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Robin Garr

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Blaze Pizza is burning up the franchise map

by Robin Garr » Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:25 am

Blaze Pizza is burning up the franchise map

LEO's Eats with Robin Garr

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"My name is Robin, and I am a pizza snob."

There. I said it, and I'm not even sorry.

I used to be an anti-snob, as I still tend to be about wine, and jewelry, and cars, and a lot of other earthly possessions some people acquire to support their sense of identity and purpose. I don't drive a Beemer or Lexus, I don't wear a Rolex, I don't drink Dom Perignon.

But where I once laughed at refugee friends from the Northeastern metropoli who would bang on about bloated, overloaded Louisville-style pizza resembling giant disks of cheesy casserole, I have slithered over to the side of darkness. A few years of living in New York City and a regular practice of food and wine trips to Italy will do that, I guess.

But I do try not to be a fundamentalist about it. After all, just about any pizza is better than no pizza at all. I'll try any pizza once, and if it's local, I may even give it a second chance.

So say hello to Blaze Pizza, which opened the week before last in St. Matthews Plaza (neighbor to Trader Joe's and Penzey's) amid considerable publicity and hordes lured by an honest offer of free pizza all day.

Blaze is a chain, but the Pasadena, Calif.-based outfit claims a strong Louisville tie with onetime U of L and NBA hoops star Ulysses "Junior" Bridgeman and James and Jim Patterson among others at the wheel of the regional franchise. It's coming on fast, too, having only 10 properties across the nation last year but aiming to add 45 more in 2014 in pursuit of a 230-unit spread, according to trade publication Franchise Chatter.

And let's face it, it's a pretty good pie: cracker-crisp and sweetly charry, so paper-thin that a whole personal pie packs only 384 crust calories. With a production line based on custom-built product made while you watch and slapped into a blazing hot "Fast Fire'd" oven (no charge for the extra apostrophe), they can have your pizza sizzling in front of you in three minutes or so.


Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/blaze ... nchise-map
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/blaze-pizza ... nchise-map

Blaze Pizza
4600 Shelbyville Road
895-7800
http://blazepizza.com
Robin Garr's rating: 80 points
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Ron H

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Re: Blaze Pizza is burning up the franchise map

by Ron H » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:00 am

Having eaten Blaze a few times now, one of my favorite things about them is that you can have a pizza with every topping they have in the store without paying extra for it. Just the other night my wife brought me home a pizza with pepperoni, bacon, pineapple, green peppers, fresh basil, roasted garlic, cherry tomatoes, onions, meatballs, jalapenos, and banana peppers, and I'm probably forgetting a few things that were on there. That's a spectacular deal for sheer mass alone, and to get that for less than $8 is kind of astounding given the general tightness of most places about toppings.
"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something." - Mitch Hedberg
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RonnieD

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Re: Blaze Pizza is burning up the franchise map

by RonnieD » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:18 am

thank you Robin. We grammar nazis are slightly appeased by your efforts. :wink:
Ronnie Dingman
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The Farm
La Center, KY
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Robin Garr

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Re: Blaze Pizza is burning up the franchise map

by Robin Garr » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:47 am

RonnieD wrote:thank you Robin. We grammar nazis are slightly appeased by your efforts. :wink:

You're welcome! But ... um ... what perzackly did I do? :mrgreen:
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Re: Blaze Pizza is burning up the franchise map

by RonnieD » Wed Jul 09, 2014 2:34 pm

"into a blazing hot "Fast Fire'd" oven (no charge for the extra apostrophe)"

although you could have said "no charge for the extra, needless and baffling, apostrophe" :mrgreen:
Ronnie Dingman
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The Farm
La Center, KY

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