Promise Pizza

There are two AMAZING things about Promise Pizza:

1) Gluten-Free Pizza Crust:

– Smart Flour (amaranth flour, tapioca flour, teff flour), water, sweet white sorghum flour, modified tapioca starch, potato starch, eggs, olive oil, honey, yeast, sugar, xanthan gum, guar gum, salt, baking powder, baking soda

MUCH better for you than regular crust!

2) Vegan cheese WITHOUT casein, soy, lactose, gluten, egg, wheat, barley, corn, whey, rice, or nuts

What IS in it then? Plant-based ingredients. The full list of ingredients:

Purified water, tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and/or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, coconut oil pea protein, salt, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, natural flavors (derived from plants), xanthan gum, sunflower lecithin, vegan enzymes (no animal rennet or animal enzymes), vegan bacterial cultures, citric acid (for flavor), annatto.

For more info: http://www.daiyafoods.com/products.html

So Promise Pizza is active on twitter (@promisepizza), and excited, energetic co-founder (of 4) Suzanne tweeted me suggesting I come give it a shot. I invented an excuse to head up to Round Rock (ok, I really had to be there, but NOW I’ll start inventing excuses) and was floored by Suzanne. It’s a labor of love for her, and the three other founders, and they really just wanted to make good pizza. Maybe that’s the third AMAZING thing about Promise Pizza. The brains behind it have no background in restaurant, retail, nothing. Two of the investors own a wind energy firm in town. They just wanted to make happy pizza as eco-friendly as possible. They deliver in Smart Cars. Recycle everything. Have cane-juice-sweetened drinks (erm … I mean, if you’re gonna have sugar, it’s better than HFCS). Gotta love all that.

But on to the pizza. Pictured above is a Nature’s Choice, with Daiya, Tomato, Portobello Mushroom, Black Olives, Red Onion, Green Pepper, Basil on gluten-free crust. And it is delicious. It was also a little too sweet for me. At first I thought it might be the cheese, but turns out the cheese is just fantastic. Then maybe the crust. Turns out the crust is crispy-crunchy and just salty enough. It definitely wasn’t the delicious, perfectly-prepped veggies who retained the slightest firmness while melding into the pizza. So I deduced with my pizza powers that the sauce was too sweet for me, and upon looking on the web at the ingredients, I discover why:

Tomato Sauce: Ground Tomato, Herbs, Garlic, Sugar

I kid you not, this pizza would have been absolutely perfect for me were it not for the too-sweet sauce. Even the black olive bombs (in honor of my missing Vermocoloradoan) in all their salty glory couldn’t counteract the sweet. BUT don’t be fooled, I still ate the entire damn thing (except one piece my mom later enjoyed) in one sittingdriving back to Austin.

For those of you lucky enough to live in RR (did I just say that?), they offer a KILLER lunch special–personal pizza (8″) + drink for only $5.95!!

They plan to open a downtown spot within six months. Can’t wait! In the meantime, it looks like I have a lot of, uh, work to do … in Round Rock … near Grimes Blvd …

Promise Pizza
1500 A. W. Grimes Blvd.
Suite #410
Round Rock, TX, 78664
(512) ORGANIC