My family tried all the original pizzas at California Pizza Kitchen. There's only one we'd never order again.
Steven John
- California Pizza Kitchen has four original pizzas that have been on the menu for decades.
- Barbecue chicken and California club were both delicious, but wild mushroom was a favorite.
- However, the California veggie pizza disappointed us, and I wouldn't order it again.
I'm a huge fan of California Pizza Kitchen. I lived in Los Angeles for nearly a dozen years and frequented several locations of the chain during that time.
Luckily, the chain also has a location near my house in New York.
My family and I recently ordered the four original pizzas at CPK — California club, California veggie, barbecue chicken, and wild mushroom — to see which one is best.
We opted to make one of them half plain cheese so my youngest child would have a safer fallback option for dinner. However, it turns out we didn't need it because there were several family favorites.
Here's how the original pies stacked up.
Steven John
Per the CPK website, the California club pizza features avocado, applewood smoked bacon, mayo, fresh lettuce, and tomatoes. We could also add oven-roasted turkey or grilled chicken.
My wife and daughter are vegetarians, so we opted for bacon on just half of the pizza and skipped the added meat.
Although consuming this is a messy affair that almost necessitates eating with utensils (or alone in the dark), the California club is just a delight of a pizza.
The crunch of the lettuce (ours also had arugula), the thick chunks of avocado, and the pizza all complement one another wonderfully in taste and texture.
I appreciated that it had sizable chunks of bacon, the appropriate amount of mayo, and fresh-tasting tomatoes.
Steven John
One of my go-to orders at CPK over the years has always been the original barbecue chicken, which is topped with barbecue sauce, chicken, smoked Gouda, red onions, and cilantro.
Tangy and almost spicy (but with no real kick), this pizza works so well because the relatively few toppings each stand out while also working together.
The onion is potent but not overpowering, the cilantro adds a flash of herbal flavor, the chicken is heaped on generously, and the barbecue sauce ties everything together.
To be fair, my son didn't much care for this pizza, so I can already attest to it not being a universal winner. But he did eat every bite of one piece … and I happily ate the rest of the pizza myself.
Steven John
I loathe mushrooms, so I was glad to have some folks along with me willing to do the hard work of taste-testing. My wife and son both said CPK's wild-mushroom pizza was the best of the night.
And indeed, I'll allow that it looked like one good pizza. It's topped with shaved Cremini mushrooms, extra-virgin olive oil, garlic, slivered scallions, Romano and mozzarella, cheese, and cracked black pepper.
The mushrooms were layered on evenly without being piled up, which helped some of them crisp up.
I'm told the pie's flavor was mildly earthy and vaguely meaty (even though the pizza is vegetarian) and that the blend of cheeses was excellent.
Steven John
Granted, there's a chance that we ended up with a uniquely bad showing of this pizza, but all the other pies seemed normal, so I doubt it. I think everyone in my family just thoroughly dislikes CPK's California veggie pizza.
The pizza comes topped with Broccolini, grilled zucchini, shaved Cremini mushrooms, roasted cherry tomatoes, corn, red onions, and mozzarella. (I picked the mushrooms off, but my wife and son tucked in as-is.)
Usually, a plethora of toppings is welcome on a pie, but in this case, there was too much piled on the crust.
The veggies seemed overcooked and soggy, which negatively affected the texture of the pizza. The pie had hardly any sauce to speak of.
Also, in my opinion, Broccolini has no business being on pizza in the first place. I'm even on the fence about zucchini, but it's a moot point, as this pizza will never be on my table again.
Steven John
The barbecue-chicken pizza was always my go-to, and it still holds up.
Because of the variety of ingredients, the California club is like a salad and entrée in one tasty package — I highly recommend it.
Although I can't vouch for it personally, my family loved the mild, earthy flavors of the wild-mushroom pizza.
The one pie we all agreed to skip in the future was the California veggie. The texture didn't win us over, and it seemed like proof some toppings don't belong on a pizza.
