After Bards quizzo last night, me and my man DJ headed over to a prime pizza late night spot in CC West, Tower Pizza. Tower is famous for one reason: it is open until 4 am. I don’t know of any other pizza places that can make that claim (What time does Lorenzo’s close? 3 or 4?) Anyways, here was DJs take:
One of the most predominant items visible on Tower Style Pizza’s hanging menu is a cornucopia – and fittingly so. The pizza shop, located on 20th street between Walnut and Sansom, is packed to the gills with a variety of pizza flavors, mixed decor, and a drink selection that rivals that of your local food mart. To top it off they keep their doors open until just about sunrise, allowing the masses to reap the benefits of greasy pizza goodness until 4am.
Tower’s setup is a little bit all over the place. Greek posters, nostalgic World Trade Center photos, and two rabbit-ear laden televisions are crammed into a smallish 20 foot wide sit-down joint pumping middle-eastern music. I’m still a little bit intrigued by their illuminated advertisement for a cheese and pineapple platter, but I’ll dare to sample that when Johnny goes on a city-wide dairy and fruit review.
Despite a menu boasting a dozen or more pizzas, late night selection was slim between sausage, pepperoni, and buffalo chicken. I grabbed a slice of pepperoni (@ ~$2.35) and wasn’t blown away. The thin crust was solid, but the general flavor wasn’t overwhelmingly notable. Service was quick, polite, and friendly, but hardly made up for a relatively mediocre slice. Table napkins were sparse despite the slight greasiness, but garlic and parmesan were plentiful throughout. The latter I encourage to help get through the pizza.
Far more impressive than the pizza was the supplementing beverage collection. Seldom do you find two cases filled with regular and diet sodas, root and birch beers, flavored teas, and energy waters in such a small shop. With the overstock of drink racks stacked literally to the ceiling, locals should keep Tower Style Pizza in their sights should the need arise for a downtown nuclear fallout shelter
Tower Style Pizza’s most defining attribute is not their pizza, decor, or their barricade of beverages, but their accessibility. Average pizza can taste like a 4-roni award winner when you’re stumbling home loaded from the bar at two in the morning. The fact that Tower gives you two more hours to wander around downtown before they close up shop is pure gold. Just remember you’ll need to be mildly drunk to shell out almost 3 bucks for a slice. 2.5 roni’s for dinner, 4 roni’s if you’re destroyed at 3am.
Yeah, my thoughts were similar. The place is kind of weird. Definitely set up for a late night crowd. The pizza was decent. I had a pepperoni slice and a buffalo chicken slice ($3). They were not at all greasy,and neither were they too dry, which was good. Neither blew me away, but they would have been perfect had I been plastered. If you desperately need a slice at 3 am, this place is more than suitable, but I wouldn’t get a dinner slice here. And if you need 325 bottles of Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer in a jiffy, this is definitely your spot.
