Promised Delivery Time: 45 minutes

Actual Delivery Time: 33 minutes

Scoring Summary:
Easy Order Taking: 10
Partially Mucking Up My Order: 5
Repeatedly Being Told "God Bless You" By Delivery Driver: 30
Having to Eat Without Raccoons and Possums Begging for Food at My Feet: 30
Total: 75

I have a problem. Being a former New Yorker and once living in Italy, I have high standards for pizza. The closest I have come to New York and/or Italian pizza is that from Jay Jerrier's mobile pizza-oven operation, Il Cane Rosso. Jerrier's pies blow my mind! I have another problem. Being new to Dallas, I haven't had much opportunity to scope out restaurants with a delivery service. I did, however, find Roma's Pizza & Restaurant, a joint where the local wildlife begs for food at the feet of diners unlucky enough to be seated on the porch. I could have ordered the pasta sampler (lasagna, manicotti and ravioli), something that would most assuredly be a gluten-heavy gut bomb drowned in disastrous, lukewarm sauce. But not having eaten pizza since munching greedily on Cane Rosso's Capricciosa, I chose the 12-inch prosciutto pizza, one of the eatery's signature pizzas. The online menu promised it would come topped with prosciutto, extra virgin olive oil, whole-milk mozzarella, ricotta, feta and gorgonzola.

Ordering over the phone was a debacle worse than when friend and I attempted to order dumplings at a Flushing, Queens, Chinatown shack where only Cantonese was spoken. Thankfully, the pizza arrived at my apartment in a shorter amount of time than it took to place the order. Our delivery driver was so friendly, he said "God Bless You" three times--and nobody had sneezed.

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Promised delivery time: 35-40 minutes
Actual delivery time: 22 minutes

THE SCORE
Delivery earlier than promised: 20 Points
No online ordering: Minus 5 Points
No MSG: 10 Points
Fresh tasting food: 40 Points
Food securely packaged: 10 Points

TOTAL: 75 points

E-mail menus, snail-mail menus, and door-hanger menus. Where would we be without them? Whether you live downtown, uptown or in the swingin' suburbs, you probably rely on a combination of these menus whenever you want to order delivery, at least until you can start to develop old favorites. When I first moved to my neighborhood a few years back, I was receiving new ones weekly, if not daily. Lately, the trend seems to have slowed as the area is building up, so I was particularly pleased to receive a new advertisement for Lin's China Diner, a College Station import that has branched into Big D.

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​Old World Sausage Company
Farmer's Market Shed #2
1010 S. Pearl Expressway
214-760-9000
oldworldsausagecompany.com

Estimated Delivery Time: 60 minutes
Actual Delivery Time: 75 minutes

Not having to order Chinese food or pizza: 20
Friendliest service encountered during Knockers review: 40
Excellent selection of Chicago deli classics: 20
Late delivery: -10
Orders by fax: 10
Neon relish: 5
Total: 85

Death and taxes may be life's only guarantees, but here at the Observer headquarters there's a third: free shit.

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Take care kids: You drink too much, you can end up with pears on your pizza.

LA Gourmet Pizza
2709 McKinney Ave.
214-981-9337

Quoted time: 40-45 minutes
Actual arrival time: 30 minutes

Extensive menu: 20
Lots of cool toppings: 20
Out of certain toppings: -5
Very nice phone and delivery guys: 15
Pears: 5
Whole-wheat crust option. Cool. : 15
Whole-wheat crust execution: -5
Tasty salad dressings:10
Detailed receipt: 5
Pricey: -5
Score: 75

Nursing a hangover last Sunday morning, (sorry, Mom) I had no intention of leaving the comfort of my bed. I've wanted to try LA Gourmet Pizza for some time, so I decided there couldn't be a better time to give the McKinney pizzeria a call.

God bless them for being open at 11 a.m. on a Sunday.

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i Fratelli Pizza
2208 Dallas Parkway
972-608-8833

Promised Delivery Time: 30 minutes
Actual Delivery Time: 26 minutes

The Score
No delivery fee or fuel surcharge: 10 points
Polite, professional order-taker: 15 points
No online ordering: -5 points
Delivering sooner than promised: 20 Points
Consistently good quality from expanding local chain: 20 Points
Having a pizza on menu that has everything I want: 20 Points
Excellent House Salad: 6 points
TOTAL: 86 Points

In the ultra-competitive world of pizza delivery, you're only as good as your last pie. When the Observer first rated the Greenville Avenue location of i Fratelli Pizza, we gave it an excellent score. Still, that was 15 months ago, and restaurants, particularly chains, can suffer a steep drop-off in quality if they're not careful. With this in mind, seemed time to see if the product of this ever-expanding local institution could still pass muster.

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​Jiang's Chinese & Japanese Cuisine 6912 Snider Plaza, 214-361-8220
Promised Delivery Time: 45-60 minutes
Actual Delivery Time: 90 minutes

Simple ordering process that doesn't take a year to do: 40
Keeping a hungry lady starving: -20
Having a gagillion menu items to choose from: 20
Having a gagillion things to choose from when you're indecisive: -5
Kung Pao Beef that actually has a Kung Pao taste to it: 25

Total: 60

When we first started "How 'Bout Them Knockers" in the fall of 2008, I was excited because this lady loves delivery food. As much as I enjoy cooking and cleaning the dishes afterwards, I still get a thrill when someone does all the work for me and then delivers it to my door. Well, fast forward to present day and 70+ Knocker posts later, it's my turn again to test out another delivery joint. After contributing 11 of my own posts while living in three different neighborhoods over the past year and half, my head was about to explode trying to figure from where I could order.

