Imo's Pizza

Yuck! Being from Chicago, I have yet to find a pizza place in Springfield that tastes close to good pizza. Everything here just pales in comparison! Imo's pizza on cracker type crust, with a sauce that tastes like ketchup, no mozarella cheese and spicy enough to give me heartburn - no thanks!!! Wish there was a Giordano's down here!!!

This is the first pizza place in Springfield I ate at, and according the a review I'm seeing off to the right, Imos is the originator of what's known as "St. Louis style" pizza.

As you can see from the rating, I'm not impressed. Firstly, I'm glad that I now know--from that review off to the right--that St. Louis-style pizza skips mozzarella for something called "provel," but that doesn't make it good. Real pizza has mozzarella cheese, long gooey, stringy cheese that holds the toppings to the crust, gets pulled when pick up a piece, and has a certain consistency that defines pizza. I'm pretty sure this is why most people eat pizza, because it's their favorite toppings covered in this delicious substance.

This provel stuff, on the other hand, just seems to sit on top of some of the toppings, and Imos in particular--compared to other places I've been--purposely leaves their pizzas in until the provel is dark brown, what I would easily define as "overdone." If everyone else's pizza didn't have this dark brown stuff randomly sprinkled on top of their pies, I would have thought they burnt mine and just didn't tell me.

So, throw in the paltry cheese with the St. Louisy thin crust and good toppings and you have a pizza-like item that's not bad by any means, but at the same time, isn't something I'll go back for. Did I enjoy it? Probably, as opposed to lima beans or broccoli puffs. Is it better than an average frozen pizza? Nope, not close--I'd take a Tombstone any day of the week over this, for a third the cost.

I'm probably going to come off as being hard on local pizza due to my Chicago origins, but really, there's better St. Louis pizza in town than this. I guess if you're near campus, it's convenient, but otherwise, pizza-like isn't pizza.

Imo's is where you go to get the best pizza, hands down.