Lehigh Pizza 13 West Third Street (610) 866-1088

Well, Lehigh, if our last review provided a standard of excellence for the pizza in South Bethlehem, this one provides a sobering contrast. Using our SOP (standard operating procedure) of two guest reviewers, one undergraduate and the other a graduate student, cum two pizzas, one plain and the other with pre-selected toppings, we visited Lehigh Pizza on a recent Monday night.

The dining area was not much in terms of space, decor, or niceties like table clothes, but our focus was on the food, particularly when take-out is the student norm. The service was friendly and trusting; we retrieved our own beverages from an impressive assortment, including an extensive array of beers, both domestic and imported.

The pizza, our raison d'etre review-wise, was disappointing. More specifically, we gave Lehigh Pizza four slices out of eight. Our two student raters leaned toward a three but, akin to grade inflation, we gave the place the benefit of the doubt based on the BPR (bulk/price ratio), also known less precisely as the "scarfability factor," which here included the students' reports of special economical offers for ordering two or more pies.

The sauce was pasty, without freshness or zest. The cheese was bland, and the dough was limp. The toppings didn't help matters; the mushrooms had the tell-tale yellow of the canned variety, the sausage lacked "bite," and the pepperoni's higher gusto was matched by its high grease quotient.

Although not at all near the level of excellence established by the Big Apple meccas like John's and Patsy's, much less by the New Haven nirvanas of Sally's and Peppe's, Lehigh Pizza is above the two-for-one and super-market freezer varieties that are otherwise all too available. As one of the students said, "if you are out for scarfing-down filling, not pizza fine-dining, this place is quick and inexpensive."

Based on a large pie yielding eight slices, which is our highest possible rating, we gave Lehigh Pizza four slices, which an optimist would explain, in insisting that it was half good, "ain't half bad."

Reviewed by:
Ron Yoshida, Dean of the College of Education
Perry Zirkel, Iacocca Professor of Education
Andriy Kramal, a freshman from the Ukraine
Tara Skibitsky, a Lehigh alumna and graduate student in Special Education

Lehigh Pizza, 13 West Third Street, (610) 866-1088
Free Delivery, Day or Night (with Cold Beer to Go)
Open Seven days a week from 11:00 am to: midnight Sunday thru Thursday and 1:00 am on Friday and Saturday.
Pizza: Medium (14") $5.00, Large (16") $6.00, Sicilian $12.00 Toppings ea. $1.00 (med.), $1.25 (large), $1.50 (Sic.)

This review originally appeared in The Brown and White at Lehigh University on October 17, 1997.