Restaurant Review: Blue Line Pizza

Blue Line Pizza - dinner on November 14, 2014

I met some friends for dinner and we wanted to try out a new pizza place on Castro St in Mountain View. My friend, Queen of Cheap Eats, and I discovered it when we met for dinner at Asian Box beforehand. Since then, we've decided to meet with a couple of other friends once a month to try out new restaurants up and down Castro. Given the plethora of choices (think of Castro St in Mountain View as like an outdoor shopping mall but instead of stores, both sides of the street are lined with restaurants one after the other), it would take us a year just to cover one block.

This time around, we went with Blue Line Pizza as yelp reviews claimed their deep dish pizza was like Zachary's in Berkeley or Patxi's (pronounced "pah-cheese") in Palo Alto. That's enough to get any of us to try it. Turns out they don't take reservations and initially there was going to be a 20-minute wait for a table but some people left when I got there and fortunately, we were able to get seated within a couple of minutes.

The inside of Blue Line is a bit small and shaped like a rectangle. It's the typical real estate of most of the restaurants on Castro. There's also outdoor seating but it was starting to get chilly enough that we opted for an indoor table.

Half "Classic" and half Canadian bacon and pineapple

It can sometimes be a bit tricky to share pizza with friends who might have different tastes. There are only a few toppings I like on my pizza so I've gotten used to picking off unwanted toppings on my piece(s) rather than limiting what others want. But fortunately, Blue Line allows you to order half and half on their pizza. So we got a half Classic (sausage, mushrooms, onions and green bells) and half Canadian bacon and pineapple. I know some people don't like the Canadian bacon and pineapple combo but I love it. If I can't have meat lovers or sausage and pepperoni, my go-to are Canadian bacon and pineapple.

Deep dish always take a bit longer to bake than thin crust; I think ours came out after 20-25 minutes. I love pizza but I have to vehemently disagree with whoever thinks Blue Line Pizza is like Zachary's or Patxi's. No. Way. It wasn't awful but I guess my expectations were too high because I didn't think it was that great. The "deep dish" wasn't very deep at all and it wasn't like it was overflowing with toppings either, at least not on the Canadian bacon and pineapple side. They also overbaked it because the crust was dry and, unlike Patxi's, not very buttery. Bummer.

Caramel Apple Bread Pudding

Fortunately, we ordered dessert in the form of Caramel Apple Bread Pudding. There were only 2 dessert choices on the menu plus a special for the night. The other dessert and the special were some form of cheesecake, the one dessert I won't eat ever so the bread pudding was the optimal choice for all of us. At first we were leery because our waitperson described the bread pudding as being made from the same bread that the pizza crust is made of. Uh, the dry, overbaked pizza crust we just ate, you mean? But we were risk takers and decided to chance it. Luckily, the gamble paid off as the bread pudding was excellent. Maybe because being soaked in custard and doused with caramel sauce prevents it from being dry (seriously, you'd have to completely defy the baking gods to make a dry bread pudding). The taste was good and so ended the dinner on a high note.

Afterwards, I wondered if our dry pizza was just a fluke. Some other friends went another night and had the meatball sub deep dish. They said theirs was fine. Huh.