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| - Note #1: CASH ONLY!
Note #2: JB's does deliver, but within a limited range. After calling JB's once before, I found that they don't deliver to Beechview and didn't deliver to me when I lived in East Brookline.
Note #3: There is seating, but it is limited to a few stools placed in front of video game terminals. It is virtually a takeout-only establishment.
According to the sheet that lists their menu, JB's has quietly existed on a side street in Overbrook since 1977, making pizza, hoagies, and wedgies (read on) for only those in the loop. Let's stare the gorilla square in the eye here, unless you live in this section of Pittsburgh, you probably have no idea JB's exists. I didn't know of it until sometime in 1995 when I carpooled with a co-worker to Hills Department store in Bethel Park, and she took this shortcut.
It is literally a house -- a plain, alabaster house. And it is very easy to miss unless you decide to drive on lonely, old, foreboding-after-dark Transport Street for some reason, happen to catch a glimpse of it while heading down Library Road, or are speeding by on the busway or trolley line. Unless of course, you KNOW it is there.
Well, I did know it was there, and for the past 17 years, I was moderately vexed by that knowledge, particularly when I joined Yelp in 2009 and JB's remained unreviewed.
Kay didn't want to cook and wanted pizza. After arguing with her over this for about an hour, I finally prevailed upon her to retrieve a takeout order from JB's...for Yelp's sake.
I ordered 3 things: A 10 inch round crust pizza with bacon as the only topping, a "small" (6 inch) meatball hoagie, and a Wedgie.
Possibly named after the vicious and lewd school prank, as far as I know, wedgies aren't sold anywhere else in the country. Essentially, the wedgie is a hybrid of a hoagie, a calzone, and a folded-over pizza with whatever fillings are on the menu: steak, Italian, etc.
JB's version of this (a number of other area pizza parlors sell wedgies as well) has a slim, crackly crust. Mine was an Italian and had ham, veggies, cheese, and dressing inside. So yes, it's a trapezoid sandwich with pizza cuts as the bread, and while I could have used a little more meat, this contented my breadbasket and taste cells.
JB's pizzas come in round crust and square crust varieties and in 4 and 5 sizes respectively (rounds come in 10 inch, 12 inch, 14 inch, and 16 inch sizes and the squares come in 4 cut, 6, cut, 8 cut. 12 cut, and 16 cut portions. why the squares are listed by 'cuts' instead of inches I can't tell you). Our bacon 10 inch pizza was oilier than a Ponzi scheme promoter and had a wax paper sheet on top of it. The bacon was sprinkled on in completely atomized fashion. The cheese was the consistency of rubber cement. The crust was similar to the wedgie's albeit somewhat cushier. Nonetheless, my hunger defenestrated objectivity for the moment. JB's purports on their menu that their pizzas consist of "Fresh Dough - No Sugar -Homemade Sauce." So if ya want sugar, go to Fiori's. I kid the overrated Brookline fixture. Movin' on...
The meatball hoagie (served in Small, Medium, and Large, which is rare around here) had a burnt bun, SLICED meatballs (why? to stretch 'em out?) and sauce (the same used for the pizza obviously) that was blandly chunky. Whether or not this is a good thing, I'm not sure, but I saw lots of empty cans of tomatoes sitting about. Is fresh always better? Is it acceptable to use a mix of both canned and fresh tomatoes? Regardless, I think more seasoning is in order.
Call me a softie, but I want to give JB's a 4 for reasons even I don't understand. Perhaps it's because I occasionally crave the dingy, the rinky-dink, and the greasy.
I've got it. Consider my rating a high 2. There. All done.
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