California Pizza Kitchen is a proof that there is a creator, and that he isn't paying attention to what he is doing. A brass and glass festooned, unconscionably hip place which serves horrible mutations of that Prince of Foods... the pizza. The typical CPK patron would never eat breakfast pizza.

Update 3-13-02: Further research has found that they do make at least one decent pizza, marketed under the name 'Rustica' which includes capers and black olives. The capers, somewhat uncommon in standard pizza recipes, are a nice touch.

A similar restaurant chain can be found internationally called "Pizza Express" with outlets in London and Tokyo, possibly elsewhere. The Greenwich (London) store serves a pizza with, among other things, sultanas, which is suprisingly good on a pizza.

The name makes the place somewhat suspect, to be sure, but I really don't care. Disliking a good thing simply because it's trendy is just as stupid as liking a bad thing because it's trendy. I've found CPK's pizzas to be very, very good. Certainly they're unorthodox, but they make the only pizza with chicken on it that I consider edible. Because their menu is rather odd, you'll probably end up ordering some kind of pizza you've never heard of. The nice thing about this is that if you don't like it, they'll take it back and bake you a different kind without charge.

Also, they have excellently fudge-drenched sundaes.

CPK has fairly recently begun selling frozen pizzas, at least in California. I haven't tried these yet, though, because I am scared of natural gas.

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