Gins Tavern - Factoryville, PA

Restaurant: Gin's Tavern
Location: Factoryville, PA
Date: July 2012
Pizza Ordered: Plain Square Pizza
Price: $11+/-
Eat In/Take Out: Take Out

Ok, so this article is not easy for me to write for a few reasons.  First, I have a love/hate relationship with Gin's.  As a kid growing up, I always loved the place because they had great food, and I was especially a huge fan of their pizza and wings.  My the hate part of my relationship comes with the incredible inconsistency of the food in recent years.  The recipes and ingredients are all good, and believe me, the dishes have great potential, but more times than not the food is ill prepared, not cooked properly, and just plain lousy.  With that being said, another reason why I'm having a hard time writing this article is that I feel I'm too familiar with the food, and might objectivity might be compromised.  To aid in this, I enlisted the help of 2 friends to dine with me.

So after arriving promptly after my 30 minute wait, I waited the customary additional 15 minutes for my pizza and wing order to be prepared.  Upon receiving my food, I promptly returned to see which Gins pizza we would get tonight: the good, the bad, or the ugly?  Well, as you can see in the photo the small item in the box does in fact have a crust and is covered with sauce and cheese, which does constitute this as being a pizza by broad definition.  This was nothing like the normal Gin's "tray" that I've grown accustomed to.  It didn't have the molten lava cheese with the signature smell that you just know it's Gin's.  Instead it had a flavorless, undercooked cheese that I doubt was their normal batch.  The sauce which is usually quite flavorful and vibrant was flat and bland.  The sauce was so lacking that it seemed a simple can of Hunts Tomato Sauce was mixed with a tomato puree and dumped on the pizza.  It was also quite dry.  I sought advice of my 2 deputy critics who concurred that these components of the pizza were not up to snuff.

As I said, it does kill me to say anything negative regarding a place I've grown to love, yet grown to hate, so I will not understate the positive.  I did very much enjoy the quality of the crust.  It was cooked to perfection, a nice golden brown, and a good crunch with a nice flavor.  You could tell the pan was oiled nicely, because the taste was the one thing that allowed me to reach for another slice to confirm my initial impressions.  Again, I think my colleagues would concur that crust was above average.

Crust: 3.5/5
Sauce: 1/5
Cheese: 1/5
Overall Taste: 1.5/5
Crispy/Cooked Properly: 3/5
Overall Value: 2/5
OVERALL RATING: 1.5/5
Similar to: Mainline Hoagie and Pizza

THE BOTTOM LINE:
Unfortunately for this review, we received a bad Gin's pizza.  I could go back tomorrow and have one of the best pizzas of all time.  It's really frustrating to know that on any given night you can have either one of the most satisfying meals in NEPA, and a pizza worse than a 4 day old pre-prepared supermarket pizza the next.  Although this is was a bad experience with both the pizza, wings and wing bites that were ordered, I will of course go back for more and provide Gin's with a good review the next time I catch them on a good day.