Scoring from home on Dallas delivery options
Angelo & Vito’s 4250 Frankford Rd. 972-381-1002
Promised in: 35 minutes Delivery time: 24 minutes
The Score Food: -15 Delivery: 80 Degree of Difficulty: 5 Style: 10 Other: -3 Total: 77
So the real-life pizza doesn’t really match the photo. Instead of rustic Italian cured meats, which look so good on a four-color flyer, you get common pepperoni and other American imitations. Not the stuff for a photo-op.
Big woop -- we’ve already been desensitized by Chinese restaurants, the ones pasting food porn next to every dish listed on menus, big boards, whatever. Besides, all we really needed was a Monday Night Football pizza, something filling without too many frills. Angelo & Vito’s easily meets limited expectations with a reliably yeasty though otherwise nondescript crust, sweet and tangy, perhaps under seasoned sauce and a simplistic flavor profile. The cheese tastes yellow, the pepperoni purveyor-cured and red peppers vaguely real. There’s nothing here to cause either upset or excitement.
Now, we’re judging from a 100 point scale. Nondescript probably starts them off on ground zero. But really, we should strike a good 15 points, sticking them in a hole straight away . . . kinda like when the Cowboys go on defense to start the game. And for false advertising, let’s chop three more.
What we really want from a delivery guy is not, however, a Neapolitan crust dripping in San Marzano tomatoes, artichoke hearts and patanegra, the thin sheaths of air-cured meat from black footed, free range Iberian pigs. No, we want food. Now.
Well, Angelo & Vito’s rose to the challenge on this particular evening. Ordered at 7:39 p.m., the pie arrived at precisely 8:03, an impressive 11 minutes faster than promised. Those are Lewis Hamilton-like numbers, deserving many points -- perhaps the whole bundle...or at least 80. Sure, the drive only traveled 1.2 miles, a distance anyone with less than a Limbaugh/Rove physique could amble in less than 24 minutes. But accounting for at least two red lights, a number of speed bumps, the vagaries of North Texas roadways, not to mention cooking time, that leaves just five lost minutes. And I’m willing to toss in at least five extra degree of difficulty points for Monday Night Football orders. That puts them at +70 before totaling up style points.
Yes, style matters. And this was just a methodical, Manning-esque delivery. No signs of tarmac ripped apart by earth wrenching torque, no Dukes of Hazzard-style fishtailing through the parking lot -- nothing dramatic or vainglorious. Because, like military brass, I count on a little collateral damage, there would be no additional points but for the driver’s use of a throwback ‘shave and a haircut’ knock. How cool is that? A kind of paean to the days of Brill Cream, Burma Shave and muscle cars worthy of at least 10 points.
So negative 15 for the food, 95 for delivery and the all important intangibles -- that makes for a tolerable night of football. --Dave Faries
