Pizza

Davis, being a college town, has many establishments that offer all sorts of pizzas. Pizza is one of the few things available for delivery in Davis. If you're really hard core, and want some of the best pizza ever known to mankind, you can drive to the Bay Area and pick yourself up some Zachary's Pizza. However, you can get Chicago Style Pizza at several other places nearby and save some gas.

Pizza is an iconically delivered item, and tipping the person delivering the pizza is common. The Tip the Pizza Guy Website has guides on how to tip, and also how to place an order to make sure you get what you want, how to make sure the delievery person can find the house and more.

Most of the pizza establishment pages have an accompanying photo of a typical large pepperoni pizza.

Table of Price and Size

Listed here are the prices for a pizza with no extra toppings that is not on sale, alongside its diameter in inches.

Deals

The table is greatly confounded, of course, by the uneven price of toppings and the massive amounts of special deals available. Listed here are known deals that don't require a coupon, although they may require you to be knowledgeable of the deal before going into the store, as pizza places know that if you walked in sans coupon and knowledge of a discount you're probably willing to pay more. If you don't mind being sleazy to save a buck, sometimes you can get a reduced price by simply flirting with the clerk and asking what deals they have that aren't listed on the menu.

• If you get takeout from Pizza Guys you get a free 2 liter soda. They also have a coupon special for under $12 that includes a large pizza w/ one topping (FSI=109), cheesy garlic bread (FSI=56.7), and a free drink. Counting the garlic bread, they have the best FSI to price ratio in Davis.

Functional Square Inch

A graph of price per square inch would seem appropriate from the table above, however not all pizzas are made the same. Crust radius, in particular, tends to confound the real size of a pizza, so below is a table showing the number of Functional Square Inches (FSI) of a Pizza. The FSI reflects the area containing toppings, and can therefore reveal how much certain places rip people off by having a ridiculous amount of crust. FSI = 3.14159 * (radius - crust length)*(radius - crust length)

Please consult Pizza: FSI Calculations for how to interpret and update this chart.

Comments:

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2005-02-21 22:15:09   price per square inch! price per square inch! —ArlenAbraham

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2005-02-21 23:05:28   Price varies considerably if you have one of the MANY coupons though. What I'd like is a picture of what a standard pepperoni pizza looks like, since some have more and some have less. Or, at least, a count of the amount of pepperoni in a pizza. Either way, price per square inch is a bit misleading, since we should also count crust radius (a 12" pizza with a 1" crust has significantly more crust per square inch than a 16" pizza with a 1" crust) —ScottRitchie

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2005-02-22 02:50:17   Davis Pizza Rankings: 1. (two-way tie) Steve's, Village Bakery 3. Mountain Mike's 4. Symposium 5. Caffe Italia 6. Lamppost 7. Round Table 8. Papa John's 9. Woodstock's 10. the Grad 11. Pizza Guys. I've never been to Konditorei. —RishiTrivedi

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2005-02-22 13:32:09   Could we creat a Wiki price scale 10=really expensive 1=Free or something along those lines. —JamesSchwab

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2005-03-29 17:38:33   Whatever happened to free delivery? :( —RussBowlus

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2005-05-14 18:02:07   Oh man, the FSI table is the awesomest idea! Brilliant! —JeyKottalam

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2005-06-07 09:31:53   Think of it this way — you can get a really great apartment with awesome furniture, a state-of-the-art sound system, a new King size bed, and perfect climate control system, and you'll spend some $$ to get it. Or you can get a way bigger apartment with a leaky roof, crappy furniture, a squeaky ghetto blaster, and a bed you found in the alley, and it won't cost near as much. Bigger — yes! Better??? It's not just the size of the pizza, it's what's on it and how it tastes. With this FSI calculation, the cheapest, crappiest pizza in Davis will win, but that doesn't make it a good value. —LauraAmbrose

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2005-06-07 09:50:00   Well, while I think the FSI too confusing too be really useful (it would probably be better just to rank who has the most crust), it's not really measuring who has the biggest pizza, it's really measuring the REAL dimensions of pizza with toppings on it. I think it's ultimately misleading because pizza places are not consistent in this regard, so it would be better just to list the habitual offenders and estimate how much unused crust there is. And I also think that there is no real spectacular pizza in Davis, so the biggest, best value is usually not too different than the worst value. I'd like to say you get what you pay for, but some of the most mediocre pizza can be pretty expensive. —JaimeRaba

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2005-06-07 10:36:40   option 2: separate toppings from crust. weigh each. give total weight and % crust. c-mon, who's got a scale —ArlenAbraham

