Duca’s Neapolitan Pizza — 12229 Voyager Parkway #170, Colorado Springs, CO 80921 — Review

© 2014 Peter Free

 

19 March 2014

 

 

Duca’s Neapolitan Pizza (Colorado Springs) is among the worst that the five of us have ever had

 

No kidding.  You have work at it to come up with a product so worth rejecting.

 

 

Test conditions

 

Three pizzas as take outs, early evening, 18 March 2014.  Two margheritas and a separate one with mushroom, meatball, and black olive toppings.

 

Four of the testers are middle-aged.  I’m older than that.  All are pizza fans.  Three of us often make our own pizzas.

 

 

Specifics

 

Skimpiest topping amounts we have ever seen.  Limp-soggy crust.  Too floppy to eat, without first folding it over itself.

 

Unimpressive sauce taste.  Minimal cheese.

 

When my wife opened the boxes, she expressed astonishment about how little there was on each pie in the way of toppings:

 

 

The two margherita pizzas had one lone basil leaf per slice.  Each of these leaves was set atop a thin yellow-orange coating of cheese, which in turn sat on an equally thin coating of tomato-like sauce.

 

The presentation was attractive in minimalist way.  But who wants minimalist food, when he and she are hungry for volume and taste?

 

The alleged meatball topping of the other pizza amounted to a couple of tiny crumbles per slice, with one or two soggy (probably canned) mushroom slices set around them.

 

 

The good — very nice fast food restaurant

 

The shop itself is unusually nice.  So attractive that I expressed the wish to return — but that was before I tasted the pizzas at the motel we were headed to (just a handful of minutes away).

 

The pizza store’s interior’s visual focus is a colorfully tiled and domed oven imported from Italy.  The glass-fronted service counter makes a sharp bend in front of it.  Diners can see everything that the crew is doing.

 

Two sides of the restaurant have large windows that let in lots of light.  The view toward the Front Range is attractive.

 

Duca’s would be a nice place to eat, were it not for the apparent horribleness of its pizzas.

 

 

Considered conclusion

 

These pies were so bad that three of the five testers, each of whom had been frequently working outside on a 30 mph windy and sub-freezing day, refused to take a bite of the third one.  Better to go hungry.

 

Perhaps the three samples we got were anomalies.  However, the five of us were unanimous.  Even the most atrocious grocery store pizza is better than the pies we got.

 

 

One of the testers, whom we used to tease as being Colorado’s version of Martha Stewart, said that it seems as if almost no one in the restaurant business still takes pride in what they make.