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| - Vacation time spent by a trip to see the family is generally rife with compromises. After failing to produce an agreement on anything we all really wanted, we ended up at the somewhat unfortunately named BJ's Brewhouse.
I half expected to see gaggles of teenage boys and tweenage girls (of roughly the same maturity level) stifling giggles about what "BJ" might stand for, but did not. The other half expected the food to be disappointing and for me to be already longing for some good Szechuan before I'd been in Arizona 2 hours, and pleasantly did not experience that either. Standard chain decor, standard chain service, standard ratio of operational to non-operational men's room stalls (non-zero.)
We opted for the stealth $20 email special of a shared medium pizza (any specialty or number of toppings), a shared "pizookie" dessert and individual soup or salad which I would strongly recommend since normally a specialty pizza itself is $20.
The starter? Minestrone with a bit of cheese. Italian. Adequate. Unremarkable.
The pizza? A paradoxically Chicago-style Southwestern, like a chain boutique version of Pizza Hut. Solid crust, great by Seattle standards (low.)
The dessert? A very thin (Peanut Butter, among the 5+ varieties) cookie in a pancake-sized tin topped with vanilla ice cream. I was more preoccupied with whether Madame K's Pizza Brothel, er, Bistro in Seattle copied the Screaming Orgasm from them or vice-versa (and thinking they would have been better off to copy BJ's pizza) than the experience of the sweet cookie.
The verdict? For optimizing any particular aspect, one could do better elsewhere, but the pizza is quite good among mostly forgettable accompaniments. Chains are generally compromise candidates, and in that vein, BJ's Brewhouse performs the job.
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