I will be the first to admit that my experiences with pizza are few and far between. Not that I hate it, but I prefer fish and chips instead. Also, pizza is quite expensive and the choices that I’ve sampled so far leave a lot to be desired.
That said, I found myself at Pepino’s Pizza on Tuesday for a working lunch. Pepino’s Pizza is located on Kimathi Street and usually has a ‘Buy One, Get One’ free offer daily. It is a popular hangout spot for college students and is usually very busy. On Tuesdays, they have their ‘Buy a Large Pizza’ at Kshs 499 offer. I’ve gone there once before for the same offer and there were so many people that my friend and I had to literally walk through the whole sitting area looking for empty seats. This time it was very quiet and, since it was noon, the lunch hour crowd had yet to show up. We ordered our pizzas and went to sit down as we waited for them to get ready. They have this disc thing they give you after you place your order, and it starts flashing and making noise when it is ready so that you can go collect it.
We had the buy one, get one free offer so we ordered two pizzas, one with chicken and the other one with beef.
I’m a meat lover, and I was very disappointed that I could easily count the pieces of meat on my pizza. Like, I didn’t expect them to cover my pizza in meat, but at some point, it felt like we just eating the overpriced dough. The red sauce was practically nonexistent, it was mostly dry, flaky dough. They also went way overboard with the cheese and it was all over the place. It wasn’t the good cheese that bubbles, stretches and has life… This kind just lay there and made an otherwise okay meal downright mediocre. The pizza had no flavour at all, and we were even unable to finish the pizza.
I’ve had pizza at Pepino’s before, and it was delicious. What I had on Tuesday was anything but. It felt like pizza for pizza’s sake, you know? Like the ingredients were just thrown together haphazardly and left to bake. Like no one had made any effort whatsoever to give it flavour or make sure the ingredients were measured correctly.
One thing I commend Pepino’s Pizza for is the art on the wall. From whimsical drawings of food, fantastic pictures and sayings, it is a space guaranteed to make you appreciate food and want to eat. I also love the videos of food usually shown on their huge TV, it always gets me in the mood.
I’ve heard many people say that Pepino’s Pizza is a decent pizza but based on my recent experience, I strongly disagree.
