San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in America; it has more people than Boston, Dallas, San Diego, Detroit, Seattle, or Atlanta. Among its many charms are the Pearl District, the River Walk, fabulous Mexican food, an ample supply of affordable housing, and of course the Alamo.
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| San Antonio's RiverWalk |
What is lacks is great pizza. Among America's ten largest cities, San Antonio ranks 10th in regard to the number of pizza destinations worth your time and travel. It does have a few gems: Stella Public House and Dough Pizzeria Napoletana are making top-shelf Neapolitan pizzas; there is an outpost of the New York Grimaldi's chain; Il Forno is crafting masterful NY/Neapolitan hybrid pizzas; and Trilogy is offering New York, California, and Chicago style pies.
Because I'm just 90 minutes away in Austin, I get frequent opportunities to explore what the natives are eating in San Antonio, and the local chain Capo's gets a lot of love online. Capo's also ranked #1 in a story from the San Antonio News-Express in 2020 (https://tinyurl.com/ExpressNewsPizza) and still ranked #6 in 2023 after some "growing pains."
Capo's was particularly intriguiging because it offers "Buffalo style" pizza, since the owners came from Buffalo NY. I targeted the original location (out of the current six spots) to find out how good it is.
From the outside, Capo's looks like a typical generic strip-mall pizza place that makes passable pizza using cheap Sysco ingredients. Inside, it was a much nicer space than I would have guessed, with some interesting wall art and iconic red checkerboard tablecloths.
I ordered an 18" pie with sausage after the server informed me that the sausage is applied raw (the only proper way to add sausage to a pizza, since it browns on the pie and lends its savory drippings to the flavor mix).
The pie arrived looking like a generic strip mall pizza, with a pale and puffy cornicione. The crust was soft and tender throughout, without a hint of crisping even at the edge. It had lots of flop; even worse, the cheese was riding atop the thin sauce and had no adhesion to the crust. I feel that it was this kind of poorly-made pizza that created the unfortunate habit of folding pizza slices in half just to manage a soft slippery mess.
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| Thin, soft, pale, floppy crust |
The crust was like a large circular Olive Garden breadstick -- pale, bready, and soft. Despite that major failing, the pie overall had a pleasant flavor, in the same way that a generic Domino's or Papa John's pizza is still better than no pizza. What else could go wrong? Well, the topping was slices of pre-cooked sausage, despite my server's misperception on that topic.
Overall, the service was very polite and attentive, the place is clean and attractive, and it would be a fine place to take a bunch of kids out for pizza. But this pizza failed the DiGiorno test -- is is better than a midscale frozen pizza? Sadly, no.
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