California Pizza Kitchen

Tonight after work I met the family at California Pizza Kitchen on Park Avenue. As I have mentioned before, it's not that CPK's pizza is that good (certainly not compared with many of the New York-style pizza establishments I have grown accustomed to), but it is familoar and reliable. I wouldn't even necessarily call it pizza exactly; just a distant relative from across the country that bears only a vague resemblance.

I haven't been keeping an exact count, but for about the past 25 times I have been to CPK I have ordered the same item, the California Club pizza on whole wheat dough. Note that those 25 visits have occurred within the past year. Since moving to Manhattan a few months ago the frequency of my visits there has decreased significantly, but in Seattle it was at least a weekly destination.

I am not sure exactly how I got into the rut with the California Club, which is one of their salad pizzas served with lettuce, tomatos, and avocado on top (applied after the pizza is baked, of course). I can't imagine getting a more traditional type of pizza there like pepperoni or sausage, since as stated previously I think there are many better options for that.

Amazingly enough, our five-year-old son's attachment to the kids' Hawaiian pizza goes back even further than my California Club streak. He has frequently vowed that he will never try anything different there for the rest of his life. We are hoping that he reconsiders at some point, but for the present he seems pretty steadfast in his conviction that nothing could be the Hawaiian. As a result of this, he is pretty particular about the exact preparation, and therein a problem has arisen in our visits to CPK since moving here.

In Seattle, a CPK kids' Hawaiian is made definitively with pineapple and Canadian bacon.
However, here in New York, a choice is offered between Canadian bacon and pepperoni. To complicate matters, it is not altogether clear what the default choice is supposed to be. Since we are used to the Seattle version, on at least one previous occasion we have forgotten to specify and wound up with Pepperoni, which our son finds unacceptable. Apparently even as close as it is, the pepperoni version is different enough to be banned along with the rest of the menu choices at CPK from consideration for all time.

On this particular evening we encountered the problem once again. It had been a while since we had been there, and so when ordering we forgot to specify the Canadian bacon explicitly. When the pepperoni-topped pizza arrived, the problem was immediately detected, and a new one was comissioned. The surprising thing in this case was that the second pizza also arrived with pepperoni, even after the clear request.