EJ’s Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza
Our first skirt with EJ’s was last November at KosherFest, where we encountered their understocked booth and were denied any food samples or marketing materials given our lack of big-time food distribution credentials. The pizza did look good though, so I was happy this week to see it had arrived at the local kosher market.
The 12-ounce deep-dish pizzas are available in cheese and cheese/spinach combinations, and sold in Brookline for $4.99 a piece (non-kosher premium brands hover around that price for a pizza typically twice the size, according to quick look at Peapod.com). Preparation is simple (unwrap, bake for 25 minutes) and the results were tasty, but didn’t fully compare to our treyfa memories of delicious Pizzeria Uno pies. The crust was a good texture (developed a nice brown crunch from my pizza stones), but I personally felt there was too much of it and it was too puffy. Also, the cheese was somewhat paltry.
Another detail irked me a bit. EJ’s website states that one 12-ounce pizza “will satisfy one adult” but the package’s nutritional information indicates that the small pizza is in fact two servings. Now, I don’t expect waist-reducing results from eating pizza of any kind, but I find it disingenuous to mark individual-sized food items as two servings.
Overall, it’s nice to finally have a kosher way to satisfy a deep-dish pizza fix on those days I don’t have several hours to prepare my own dough, and in a handsome box no less.
 |
|
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Taste | 3 |
| Presentation | 3.5 |
| Value | 2 |
| K-Factor™ | 2.5 |
| TOTAL | 11 |
Serving sizes are often determined by FDA regulations, not by what the manufacturer wants, and certainly not by what anyone eats.
The “serving size” for flour is 1/4 cup — which does not mean that a loaf of bread made with 3 1/2 cups (one pound) of flour will feed 14.
If that’s verified, I’ll gladly alter my review.
One interesting note on serving sizes - you will often find variation within the same product depending on the size of the package.
Consider soft drinks like Coca Cola - if you buy a can, the serving size is 12 fluid ounces. If you buy a 2 liter bottle, the serving size is 8 fluid ounces. If you buy bottles that are smaller than 8 fluid ounces (like the ones that you see in minibars, etc.), the serving size will be the size of the bottle.
Given this, I’m not too sure if the FDA is really mandating this stuff - they certainly aren’t in the case of soft drinks.
You will also find that on Cereals for example, where the serving size between different cereals varies from 1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cups. I suspect that it is partly so that the manufacturers can say they have a lower calorie/carb/fat/whatever content per serving than the competing brand.
From the FDA Website: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fl-ltr4.html
“FDA also recognizes that there is a growing trend in the marketplace for jumbo or super-sized servings. When such products are intended to be consumed by one individual in one eating occasion, the nutrition information should be based on the entire contents of food in the container. We recognize that the current serving size regulations allow for such products to be sold as either one, or more than one, serving even if they are usually consumed at one time. FDA intends to re-evaluate this aspect of the serving size regulations. In the meantime, we encourage manufacturers to provide the most accurate and useful nutrition information to consumers by taking advantage of the flexibility in current regulations on serving sizes and label food packages as containing a single-serving if the entire contents of the package can reasonably be consumed at a single-eating occasion. “
Thanks for the review of EJ’s deep-dish pizza-I just saw it at the store (7 Mile Market in Baltimore) and was wondering about the quality.