From the outside, 5th Street Pizza in Allen looks like a typical hole in the wall pizza parlor; but this small restaurant has won the “Best Pizza in Allen” award from Dallas Morning News. 

Walking inside, there are statues of ‘Joliet’ Jake Blues and Elwood Blues, characters from The Blues Brothers film. To the right there’s an entrance to Stacy’s Furniture & Design, and to the left there are tables and chairs next to an arch walkway in a brick wall that leads to the cashier of 5th Street Pizza. 

The menu features pizzas with salads, calzones, and strombolis, and the decor all around is brick walls with jerseys, vinyl records, and a big projector playing sports games or sports recaps. 

The first food to arrive at the table, with very little delay, was a house salad with romaine lettuce, Roma tomatoes, red onions, green peppers, Provel cheese, and mushrooms. The lettuce had hints of brown, signs that it was old, giving it a slightly bitter taste. The mushrooms were thick slices that had no discerning taste. The tomatoes, green onions, and green peppers were diced to small bits. The overall quality of the salad was poor with the lettuce being old and the mushrooms being floppy and squishy.. 

The next to come out was the St. Louis style pepperoni and black olive pizza, with a thin layer of bubbling cheese holding the black olives to the sauce and dough. The pizza is cut into squares, like a typical St. Louis style pizza, and has a thin, crispy crust. The pizza is cooked well, with no burnt or undercooked spots on the underside. The pizza cools down quickly due to how thin it is, so eating it quickly is essential if you like your pizza warm. The pepperoni flavor is covered up by the pizza’s tomato based sauce that has a mild sweet and acidic taste with small hints of cheese and olives.

Forgotten until the end, the previously ordered spicy cheese toasted raviolis came out cold and disappointing. The raviolis were burnt around the edges and the combination between the spicy cheese and the raviolis wasn’t  good as the flavors clashed and didn’t mix well. 

While 5th Street Pizza might have gotten awards for the best pizza in Allen in the past, it certainly has seemed to decline since then, from the poor service and low quality food.