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| - Top-quality pizza? Not in my book. This pie does, however, taste identical to the sludgy squares passing for pizza that you'd find in a typical PA public high school cafeteria. I used to live less than 6 city blocks from this place and it was open during Penn Ave. First Fridays, so I ate here on occasion. And after the first bite, I figured out why it is such a success. It takes people here back to their childhoods, and such nostalgia is, for whatever reason, the barometer of "tasty" when it comes to pizza and other convenience foods in Pittsburgh.
As a former longtime resident of the Steel City, I get it. The economy is always tough, salaries are rudely low, Jeffy Romoff owns most everything (aside from whatever the banks sucked up, while you, the taxpayer, has the honor of footing the bill), and in most neighborhoods, being a homeowner entails feigning the requisite sense of deep delight at your weekly Saturday sessions spent giving the lawn a buzz cut that any military officer would salute. Those pressures can add up, kindling fond memories for the institutional government lunches you ate every weekday between September and early June before you turned 18 and were on your own. Simply put, Spak's takes you back to a simpler time, with pricing to match.
But Pittsburgh was never simple for me -- living at a subsistence level ain't fun after a while -- so when my spouse and I skip home cooking for fast casual pizza, I want to TASTE the flavors. I'm afraid I just wasn't enchanted with the offerings at Spak's. It's not their fault, either. They're simply catering to the market, and they know it well. Many longtime Pittsburghers have learned to expect very little (o hai!), so when a restaurant serves anything vegetarian at all, it instantly becomes a hit. But I want more. I want food that is marginally better than what you'll find at a typical Rust Belt public high school. If you do too, this is not the type of pizza parlor you'll want to spend your scarce free time visiting.
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