (can you see why it caught my eye). It was absolutely delicious and satisfied every taste bud on my tongue. But no salad is complete without croutons so I simply cut up a piece of Mark's pizza and threw it on top.

On the advise of our waitress, Mark ordered the chicken pesto pizza on a thin crust. It had a basil pesto sauce with pesto chicken, onions, sundried tomatoes, mozzarella, and toasted pine nuts on top. Mark is a big pesto guy and thought that the pesto on the pizza tasted good, but wished that there had been more of it. He also thought, and I agreed, that the pizza was a little too greasy for our tastes. Maybe too much oil and not enough basil in the pesto? We also thought that it would have been good with some roasted garlic on top. 
My roasted veggie salad & Mark's chicken pesto pizza
So for our rating of the chicken pesto pizza from California Pizza Kitchen:

1. Crust: 7 - Good, but too soggy.

2. Sauce: 6 - Nice flavor, but could have used some more.

3. Toppings: 5 - Nothing to write home about.

Overall we gave it a 6. It was good but nothing stuck out except the greasiness. But given that California Pizza Kitchen has numerous pizza combinations to choose from, we would give it another shot with a different kind of pizza.

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