Erie Perfect Pizza Pursuit

Price at Purchase: $1.50 per square Pieces: As many or few as you'd like Description: Olive oil, spinach, onion, tomato, and ricotta. What We Liked:   This was our first trip to Virgil's and it was in a nice location, clean, and we were greeted by the owner when we first entered.  Their signature style is offering pizza by the square.  A large pizza has 12 squares and you can customize each individual square as you'd like.  As for the pizza itself, aesthetically...just look at it.  Where would you find pizza like this elsewhere in town?  We've been to almost every pizza shop and none of them look like a culinary work of art.  Clearly, the owner has put thought into the combination of toppings, quality of ingredients, and presentation.  The other employees were even dressed to fit the part of a "chef".  Being a white pizza, it had a garlic infused olive oil and wasn't the typical greasy, salty, buttery, white sauce offered most everywhere else.

Price at Purchase: $10.50 + tax Size/Diameter/Slices: Medium / 12"/8 Description: Medium "white pizza" with chicken, tomato, and onion What We Liked:   To be honest, we liked almost everything about this pizza.  Not only was the freshly made dough consistent and flavorful, all the ingredients really popped.  I first noticed how much cheese there was, which I enjoyed.  The tomatoes and onions tasted very good, were fresh, and again complemented the rest of the pizza.  The chicken was fully cooked, but still tender.  We would comment on the "white pizza" aspect here, but we can't...which leads me into the next section... What We Didn’t Like:  Unfortunately...this wasn't a white pizza!  Traditionally a white pizza is devoid of pizza sauce, and has a good amount of olive oil, salt, and herbs.  There was definitely pizza sauce here, and we didn't notice any additional herbs sprinkled on the top.  Jen had wished she added some fresh basil to

Price at Purchase: $13.95 + tax Size/Diameter/Slices: Standard / 14"/8 Description: Deep Dish pizza with pepperoni...and pepperoni...and pepperoni. What We Liked:   Where to start with this thing?  Well, in terms of what we liked, the dough and crust was very good.  Even though this crust had to support multiple layers of toppings, it wasn't thin and non-existent, which is a good thing.  Also, the sauce was pretty excellent and was actually the tastiest part of this deep dish.  It's a good thing because there was SO much sauce... What We Didn’t Like:  We're not really sure where to start with things we didn't like.  Some people might love multiple layers of pepperoni (I'm a big pepperoni fan), but on this pizza they were simply overwhelming.  A little bit of pepperoni goes a long way.  As mentioned above, there was a ton of sauce on this thing also.  We think there was cheese on the pizza, but we couldn't tell.  The "assembly" of the p

Price at Purchase: $9.95 + tax Size/Diameter/Slices: Medium / 12"/8 Description: Medium pizza with tomato, spinach, oil, garlic, and Parmesan cheese What We Liked:   Spinach and tomato...although I was hesitant, this pizza surprised me!  We typically find a fault with homemade crust, but Steveo's was evenly baked, light, and had a slight hint of seasoning.  We discussed coming up with descriptive words other than "awesome" and "great" but we failed miserably.  The tomatoes were fresh, were not pre-cooked (a touchy subject), and the oil and garlic added flavor, while managing to avoid being greasy.  The Parmesan cheese, although not a necessity, complemented this pizza nicely. What We Didn’t Like:  I'm not just saying this because it's healthy, but the spinach wasn't my favorite...but that's a personal preference.  Even still, I enjoyed the pizza, so it's a minor complaint (again, it was prepared the way spinach should be).  If

Price at Purchase: $10.95 + tax Size/Diameter/Slices: Medium / 12"/8 Description: Medium pizza with chicken, tomatoes, mozzarella, and butter garlic sauce What We Liked:   It was nice to try something different, as our usual orders consist of supremes and custom orders with sausage and pepperoni. This pizza had plenty of cheese, chicken and tomatoes and tons of flavor from the buttery/garlicky sauce. The tomatoes were fresh, the grilled chicken was tender and the crust was soft and chewy and crispy on the outside (fresh dough). What We Didn’t Like:  I tricked myself into believing this would be a healthier version of the pizzas we typically order... not the case. This pizza was super greasy from the excess butter & garlic sauce. It tasted great, sure, but it was literally dripping with butter. I chose the patented napkin-dabbing method in order to minimize my fat/calorie consumption for the day, but not sure how much it helped. Overall:   We also ordered this ve

Price at Purchase: $10.80 + tax Size/Diameter/Slices: Medium / 14"/10 Description: Medium pizza with sausage and sweet peppers (medley) What We Liked:   We were anticipating the fresh homemade crust advertised on Alfee's menu and for the most part, it wasn't a disappointment. There were a lot of toppings on the pizza, and even though the veggies were cooked (a pizza sin in Jen's book) they were flavorful and good.  The sausage had a nice amount of spice to give the pizza some zing, and there was plenty of cheese as well.  We can't fail to mention the price was pretty reasonable too. What We Didn’t Like:  Although homemade, the crust was a bit tough; however, not enough so to really detract from the great taste.  The pie had a little grease, but honestly this could've come from the sausage, which is almost impossible to avoid.  Of course, even though the vegetables were OK in this form, we would've preferred them to not be cooked beforehand :)