Wilmington Pizza Insulting the stretch of pavement and stripmalls you call home

25May/120

Nino’s Pizza & Pasta (Eastwood/Market)

Posted by pete

Below is a review I wrote a while back. I was hoping things would improve and I could burn this review but all the critiques hold true so fuck it here goes.

Third time's not the charm

It be nights like this when I hate captaining this pizza cruise. Actually, this tangled mess of drunken prose is less like a cruise ship or a pirate ship and more like a Navy destroyer. I don't want it to be a fucking destroyer. I really do have the best of intentions, like Lennie Small. Then my overwhelming power of critical cynicism just starts fucking shit up. I can't help it.

I was looking forward to Nino's new location. A lot. I loved the old Nino's location; the only problem being that it was in bumfuck Wrightsboro on the way to Castle Hayne (which is basically the moon as far as I'm concerned). This new location is quite close to where I live.

I'd heard mixed tales of how this store relates to the other; calling the Wrightsboro store as recently as a week or two ago got responses ranging from "Uh, you should probably call them," to, "Uh. They are different owners." I also heard that the old store was closing and this one was just the new location being opened by the former owners. Fuck if I know. Most likely scenario is the owners of this new place sold the old place some time ago, and then decided to try to buttfuck all the butts by opening a new shop with the same fucking name; basically, I just don't fucking know (or care).What I do know is that I logically assumed the pizza would be really good - so I ordered a whole fucking  pie (plus another slice for an extra two bits during their grand opening promotional period).

I was fairly goddamn suspicious right off the bat. Immediately the crust stood out as a fraud, and so it was. More on that later. Biting into this thing elicited a most puzzled look on my face. Something was amiss, but what was it? My first guess was the usual suspect: the cheese. After eating the components individually (you should see this process, it's absurd), I became fairly confident that there is indeed trouble in Cheeseville. Additionally, the sauce was probably overcooked and a bit too pasty but overall it was okay. Almost good, maybe.

The cheese, however, tasted mostly of stupidity. I don't know what it was - either it's crummy quality - a weird cheese blend - or part-skim. It just doesn't fucking taste right. The cheese-sauce-crust ratio was pretty good, though. If the cheese were better, the slice would have been saved, in spite of the lackluster crust.

This looks much more fucked than it really was. It probably wasn't as burnt as the picture would seem to indicate. For example, my thumbail looks dirty as hell and it surely is not, though I should clip my nails. I took the picture because it shows that this pie was cooked on a screen (or at least that's what it fucking looks like to me). As a result of that, in combination with dough formula issues (I'd wager), the dough is overcooked on the bottom while remaining flimsy, lifeless, chewy and crunchless overall. And the while the bottom was overcooked, the top was undercooked.

Why the fuck are these guys using screens on large NY-style pies? Did they do this shit at the old location and I was too stupid to notice? This pizza seems completely different from the old place.

I also thought the dough probably had too much oil in it and tasted a bit yeasty and doughy which I guess is a weird critique to give something made of a yeast dough.

Don't call me a banana farmer.


5 recircs out of a possible 8 recircs (lower is better)

$1.95 + taxicles
5500 N. Market St, Wilmington, NC 28405

Nino's Pizza on Urbanspoon

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5/25/2012 Addendum:

It's been over a month since I wrote the above review. Despite assurances to the contrary from one of the owners, this place is still serving up weird-tasting pizza. You gotta go here and try it I guess, because I really don't know what's going on, nor how to accurately describe this shit. On my most recent visit the dough was marginally better (still screen-cooked), the sauce might have been a little better, but the cheese and the overall flavor was just fucking wonky. WHAT KIND OF FUCKED UP MOON CHEESE ARE YOU NERDS USING?

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22May/120

Gumby’s Closes / Brooklyn Sal’s set to open? / Nino’s review incoming

Posted by pete

Another one bites the dust. That's right, another shitty pizzeria has closed its shitty doors. This time we mourn the passing of a long-time blight on the Wilmington pizza scene: Gumby's. Fans of this place were always hard to find, but they did exist, and  they were without exception complete dummies. Gumby's should have been called Garbagetown USA. I don't know what I was thinking when I gave it a 6-recirc rating - I guess I was extra drunk when I wrote that review.

Anyway, good riddance to them.

In their place there is signage for a place called Brooklyn Sal's Pizza (or some shit), along with the nebulous words, 'coming soon.' I can only imagine that Gumby's owner was tired of his shitty pizza's shitty reputation and decided to basically steal the name of Wilmington's best pizzeria (Brooklyn Pizza) in hope of getting more than one customer a fucking year. If this is the case, I wish 'Sal' the best of luck. Oh wait, no I don't - he can eat a bag of fuck.

But maybe it will be a legitimate new pizzeria. Seems unlikely, though.

Soon I will be posting a review of the new Nino's spot, which is in a weird location across from the College/Market booze emporium. I've been going to Nino's now and  then since their opening, three times in total. I've probably spent more than $20 in total. The first visit was a real let down. I bought a whole pie, since I figured it would be on par with the old Nino's location. It wasn't. The second time around was no better. Having recently finished my third try, I guess a review is in order. You'll have to wait and see if they have redeemed themselves. I know, the suspense, it kills