Review – Blue Line Pizza

Theresa had sampled pizza from Blue Line Pizza delivered during one of her workplace lunches and enjoyed it so much, she wanted to take me there over this past weekend. Blue Line has 4 locations in the Bay Area, so we decided to hit the Burlingame location on our way up to San Francisco.

Blue Line has both deep dish Chicago style pizza as well as thin crust pizza. The deep dish is what they are known for and so that is what we ordered one with sausage and pepperoni. Since it takes 20-25 minutes to come out, we ordered  their spicy wings as an appetizer.

The spicy wings were the dry, non-breaded variety, served steaming hot with a side of blue cheese dressing and carrots. The dry rubbed spices provided a nice bit of initial heat, but of the “short burn” variety, so it won’t blow out your palate for the rest of the meal. The wings were well seasoned  throughout and not dry, leading me to believe they were brined before being dry rubbed and run through the fryer or broiler, differentiating it from wing joints like Wingstop and Buffalo Wild Wings, which fry and then toss wings in a sauce or dry rub.  Each order comes with 1lb of wings, which in our case turned out to be 8 wings.  Would definitely recommend trying this if you are a fan of wings, and almost definitely order these if you arrive hungry and can’t stand waiting the 25 minutes needed to bake a deep dish pizza.

The deep dish pizza is typical Chicago style, with the cheese and traditional pizza toppings being sandwiched between the crust and a layer of tomato sauce. The crust really shines here, giving the pizza a nice crunch while not being overly hard or plywood like, and giving nice structural support to all the toppings.  When hot, this is definitely the domain of the fork and knife, as using hands will result in constant bobbling or singed fingers. The sauce was “chunky” style with large bits of tomato mixed in with Italian spices. By itself, the sauce was a bit on the salty (for my taste at least) and acidic side, but in combination with the crust, cheese, and toppings, made for a good balance, cutting into and contrasting the richness of the crust and cheese.

Pizzas come in 2 sizes, 9″ and 12″. Since each slice is pretty dense, the smaller size can easily feed 3 people or 2 large eaters.  The larger pizza can probably be split 4 ways or more.   Apparently,  Blue Line only offers delivery for  “catering” packages, which feed 12-15 people. So if you want just one or two pies to eat at home, carry out is the only option (they recommend calling ahead due to the long lead times). For the first experience, I recommend dining in so you get that  “hot out of the oven” experience.

Verdict:
If you are fan of Chicago deep dish, I would recommend giving Blue Line a try.  Perhaps I will try the thin crust the next time around.