When I was a fat, lazy child, I remember spending hours watching cartoons and thinking to myself how unfairly delicious all the animated food always looked. Everything from preposterously tall sandwiches shuffled together like playing cards to the giant floating slab of raw steak that characters tend to turn into when delirious with starvation. Delicious. But the most delicious of the cartoon delicacies was always pizza.
My god… just look at the way the cheese oozes off of that floppy slice. Who could ask for anything more perfect? Nobody, that’s who. In fact, we can’t even ask for that – our shitty reality doesn’t even come close to replicating this fantasy pizza. The best we can offer is a greasy slice of a pizza cut so wide that you have to fold it in half to manage it into your mouth, instantly destroying all taste buds on contact with second degree burns. And hey, that’s not bad… but sometimes all you want is the visceral chew of cartoon cheese and the delightful flop of a cartoon crust. My friends, Original Pizza II just may offer you that pizza.
Located on Park Blvd and 62nd St N in Pinellas Park, the ironically named Original Pizza II is just a hole-in-the-wall pizza shop with a ridiculous logo and an eight dollar minimum for credit card purchases. They’ve got a fair amount of menu items, a tiny amount of seating, and exactly one Ms. Pac-Man machine. If I had lived near this place while I was in college, I would be 25 pounds heavier and play a MUCH more respectable game of Ms. Pac-Man. The owners seem very friendly and appear to be fairly involved with the community, and they know their way around a pizza.
The pizza here is all about the experience. The crust is crisp and pillowy all at once, with just the right chew to it. And the cheese! My god, the cheese. It’s a perfect, gooey, stretchy, drippy masterwork. The pepperoni is a very standard, nothing out-of-the-ordinary topping… it tastes the same as pepperoni you’ve likely had many times over in your life. And the sauce is practically non-existent, with a barely there sweetness to a plain tomato flavor, used extremely lightly to the point that you’d hardly notice it. All in all, you have a floppy, greasy slice of pizza that looks, feels, and behaves almost exactly like a cartoon pizza. The flavor is good, but nothing special. You get cheesy oily pepperoni flavor in every bite – just pizza, nothing more, nothing less. But like I said, this pizza is all about the experience – texture, viscosity… the physics of pizza. And if you’ve been craving a pizza, this will undoubtedly hit the spot.
I also got an order of ten wings. These were big meaty beasts, brought out piping hot and soaked in a vinegary buffalo-style sauce. The favor is spot-on, but the vinegar is intense to the point that it was a bit difficult for me to get through the wings in a single sitting. These wings were extremely satisfying, though… fried to crisp perfection, and exactly what you want in a generic hot wing from a place that doesn’t specialize in them.
All in all, a great place. The visit (a slice of pepperoni, the ten wings, and a 20oz Coke) ran me just under $13, which isn’t bad. I’d have been better off just getting a couple slices of pizza, but their lunch special wouldn’t have gotten me to the eight dollar minimum I needed to use my credit card. When will we live in a world where it’s understood that nobody carries cash anymore?? Eh whatever. I’ll definitely be going back anyway.
Original Pizza II is located at 6175 Park Blvd, Pinellas Park.
Open Monday through Thursday 11am-10pm, and Friday and Saturday from “11am-?” (according to them). Closed Sundays.
