The Pizza Shop – West St. Paul, MN

There are a couple of mom and pop pizza places near the house that D.Rough and I have been meaning to try. We figured we’d better try the Pizza Shop. It’s a call-in-only kind of place that does car shows in the parking lot on Thursdays during the summer. It always looks like a fun place.

We called in our order and headed down the road to pick it up. They don’t do delivery, but we’re honestly not THAT lazy that we can’t drive down there to pick it up. We ordered a pepperoni and banana pepper pizza and an order of their pizza fries – like cheesy bread.

We rolled in and said our name and they handed over our order. The inside of the place reminded me of some of the pizza places where I grew up. There’s a giant mixer in the back for making their own dough – which rules – and areas where they actually MAKE the pizza, instead of just heating it up. I had a feeling this was going to be good.

We headed back home to eat. I’ll start with the pizza fries. These sound like such a simple thing to make – throw some cheese and garlic on some pizza dough, forget to put the sauce on and bake it. I’m not sure what the Pizza Shop has put in their Pizza Fries, but they’re the best I think I’ve had up here in the Twin Cities. Amazing tasting crust and the cheese is cooked to perfection. It comes with a couple of marinara dipping sauces, which is pretty common. But seriously, these pizza fries are really good.

The pizza was also good, but not mind-blowing like the pizza fries. The pizza is thin crust and has a healthy layer of cheese on it. The pepperoni flavor was awesome and the peppers were just the right amount of zip to make this pizza pop a little bit. We were pretty happy with this pizza.

I assure you we’ll be going back to the Pizza Shop. We’re already coming up with daily excuses to go get those pizza fries. It gets more and more difficult each day talking ourselves OUT of going to get them every time one of us mentions food.

www.thepizzashopweststpaul.com