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2005-07-27 13:38:23   Laura, the FSI in no way reflects on the quality of the pizza. Rather, its a rough way to put pizza on a consistent economic scale. Once pizza size has been normalized with the FSI, you, as an informed consumer, can compare equal sized pizza's and determine whether the taste quality difference is worth the extra price. For example, in terms of FSI, the medium at Mountain Mike's Pizza, the medium at Symposium, and the large at Woodstock's Pizza are equivalent. They're respective prices are $11.65, $9.95, and $14.16. Woodstock's is the most expensive, and IMHO is my least favorite of the three. Its clearly out. Symposium is far better than MM's, and is $1.70 cheaper! Its really comforting to know that Symposium, arguably the best pizza in town, is both best quality and economical for an FSI of 95 and no toppings. A lot of people avoid it, however, because they don't take FSI into account, and erroneously believe it's too pricey. More data needs to be collected to determine which place place in Davis has the best FSI:price ratio. —CraigBrozinsky

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2005-08-20 14:32:20   Honestly, the price+size chart could be integrated. Like this: $14.99 (16") —JaimeRaba

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2005-08-20 18:30:54   Hmm, we should probably merge the FSI table in too. The table needs serious deuglification too, but I lack the skills. —ScottRitchie

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2005-09-21 21:17:39   RishiTrivedi writes "Davis Pizza Rankings: 1. (two-way tie) Steve's, Village Bakery" = I don't get it... Steve's combination pizza didn't even come close to woodstocks causeway class or village bakery's 'anything' —VivianPham

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2005-12-31 15:53:57   if you live in or near north davis, the best deal hands down is papa murphy's. yeah you have to cook it in your own oven, but big deal. you don't have to tip a delivery boy and it's cheap! i will edit in the prices after the next time i'm there, but it is definitely some of the cheapest in town. also, i almost constantly get coupons for their pizza in the mail making it even cheaper. as for quality, it's obviously not the most amazing pizza you've ever had, but i think it is just fine and much better than steve's place or mountain mike's garbage. —IanRamsay

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2006-01-23 19:48:53   Question: If there is already a delivery charge, do you tip? —JoAnnaRich

• Yes! Generally the delivery charge does not go to the employee but rather gas, upkeep of the car, and extra labor.
  

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2006-03-08 20:04:49   But pizzas also vary in thickness as well. I propose a price per volume, or given the fact that there are thin and thick crusts, a price per mass of the functional area of the pizza? Now the question is, dry weight or wet weight? Can I also get a mass spectrometer, calorimeter, and spectrophotometer to complete the analysis..? Oh here we go... Let's use an electronic tongue and publish the ratios of various volatiles and other compounds and publish the definitive flavor comparison? Let's also factor in the fuel economy of the delivery persons so we can also have the most environmentally sound pizza. Ok... I got a little hyperbolic here. I think my point about thickness/mass might be valid, though. —KarlMogel

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2006-08-10 18:53:05   Village Bakery is by far the best pizza in town, and I have had them all. If only they had more indoor seating. The Greek place, Symposium is the next best. Woodstocks is my least favorite. I am from New York and I know pizza, forget about it! —WayneSchiller

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2006-09-10 10:21:00   there is no question. when it comes to taste village bakery is the clear cut winner. Symposium comes in a distant second. —MattHh

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2007-02-01 00:01:25   Woodstocks can't compare to many of the other (independent and chain) pizza places in Davis. I don't know why people like it so much. —TusharRawat

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2007-08-27 00:30:50   I second (or third?) Village Bakery having the best pizza in PRD. Also, since when did Konditerei make pizza, anyways? —KokoSorensen

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2008-02-03 13:31:29   I don't get it. Why is it so expensive when I go to Steve's? Ooohh, the toppings! —DavidFeliz

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2008-02-03 15:50:20   I've had Lamppost, Woodstock's, Coho (which I think is just frozen pizza isn't it?), Village Bakery, Papa Murphy's, Dining Commons (does that even count?), and The Graduate and of those four, Village Bakery wins. My dad and brother have only had Village Bakery, but they think it's the best. —JasonDunne

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2008-09-21 03:25:32   pizza is way overrated. it's only good when you get drunk.. oh wait.. i get it now. —2point0student

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2009-06-12 20:50:29   Why is the delivery fee for Vito's $21.95? —TusharRawat

Their pizzas are *huuuuuuge* and require special trucks to move them? Or maybe that's Vitos "special" delivery fee, where they whack the guy it is sent to. Or maybe somebody typoed.