A Vegan Pizza Tour of the Greater Boston Area

Just going to rapid fire this one off before I lose the truly tactile experiential pizza memories. And also because I’m super tired right now.
I just saw Wind River in the theater (It’s excellent, very bleak! Politically sympathetic to women and Native Americans but still makes white people the heroes and Jeremy Renner a very stoic lone wolf savior-type).

Pizza.

Criteria: In order to be a vegan pizza, the pizza must have something purposefully vegan about it. This can be vegan cheese or some other vegan protein (like sausage or tofu). So I’m not accepting pizza with no cheese, just red sauce and vegetables. Because then I would also have to accept bread with just red sauce. And then I would have to accept just bread. And then eventually I would be buying and testing pizza air. Meh.

Third Place: Veggie Crust, Somerville
One can’t actually make a bad pizza, I don’t think. At least I’ve never had a bad pizza. So veggie Crust’s pizza was good, but I didn’t like the atmosphere of the place. Despite really billing itself as a haven of vegan pizza options, there actually were not very many. And despite lots of cute and kitschy handmade signs sprinkled around encouraging veganism and plant-based eating, the vegan options were both rarer and significantly more expensive.
It felt kind of like a restaurant for people who wanted to eat at a vegan restaurant but didn’t want to eat vegan food. Which, if that’s what you’re looking for-highly recommended- but, being vegan, I was rather put out.

Tied for Second Place: Blaze Pizza, Multiple and All Star Pizza Bar, Cambridge
I really enjoyed Blaze’s business model, which could have been lifted straight from a Chipotle (but we’re in Boston, so actually straight from Boloco). The build your own pizza feature enables you to pick the toppings you want for your personal pizza and then watch as it is created and ultimately fired. Super cute and fun. (I got vegan cheese, zucchini, and spinach).
All Star Pizza Bar was more classic (and is directly across from sister eatery, All Star Sandwich Bar). ASPB gets extra points for being the only place that has other vegan add-ons beyond cheese- namely citrus-tofu. Because my stomach is very sensitive to citrus and other acids, I opted for the BYOP once again, this time with vegan cheese, spinach, and eggplant. I am nothing if not predictable. The pizzas were excellent and the outer space/sci fi theme was cute.

First Place: Homemade Pizza
I like mine with a whole wheat crust, daiya cheese, broccoli, red pepper, and soy sausage. 😉