California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) St Louis Galleria - visited March 2013

We had received a nice coupon from the California Pizza Kitchen saying we could receive a free pizza with any $25 purchase, so we decided to go visit them on Friday evening before the coupon expired. The first thing we had to do was locate the restaurant from the outside. We knew it was on the southern end of the Saint Louis Galleria mall, and we located it at the entrance between Macy's and Nordstrom, near the Urban Outfitters store.

Galleria mall entrance between Macy's and Nordstrom

We were in fact seated by one of the inside windows so that we could watch everybody that walked in and out of Urban Outfitters from the first floor inside entrance. They have quite a bit of foot traffic on a Friday evening! Since it was just the three of us, we decided to split one large salad and then order three pizzas so we would have some leftovers to take home. I love leftover pizza! My son ordered a pepperoni pizza, my wife ordered just a plain cheese and I ordered a Spicy Chipotle Chicken pizza. For the salad we went with the Carmelized Peach salad. The large salad was a generous size for the three of us, especially since my son only wanted a small taste. The peaches were warm and flavorful, but the pecans did not have much flavor to them. The balsamic vinaigrette dressing was pretty mild and could have used a bit more zest for my taste.

Spicy Chipotle Chicken pizza

Then it was time for the pizzas and they came out fresh and tasty. We all liked the flavorful and substantial crusts but thought they could have placed more toppings on the pizzas, especially more sauce and cheese and bring it out more to the edges of the crust. My Spicy Chipotle Chicken definitely had more toppings than the others, but I was hoping for more chicken! Plus the corn and black beans kept falling off my pizza all the time. It needed some better pizza adhesive. Nonetheless, I still heartily enjoyed my pizza and so did the rest of my family. When we were done eating my wife had 3 of 6 slices remaining, and my son and I each had 2 slices remaining. That means we were headed home with more than the equivalent of a whole pizza.

All in all it was a fun Friday evening dinner outing for us (which we do not do too often) and it was fun mall people watching while we ate. I doubt we would have gone without the free pizza coupon, but that was the idea of the coupon, wasn't it?