Mythic Pizza: The UnJam

Pizza by the slice. There may not be a better fast, cheap, satisfying late-night meal option available.

Except in San Francisco.

What passes as pizza here is not fast, cheap, or satisfying. Though there certainly are quality establishments to be found on my side of the Bay, most of what is sold as pizza is decidedly not. It's something else, and whatever that is, it's awful and it's everywhere. But since they're open later than anything else in the area, they roll in dough (ugh). Mr. Pizza Man and Pizza Americana (sometimes one in the same) are seemingly the only options in my neighborhood. I know enough to avoid them. I was out of my element the other night, though, in a different neighborhood and in a hungry, food-driven state of mind, and that found me in line at Mythic Pizza.

I'll spare you the details leading up to my visit to Mythic Pizza on Haight and Fillmore. Suffice it to say, I was busy all night and didn't have a chance to have dinner. I needed something. My ride suggested that I get a couple of slices from Mythic because he had earlier in the evening, and it was "the best place around the area." Fine. I'd never been to Mythic, but it sounded like Mystic, which is the name of a semi-decent east coast joint, so I went for it. Besides, "mythic" implies something out-of-the-ordinary. I need to stop taking establishments at their word.

It turns out that Mythic Pizza is just one more in the long line of purveyors of cheese-covered abortions. Using my dazzling MS Paint skils, I've taken the time to outline for you, dear reader, the steps taken between order placement and consumption (which is followed by, but not limited to, feelings of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and rage). Here you go:

(Step 6, not depicted, involves price-gouging and baby-raping...probably.)

One could go on and on about the shortcomings of a Mythic Pizza slice. First, let's talk about the fact that it's made on a piece of slice-shaped dough, not cut out of a full pie. Low dough quality aside, this creates a number of issues, including a frame of plain crust around the entire slice because everything is assembled from the ground up. When the cheese and/or sauce does not reach the edges of the majority of a slice, you've got trouble on your hands. The sauce itself stretches all reasonable definitions of the term and is mostly just color that is applied so stingily that one would be lead to believe that it is highly valuable or that too much of it just may kill you. The cheese is either heaped on or effectively ignored, but it doesn't matter because once it comes out of the oven half an hour later, everything's brown and hard anyway. D-grade toppings are added with abandon, fastened to the top with extra cheese, and baked (again) long enough to make you wonder how something that went into an oven could come out so cold.

"You're being too hard on Mythic and its ilk," you say. "It's good when it's late and you're hungry." To that, I say, "This is the JamZone. We're always hungry and we do not play."

I'm calling you out, Mythic Pizza. I won't be fooled again. Death to fake jams.