I thought about cooking my own dinner, developing a fake restaurant, printing out cute little menus, and then hiring a friend to dress up as a delivery person for a few photo ops, but that was too much work. I even thought about going through diningin.com again, but considering I've done that a few times in the past and a few City of Aters call it cheating, I decided that was no longer an option. Where was a girl suppose to find a good set of Knockers after exhausting all of her other ideas?

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​Delivering Dim Sum after 3:00 - 30 Dealing with my OCD - 20 Surprisingly Decent Dim Sum Delivered - 25 Chuckling cheeseburger remark - 10 Total - 85

J.S. Chen's Restaurant
240 Legacy Dr. #118, Plano
972.517.2332

It has been a long and unseasonably warm week in the City of Ate and I found myself staring down the double barrel question of what's for dinner, and more importantly who was going to make it..Having lived through a particularly rough week it no doubt was one of those Knockers nights I convinced myself as I rummaged through that drawer that housed all the forgotten menus of dinners past.

I was never one to use the many delivery services available in town as it feels unholy allowing a third party come between me and my dinner. This makes delivery dining much more limited and generally in the hands of two of the most industrious restaurateurs in the business today: the Chinese American and the Italian American.

What makes Chinese and Italian food so delightfully deliverable? I pondered this question as I filtered through the many choices of pizzas and kung pao. Not sure what I was looking for because I knew there would not be a menu featuring crab dinners or a random Indian haunt that would whisk saag paneer to my stoop.

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​Delivery Time: 45 Minutes (No Time Quoted)

Having To Go Outside To Direct Delivery Man: Minus Five Points

Extensive Array Of Offerings And Pizza Toppings: 30 Points

Small Pizza A Little Too Small For The Price: Minus Five Points

Finally Putting Enough Sauce On A Pizza: 30 Points

Use Of Pecans In Delivery Salad: Five Points

Tasting Better Than Average Delivery Pizza: 25 Points

Total: 80 Points

Back in the days of yore, when old-time pizza parlors such as Shakey's and Crystal's were considered state of the art, a pizza was generally a carefully concocted blend. Just enough crust (usually thin in those days), a careful blend of toppings and spices, and sufficient layers of sauce and cheese yielded a pizza that was memorable for its time. Seldom truly great, but rather quite good and filling. Then double cheese and triple meats became all the rage, and I believe that in the resulting madness, the essential art of balance was lost. In many of these tricked-out pies, you could barely taste any sauce at all underneath the enormous freight of extra toppings.

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​Uncle Wok
8440 Abrams Road
214-343-6670

Promised time: 45 minutes
Actual time: 40.5 minutes

The Score:

Ability to make my mouth water during ordering process: 20

Food arriving smokin' hot: 40

Nutritional Value: -95

Knowing that with a name like Uncle Wok, you have to open a restaurant: 100

Total: 65
Uncle Wok is my favorite uncle. He lives in a nice part of town, and he makes (and sometimes even delivers) Chinese food for me whenever I call him. What? Some people personify their cars and plants, I happen to personify my favorite restaurants. If you call that crazy, I call you absofuckinglutely right so you'd better not make fun of me. Because I'm looney tunes. I might come over and play guitar horribly at you, Lee DeWyze style. Yeah. Fear it.
But seriously, Uncle Wok's is great.

Exhibit A: The Case of the Missing Pu Pu
One time, I walked into Uncle Wok and asked if my pick-up order was ready. They were like, "Alice who? You didn't order from us." And I was all, "Yeah, I did. This is Skillman Wok, right? I'm at the wrong frikkin' wok." (Ridiculously fungry stomach repeatedly punches me in the uterus.) My mind starts racing because it's all low-blood sugared and my already out of whack dinner timeline has just been MacGrubered. And I'm suddenly imagining everybody around me as giant food items (Hell yeah, Giant Turkey Leg was there), just like in the movies. Because, that shit is real. They go, "What did you order from Skillman Wok? We'll make it."

Uncle Wok FTW. Pick up, delivery. I'm brand loyal forever and ever.

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​Carmine's Pizzeria
2006 San Jacinto
214-220-9039

Quote Time: 45 minutes

Actual Time: An impressive 35 minutes

Pricey: -20
Coupons: 10
Interesting Specialty Pizzas: 25
Health Conscious Low-Fat Mozzarella: 15
Crispy Bacon!: 15
Fresh Toppings Selection: 15
Basic Pasta and Appetizer Selection: 10
Split pizza orders, even with Specialty menu: 20
Guy on the phone was nice: 10
Guy on the phone was also creepy (I don't do slimy or like nicknames): -10

Total score: 80

I have a problem: I hoard take-out menus. Not only do I collect way more menus than I'll ever use, but I have a compulsion to order from every menu that slides through my apartment door...and I do it in style. I've been known to order delivery of up to $60 of food for a household of two adults and one fat dog. My boyfriend looks on in disbelief and wonders why we can't just get Pizza Hut. Amateur.

Not being that impressed with our nearby pizza options, I wasn't overly excited when I walked into our apartment one day and found a Carmine's menu on our kitchen floor. The menu options, however, spurred my curiosity. California Pepperoni Pizza with spinach and bacon? Before I knew it, I had done it again. I ordered five different types of pizza. Luckily, Carmine's allows split pizza orders, so technically, I ordered only three pizzas.

Carmine's calls its pizza "New York Style," a term overly misused. Herein lies my main grievance with the pizza. Once something is labeled, whether something is merely good or not is less important. Instead, the scrutiny falls upon whether the execution of said something justifies the labeling. Sadly, when I eat Carmine's pizza, all I can think about is how it fails as New York-style, as opposed to how much I like the pizza's inventiveness and ingredients.

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