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

1Feb/130

On The Side Sub Shop

Posted by pete

 Gas Station Greasebomb

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A sub shop attached to a gas station. Since this combo seems to work for numerous Subway locations I'll give this joint a chance. Taking over from Big D’s Philly Cheese on Gordon Road is On The Road Sub Shop. The reason they get a mention here is because they serve pizza as well as subs and for a buck fifty before tax I figured it was worth swinging by since I was in the area.

These guys hail from Olean, NY, which is sorta in between Canada and Pennsylvania rather than in New York. I've never been to Canada but the pizza in PA is fucking consistently garbage. It might be easy to assume On The Side will be serving up NY-style pizza, being they're  sorta from New York. However, the further you get from NYC, the worse pizza gets. There is an oasis here and there which radiates quality pizza independently of the city, that's true. But Buffalo is not one of them and I'd wager that Olean isn't either.

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Here we have the slice. For a buck-fifty, the size was good if not impressive. The crust didn't look too offensive, at first glance, but the cheese and sauce seemed reasonably nightmarish. The first bite sang one malevolent note to me: School Pizza. I don't know if that's a legitimate genre of pizza but we all know what it means. I don't even know if there are regional differences between school pizza; there probably are. The important, binding characteristics are the shoddiness and the charm. The school pizza I'm born out of is that of a pasty, heavy sauce; a greasy, tasteless cheese and a heavy, greasy crust as seen below:

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My only assumption is that there is so much oil on the bottom of their pans that the dough sort of deep fries itself. The whole product is weird but not without its merits considering the nostalgia factor.

I keep trying to forget that this place is a couple minutes away from Brooklyn Pizza and remember that it's a gas station sandwich shop. On the one hand, if you are driving down I-40 and pull off onto Gordon Road to get some gas, this place might be a fucking godsend. Personally if I were on a road trip and the place I was getting my gas housed this place which sells cheesy saucy grease-bombs for $1.60 after tax I would jizz in my pants instantaneously. An excellent gas station find. On the flipside, if you live nearby, then buying pizza from here instead of from Brooklyn is the absolute apex of stupidity. Still, give it a whirl; the people seem nice. Maybe their other food is great.

Their pizza just isn't, unless you're looking for a trip down school pizza memory lane.

School pizza can hit the spot.

Rating:

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

On The Side Sub Shop - $1.60
6648 Gordon Road, Wilmington, NC 28411

On the Side Sub Shop on Urbanspoon