Wolfgang Puck Pizza in the Denver Airport

So my culinary adventure began, oddly enough, in the Denver airport. Apparently, the new rage for celebrity chefs (as if having well-known restaurants, cookbooks and, in most cases, their own show, isn’t enough) is to have an eatery in a major airport. Since it’s doubtful to me that Thomas Keller or Mario Batali will be bringing a restaurant to the Boise airport any time soon, I couldn’t resist when I landed in Denver and saw a sign for Wolfgang Puck’s little place in the food court. Sure, I could have eaten from the dollar menu a McDonalds, but I’m on vacation for crying out loud, and I wanted to live just a little.

I’m not sure who designed Wolfgang’s bistro, but it certainly wasn’t anyone with any sense of traffic direction (perhaps they also designed the Boise Flying-Y interchange) because it was one convoluted mess. There were three different stations to order from; soups and salads, pizzas and “everything else” all jammed into one corner of the restaurant which caused people to mill around in confusion.

Silly me, I ordered a small pizza, figuring that I had plenty of time until my next flight started boarding. I almost didn’t make my flight because of the wait for the food.  I have to admit though, it was pretty cool to see a wood-fired pizza oven in an airport, but I think the service staff could brush up just a bit on their customer service skills. Of course, I’m sure I’d probably be cranky too after serving that many people in a day but c’mon, is it too much to ask for a ‘thank you’?

After surviving the sticker shock at the cash register – I won’t say what it cost me for fear that my husband might be reading this – but let’s just say in comparison you could have walked out of Dominos with at least a large two-topping pizza – I boxed up my pizza and rushed down to my gate to enjoy my lunch.

I had the spicy chicken pizza and the crust was crisp without being crunchy. The red peppers and onions were crisp and not soggy and the sliced tomatoes and basil were also fresh. The chicken certainly lived up to its spicy name but it wasn’t overly “hot.” All in all, it was a good pizza but nothing to really rave about. I had three slices left (from a small 6-slice pie) and was determined I was not going to throw them away, so I talked a nice little sales gal from one of the kiosks into giving me have a plastic bag to wrap it up in. I’m sure I’ll be eating the rest of it when I hit my hotel tonight.