Umberto's Pizzeria

Well, well, well.  Here we are in the 150^th consecutive pizza week (or something like that) and it is something to celebrate!!  I’m going to go ahead and assume that everyone had a workday about like I did yesterday which would mean that we all needed Pizza Night pretty badly last night.

Pizza night got pushed up an hour last night because some of us (slash all but one of us) had assorted places that we needed to be at 7 o’clock.  Thus, around 7PM eastern time (6PM central), a force of 8 strong converged upon Umberto’s Pizzeria at roughly 21^st and Harvard.  This is their story.

John Lawrance and Christian Roderick (myself) were the first on the scene (separate cars though…better for the environment).  As I got out of my car and saw John getting out of his at the same time, it was like looking in a mirror.  Everything I did, he did.  Plus, we look fairly similar…so it was kinda trippy.  BUT that only lasted a few moments before Christopher Wy-Guy, London Read, Betsmurphy, and Carol Francis showed up.  I was immediately relieved to see that a couple of them had at least thought to throw on something blue for the night.  I didn’t want to be the only one wearing blue.

Betsy looked taller than usual…

I stole this picture from some guy on flickr whose flickr site said that if I didn’t give him credit, he would be very upset.  So here’s his credit.

UMBERTO’s PIZZERIA!!

Umberto’s is one of my personal favorite pizza places in Tulsa.  I might even go as far as to say it’s one of my staple lunch restaurants in Tulsa.  Thus, I was very interested to see how it would stand up to the critiques of such pizza connoisseurs as @jlawrance, @dcurzon, @racho28, etc.

Betsy was the first to order; mostly because she ordered so fast that it would have been almost impossible for anyone else to collect their thoughts enough to construct the sentence needed to place an order before she was done.  Betsy is one of the few that have stayed true throughout this entire experiment to a single flavor(?) of pizza.  Betsy ALWAYS gets pineapple and Canadian bacon.  I have to respect her dedication to the control factor as she goes through this experiment. 

I’ll also give @cwylie8642 a shout out here as he has stuck with his original order of 3 slices of cheese pizza every week that it was possible. (not to be confused with a single slice of 3-cheese pizza Libby)

So Betsy placed her order followed by @somebody who was followed by @somebodyelse and slowly we all cycled through the line placing our various orders.  As there were only six of us, we went for a booth that looked like it could fit us all.  But then, surprise!, D. and E. Curzon showed up right as we sat down.  It was either find a new table or squeeze in.  Guess what we did.

The pizza came out quickly with Wylie’s coming out first (as is always the case when you order plain cheese pizza).  I think we were all pleased to find that this restaurant finally offered Rachel a new weird something to put on her pizza.  I guess I had just never thought that putting mandarin oranges on a slice of pizza with any form of bacon, albeit Canadian, could be good.  Honestly though, Rachel usually makes good choices so I bet it was pretty good.

Also, please notice Dustin in the background .  He’s talking about something.  Also, notice the blue…

Personally, I was happy to find that Umberto’s offered a full spread of shakable spices to add to your pizza.  The most important of these was obviously the garlic salt which can actually make or break an entire pizzeria sometimes and can almost always make or break a slice of pizza.

I think we’ll take this moment to go ahead and pan around the table to catch a shot of Emily, the Libster, and John.

I see you wearing that blue Libby.

Then if we pan around a bit further to catch the two remaining undocumented attendees…

And I know that SOMEWHERE, on SOMEONE’s camera from last night, is a really great picture of that cutsie little Wy-guy with his head buried in Christian “The Hunk” Roderick’s shoulder with Rachel giving something between a skeptical and a jealous look.  Whoever you are, we need to get that picture on here…PRESTO…no wait…PRONTO.

This brings us to the ratings.  Umberto’s received a fairly average rating in the Pizza department coming in at a 7.4/10 (rounded).  Initially, I was surprised by this considering how much I love this place and how much everyone seemed to be enjoying his or her peeeeeetza.  But after some thought, I think what it comes down to is that by this time in our experiment, we have developed some pretty high standards for pizza.  Having been to places like La Roma, Brother’s Pizza, etc, we have gotten to the point where “pretty good” pizza just doesn’t warrant more than an average rating.  And I have to agree with the group overall, Umberto’s is definitely good but it doesn’t quite stack up to some of the other gems Tulsa has to offer.

Value.  I’ll start by saying that this is the only time I have ever given a rating of 5/5 for value.  I feel like this might be directly correlated to the fact that I only ordered a single piece of pizza last night and abstained from getting a drink whereas I usually get at least two pieces and a large drink.  Thus, I was very happy with my total cost of just over 3 dollars for the meal.  After the reviews came in, it appeared that the group was relatively happy with the prices at Umberto’s.  The final tally brings us to a rating of just under 3.8/5 for value which I don’t believe is the highest we’ve seen but is definitely a solid number.

The last category we have is Atmosphere.  I’ll tell you right off the bat that Umberto’s got a 4.1/5.  That’s a pretty solid review for atmosphere and if I can go ahead and presume to know why everyone gave Umberto’s a solid review in this category, I would say that it is most likely a combination of the restaurant location and the close quarters that we got to share at the booth.  It is common knowledge that everyone is happier when he or she is forced to be PACKED into a booth with great friends.   It just makes people happy.  Also, with the location being 21^st and Harvard, the restaurant has a bit of an “Old Town” feel just because that part of town is starting to be a bit run down and such.  I personally think it’s kind of a cool part of town and I think that’s part of why it received such a solid review.

So as a whole, Umberto’s didn’t seem to blow our connoisseurs away or anything but it also definitely didn’t disappoint anyone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND, after the dinner was over, most of us showed our blue colors and carpooled over to the BOK Center to see our favorite NBA team get stomped by the Memphis Grizzlies!!!

Even though the Thunder got beat pretty bad, it was still really fun to see them play and to hang out at the NBA Exhibition game with such great friends.

Overall, it was a wonderful night and I just LOVE my friends.  I do wish that Russ and Amy Ann could have been there though.  They were definitely missed along with Luke and Zach.  But at least we were still able to have some semblance of a good time!  ;)

Thanks for reading (if you actually made it all the way to the bottom),
Christian