{"id":419,"date":"2010-04-11T15:32:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T20:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/?p=419"},"modified":"2010-07-29T15:00:17","modified_gmt":"2010-07-29T20:00:17","slug":"zaza-fine-salad-wood-oven-pizza-co","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/italian-cuisine\/zaza-fine-salad-wood-oven-pizza-co\/","title":{"rendered":"Zaza Fine Salad & Wood-Oven Pizza Co"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com<\/h4>\n
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Zaza's Pizza - Picture by Shannon Sturgis<\/p><\/div>\n

My son wanted to\u00a0have a brick-oven pizza at Zaza\u2019s in the Heights so I happily obliged.\u00a0 We have been to Zaza\u2019s a few times in the past and it is worth revisiting.\u00a0\u00a0I had never approached the place from a critics standpoint and looked forward to the experience.<\/p>\n<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n

I took my two boys with me at Noon on Sunday for pizza and salad.\u00a0 Zaza\u2019s is a very casual pizza place located behind what used to be the Heights Theater.\u00a0 It\u00a0is owned and operated by two owners, Scott McGehee and John Beachboard.\u00a0 They happen to be the originators of Boulevard Bread Company and Zaza\u2019s is\u00a0the latest creation.\u00a0 I recently read that they are going national with the store and have made business arrangements to form a chain out of it.\u00a0 Very impressive.<\/p>\n

They have an upstairs, downstairs, and a outside eating area.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t many tables, and they are almost always full, but people move in an out quickly.\u00a0 You order your food by going through a marked line that is close to the entrance.\u00a0 You can request any of the salads, pizzas, or subs from the menu board or ask to have one made with the exact toppings you want.\u00a0 This is where you can go crazy as there are many items to be had on a pizza, salad, or sub (sandwich.)\u00a0 The salads are huge and my oldest son had the chicken Caesar salad.\u00a0 His salad had large chunks of chicken in it with fresh shaved Parmesan cheese mixed in.\u00a0 The salads are made while you order them and my son was able to take it with him to our table.<\/p>\n

I ordered their standard pepperoni pizza for my youngest son and the house-made Italian sausage pizza for myself.\u00a0 I had sun-dried tomatoes and feta added to my pizza to enhance the flavor a bit.\u00a0 The pizzas are all cooked in their large brick oven and are done within just a few minutes.\u00a0 They are very thin, but not crispy.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to describe but if you have ever had brick oven pizza you will instantly recognize the food.<\/p>\n

You pay after you place your order and proceed to the drink area to fill up your sodas, water, or tea.\u00a0 You also pick up your plates, napkins, and utensils\u00a0in the drink area.\u00a0 They have a gelato counter for when you want\u00a0 to order dessert.\u00a0 Gelato is more akin to a sorbet than ice-cream and has a light flavor.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t had the gelato at Zaza\u2019s; therefore, I can\u2019t comment on how good (or bad) it is.\u00a0 Maybe next time. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

We sat upstairs and waited for our food to come out.\u00a0 I watched the patrons down below and also paid attention to the pizza makers putting the food together.\u00a0 As I watched them make the pizzas I did notice that they use very little sauce and slices of cheese.\u00a0 They also only cover about\u00a0half of the pizza with toppings.\u00a0 I used to work at a pizza restaurant and this is a bit puzzling as I\u2019m used to pizza toppings that cover everything.\u00a0 You would think that at around $11 a pizza they could afford more toppings.<\/p>\n

There are about seven tables upstairs and a couple of televisions in view to watch.\u00a0 There is also a setup of Guitar Hero on one wall to keep kids entertained.\u00a0 The tables are casual and are accompanied by plastic chairs.\u00a0 We did have to ask them to turn the air conditioner off as it gets very cold upstairs.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing that the kitchen staff are plenty warm and keep it turned down since this is the second time in a row I\u2019ve had to ask for the place to be warmer.\u00a0 They complied and within about\u00a0fifteen minutes our food was delivered to our table.<\/p>\n

I first tried the pepperoni pizza which is made with fresh mozzarella, basil, large pieces of pepperoni, and large slivers of sliced Parmesan cheese.\u00a0 The tomato sauce had a very nice flavor to it and I could taste the basil clearly.\u00a0 The dough is chewy but not too much so.\u00a0 The pepperoni tasted good and I loved the Parmesan cheese shavings.\u00a0 The pizza was a little on the salty side and after it cooled down it felt greasy.\u00a0 You can expect a lighter tasting pizza from Zaza\u2019s given the style (brick oven) and lack of toppings.\u00a0 Due to the lack of toppings\u00a0I had to make an effort to obtain a slice with pepperoni or Parmesan\u00a0on it.\u00a0 Overall the ingredients tasted very fresh and the pizza was far and above better than what I would expect\u00a0from a chain store.<\/p>\n

Next up I had\u00a0the Italian Sausage pizza.\u00a0 It had sun-dried tomatoes and feta added to it as I mentioned earlier.\u00a0 The Italian Sausage pizza comes with arugula, sliced Parmesan cheese, red sauce, green bell peppers, and a few other cheeses.\u00a0 It had a great taste to it and I really enjoyed it.\u00a0 The only thing I would change is to add more ingredients.\u00a0 On more than one slice I had to move toppings around to have one of everything.<\/p>\n

Overall, they have\u00a0good fresh brick oven pizza and huge salads.\u00a0 Their pizza could use more toppings and they need to keep the salt in check.\u00a0\u00a0Chains like Pizza Hut pale in comparison to the quality of Zaza\u2019s and that is something they should be proud of.\u00a0 I know I\u2019ll be going back.<\/p>\n

5600 Kavanaugh Blvd.
\nLittle Rock, Arkansas
\n10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday
\n10:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday\u00a0
\nNoon-7 p.m Sunday<\/p>\n

\"Zaza<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com My son wanted to\u00a0have a brick-oven pizza at Zaza\u2019s in the Heights so I happily obliged.\u00a0 We have been to Zaza\u2019s a few times in the past and it is worth revisiting.\u00a0\u00a0I had never approached the place from a critics standpoint and looked forward to the experience. I took my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,4,205],"tags":[132,13,112,133,45,72,73,131,130],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-italian-cuisine","category-reviews","tag-brick","tag-italian","tag-little","tag-oven","tag-pizza","tag-restaurant","tag-review","tag-rock","tag-zaza"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":619,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}