Pizza Perfect (Plainwell)
582 10th StreetI wasn’t planning on going to Grand Rapids last week but that’s what ended up happening.
I had an assignment in Kalamazoo Wednesday morning but my afternoon was pretty open. A colleague called and asked if I could help him with a project. All of the material was in Grand Rapids and while I can access some things from my office in Kalamazoo, the lack of a fiber line makes it very slow going some days.
I decided it was just easier if I went to the Grand Rapids office to help him out.
I left Grand Rapid around 5:00 once I was sure my colleague was good with what he needed to get done for the day.
My plan was to stop in Plainwell and pick up a pizza from Papa Murphy’s. It’s been years since I’ve done that and we don’t have Papa Murphy’s in Kalamazoo anymore.
Good plan…except there was a power outage that was effecting all of M-89 in the business district to the west of US-131. I had to come up with another plan.
I should have just went downtown and ate at one of the pub’s I’ve never been to but I was kind of in a pizza mood.
A few weeks ago, I drove by a gas station on the north side of town and saw a familiar pizza place inside. It was a little out of the way but that was going to be my dinner.
Pizza Perfect in Plainwell is on 10th Street just south of 106th Avenue in Gun Plain Township just north of Plainwell. This is the third location for Pizza Perfect joining D Avenue and Sprinkle Road. All three are inside Ridderman Oil gas stations.
This R-Store is much newer than the other two locations. It was just built within the last couple of years and it really shows. The place is much larger and spaced out better than the D Avenue and Sprinkle Road locations. The convenience part of the store is pretty standard with snacks and drinks.
There isn’t a separate area for pizza which is kind of surprising considering it’s a new store. There is a kitchen right off to the side of the cash registers but pick up is done at the main cash registers. There’s also a warmer for pizza-by-the-slice next to one of the registers. Most ordering is done online or over the phone but the lady in front of me did ask to put in an order there. The cashier got the person who was manning the phones to come out front and take the order for her.
I used online ordering and put in an order for 12″ sausage and pepperoni pizza and a small cheesy breadsticks. The cost was just over $20 and it was ready by the time I got from Papa Murphy’s to the store.
Whenever I order pizza, I pretty much plan to get a couple of days out of eating it. I went with the 12″ because my plan was to eat most of the cheese bread for dinner and have some pizza leftover for the morning.
I started with that cheese bread when I got home. It’s pretty much a 12″ pizza crust topped with cheese and comes with marinara sauce for dipping. It eats more like a pizza than cheese bread. It was still good but there was too much crust on the end of it that could use some more flavor with some garlic butter or something. I ate probably have of the cheese bread that night and saved the rest for later.
Pizza Perfect’s pizza surprises me every time I order one. We sleep on this place way too much. Especially considering we’re spending so much time at Wings Event Center right now for skating.
The pizza is kind of a thin crust, cooked until the cheese is golden brown and loaded with meat.
The sauce has a little bit of sweetness and a little bit of bitterness to it. The crust has a little bit of a salty flavor to it. The sausage is nice big chunks of meat and the pepperoni’s cover every bite. Every time I order one of these pizzas, I wonder why I never think of it as a place to order from. They’re always really good and really unique in the carry-out/delivery pizza landscape.
I’ve already said it but I need to think of Pizza Perfect more often. The pizzas never disappoint and I plowed through this 12″ like it was nothing. My plan of having lunch the next day worked only because I forced myself to stop Wednesday night. It’s the kind of pizza I have a hard time leaving leftovers.
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