Restaurant Review: Craig O's

Craig O's is yet another pizza place that is joining the seemingly growing trend of restaurants offering gluten-free alternatives.  Yay Craig O's!

Now admittedly I do not know much about this franchise or how they operate and the gluten-free crust does not seem to be on their online menu.

I was able to talk to someone in charge at the South location however and he assured us as to the safety of this pizza.

Yummy Craig O's GF pizza!

The rice flour crusts are not made in-house but rather shipped frozen to their location.  Because they are frozen they take a little longer to bake and he recommended that we call in the order and then pick up.
We then got to talking about the actual crust and he said theirs is exclusive; they tasted a bunch of different crusts, chose the one they like best and struck a deal with the distributor to be the exclusive provider of that crust so that they'll be the only ones in Austin with that crust.
And I must say, the crust is dense, chewy and pretty thick!  Definitely unique.  It's about as thick as my pinky finger,  thicker than Brick Oven's crust, which is airy, thinner and crispier.

Look at that crust!

After my first bite I had to wonder if there wasn't quite a bit of tapioca flour in the crust as well!

The cross section of the bit revealed that the dough was slightly translucent, which I attribute to either tapioca flour or glutinous rice flour.  

(Please note glutinous rice flour is gluten-free!) 

I didn't get a picture of the cross section though because my camera died! :(
My mom and I shared a 10" pizza and ate a plate of salad with fixings at home and found that it was a surprisingly filling meal!
For my salad I used mixed baby greens, walnuts, cranberries, tomato and okra and this time with Litehouse Homestyle Ranch dressing.  For some reason I like to have ranch dressing when I eat pizza!

Yes my nutty salad and yes more okra

It's not cheap eats though since it came to about $14 for a 10" pie like Brick Oven that is again, only one meal if you add a salad from home.
But like I said gluten-free gets expensive when you're talking baked goods!
If I was craving specifically a thick, chewy pizza I would make the splurge.  If my friends wanted to go there, I wouldn't mind paying that much.  But it's not something I could afford very regularly.
Keep in mind also that this pizza is the only gluten-free item on the Craig O's menu, except for maybe some salad.
For more info on Craig O's click here!