Chico's Pizza

Pizza.  Something I grew up eating tons of (we literally had family pizza night once a week, and, well, they still do), something I certainly ordered late night in college regularly, and then ... not really something I ate for like 15 years.  I didn't actively dislike it, but, I would absolutely never pick it.  And then the past few years happened, and I've turned back into a pizza fan.  I can't explain it.

But my pizza enjoyment has largely been at very well regarded places (e.g. Tony's in SF), or basically everywhere in NY when I was there for a month last summer, or, more recently, diving into the world of Detroit style pizza ().   I haven't really sought out generic, "American" style pizza, like Chico's.  To be fair, I didn't seek out Chico's either, but it was ordered by the host of an event I was at recently.

"Try the best pizzas in San Francisco.

Chico's Pizza is one of the most popular in San Francisco. Try their pizza, and you'll soon see why."

Even though I had never heard of Chico's before, it turns out that it is a small chain, with 3 locations in San Francisco.  It has been around a while.  Some, like their website, say it "the best" and "one of the most popular", which is a bit surprising to me, given that I'd never heard of it before.  I'm not sure which we ordered from, I assume the closest location, on 6th St.

Chico's offers a slew of pre-designed pizzas with all your basics like vegetarian, meat lovers, greek, bbq chicken, etc, along with some more unique options like the San Francisco pizza with pepperoni, Canadian bacon, beef, olives, and feta (which, frankly, sounds confused and muddled and I don't understand why it has anything to do with SF), or the Tijuana pizza with peppers, onions, sausage, tomato, and jalapeños.   You can create your own from a sizable lineup of topping choices.   They do not offer gluten-free crust, nor do they offer vegan cheese.   Sizes range from 12" small to 14" medium to 16" large and 18" x-large. You can customize any pizza, including their specialty ones.  Their online ordering even lets you put in a special note to the kitchen, which I've rarely seen offered.  

In addition to pizza, Chico's has salads (5 kinds), calzones (5 kinds), hot sandwiches (10 kinds, ranging from meatball parm to chicken pesto with grilled mushrooms), and sides/apps such as several kinds of wings, mozzarella sticks, jalapeño poppers, and garlic bread.  We had several kinds of pizza, and salad (which I didn't take a photo of, but it was fresh and tasty enough).

I liked Chico's for what it was.  It isn't trying to be fancy or any kind of niche pizza.  I wouldn't order it myself, but if I am at another party with it, and I'm craving generic pizza, I'd gladly grab a slice.

Meat Lover's.

"Cheese, Italian sausage, salami, pepperoni, and Canadian bacon."

This was not bad.  Very big puffy crust, very bready, not special, but it was fine.  Standard sauce and cheese, well coated, nicely melted.  Basically, as generic as it gets, but all fine.

The meats though were good.  The little balls tasted immediately recognizable, but not as Italian sausage, which is what they were I guess.  They tasted EXACTLY like (my memory of) the little meatballs in Spaghetti-os.  I liked them, but they weren't very sausage like.

The salami was salami, fine, but not my thing.  Generic pepperoni.  I really liked the Canadian bacon for some reason.

Overall, not a bad pizza if craving generic pizza, and yay for the meats. ***.

$22.50 (small) - $30.50 (x-large).