Pizza Rev - Santa Ana

Pizza Rev is the umpteenth build-you-own-pizza restaurant to open in OC. And there are no signs it will be the last. As similar as it is to the others we've seen before, it still attracts a crowd--proof that the market is not quite yet saturated. But if they're all going to be as well-managed and as tasty as Pizza Rev is, then let them come, I say.

The ritual is the same. You get in a line. You pick the sauce. Sauce gets swirled on a flattened dough disc. You pick the cheese. Cheese gets spread on top. Then as you walk with your pizza down the assembly line, other employees put on as much meat (everything from anchovies to spicy chorizo), and as much veggies (everything from artichoke hearts to spinach) as you want. Finally, it's whisked off and then slid into the blistering floor of a dome oven. You find a seat somewhere. The pizza comes out hot, delivered on a pie tin.

No matter how many toppings you managed to pile onto it, you paid the same price as everyone else--$8.

But since all the meats are pre-cooked, you could conceivably make one hell of a meaty entrée salad, which is actually my favorite thing to do here. Bacon, chicken, blue cheese--that's what I load mine up with...everything that makes a Cobb great minus the hard-boiled egg.

Now, it's true that I could patronize similar concepts that do salads instead of pizza. They would have hard-boiled eggs for sure...but care to take a guess why build-you-own-salad joints aren't popping up all over like a disease? Because even if you just want a salad, you still want the possibility of pizza.

Pizza Rev
3605 S Bristol St.
Santa Ana, CA 92704
(714) 708-2587
www.pizzarev.com

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