My first visit to Zachary's Pizza

As the saying goes, there are 2 really great pizza places in the Bay Area: Zachary's Pizza and the Cheeseboard. People who have lived in Norcal know of these two places and often argue over which is better. So, finally, I had my first experience at Zachary's Pizza.

David and I had to make a trip to Emeryville to Ikea. Ikea is cool and all IF the place is empty. It sucks going to Ikea when it is crazy busy. Imagine having these tiny aisles that you need to navigate through but you have shopping carts and little kids running around the shopping carts and all you want is a couple lamps. Then you realize you're on the wrong floor completely and could have avoided some of the crazy kids. Fun, right?! NO. So after the crazy visit to Ikea, David suggested we have dinner at Zachary's Pizza since I had never been. He went one New Years with his family a few years ago.

Using his wonderful iPhone, we looked up directions and made it there in one piece without dying (his GPS was all screwy in Oakland).


Zachary's was insane! There was a line out the door on a Sunday night just before 6pm! When I first entered, it looked like there was no order to the madness but then I realized it was very organized. If you want to eat there, you head up to the greeter and he takes your name and gives you a piece of paper that says approximately when they will have a table ready for you. But, the cool part is that you can then place your order while you are waiting for your table so your food should be ready once you sit down! Neat, huh? You can also order half baked pizza to go which you then finish cooking at home.

We put our name in (about a 45 min wait) and placed our order. We found a nice spot to wait out of the main flow of traffic. We waited about 10 minutes and then they called us! We still had to wait a fair bit for our pizza, but we had free refills that were filled very often (awesome!) and a salad to munch on while we waited. Soon, our order came out: we ordered a small pizza. It was wonderful!!! The pizzas at Zachary's are Chicago style so they have really thick crust. We got the crust stuffed with cheese. It had pepperonis buried under the layer of pizza sauce topped with chunks of tomatoes. MMM! Even tho we ordered a small, we still had leftovers to take home. That's how much pizza you get. It's very deceiving.

So, I had a great first experience at Zachary's. It's not David's favorite kind of pizza cuz he doesn't like tomato chunks, but I LOVE those. Next time we're near East Bay, we'll have to try the Cheeseboard out and see how it compares.