California Pizza Kitchen Gluten Free Pizza Review

California Pizza Kitchen
The salad was small and would make a good appetizer for one person. The plating was sloppy but they were extremely busy so we shrugged that off. The salad was good and the blue cheese dressing was awesome! There was plenty of hard boiled egg, tomatoes, and apple wood smoked bacon. We are bacon freaks and to us the bacon was just ok. It was overly smokey flavored and Alan said it reminded him of bacon bits. But really who comes to a pizza place for a salad? I was ready to dig in to some gluten free pizza pie. They had four to choose from BBQ Chicken, Mushroom Sausage and Pepperoni, Pepperoni, and Margherita. We chose the first two.
A good thing to note when ordering is that the menu specifies you tell your waiter/waitress if you have celiac or any allergies. The manager is then alerted to oversee the making of your pizza in a special area with separate gloves, utensils, toppings, pans, ect. The manager even brings out gluten free pizzas personally to your table. The pizzas did not take terribly long to arrive at our table. And it was extremely nice to have the added assurance that a manager brought the pizzas to you and had overseen the whole pizza making process. The pizzas looked beautiful. The crust was nice and brown and crispy on the edges. The bottom was lightly golden brown. The toppings were large in size and plentiful. The pepperoni were as big as my hand and the sausage pieces were huge! The chunks of chicken on the BBQ Chicken looked juicy and were large as well! Of course we took tons of photos before we dug in.
The crust was soft and slightly chewy in a good way and the edges were fantastically crunchy on both pizzas. I really enjoyed both flavors that we tried. The BBQ sauce on the BBQ Chicken Gluten Free Pizza was sweet and tangy much like a Sweet Baby Rays style sauce. The chicken was moist and delicious too. The sausage and mushrooms had a ton of flavor and the pepperoni were large and tasty as well. The pizzas could have done with more cheese and sauce, but it is hard to balance toppings on a gluten free pizza. Too many and the crust just gets soggy. I gladly take abundant meat toppings over extra sauce any day. Alan being a guy who likes light sauce on his pizza pies thought the ratios were perfect. The service was outstanding the whole time we were there. Our teas were refilled promptly and we were politely asked a few times if we needed anything and asked how the pizza was. If the location was not so far from my home I would definitely go to California Pizza Kitchen for Gluten Free Pizza often. I was surprised at the lack of Gluten Free choices on the rest of their menu. There were no GF appetizers, soups, or desserts. They had about four salads to choose from and the three small plates I mentioned earlier. That is it. But really who cares. We come to a pizza place for the pizza, right? We had ordered two ten inch pizzas and ended up taking one slice of each home. After all, what is a pizza review without the cold pizza test? It was hard to save those two pieces, but I did it all for you guys because I love you 🙂
The pizza was not my favorite when it was cold. The toppings and flavors were marvelous, but I found the crust a bit too chewy when eaten cold. Alan on the other hand is not a fan of cold pizza in general. I made him take the test too. Surprisingly he said it is his favorite pizza that he has tried cold so far. That is quite a compliment and shows that there are as many tastes as there are people in this world. Overall the California Pizza Kitchen Gluten Free Pizza is an all around winner for us.