Junior's (B)

I'm up in Vermont visiting friends, this week.  Last night, Aimee brought me to her favorite Burlington-area pizza joint:  Juniors.  The restaurant has two sides, one a standard pizza place and the other a fine Italian restaurant.

The Location
It's a classic Vermont-ish eatery.  You go up to a counter and order your food and then take a number to whichever table you want.  They bring the pizza to you.  The pizzaria side was a straightforward, open area with classic red and white checkerboard tablecloths.  The pizza came out fast, the staff were friendly enough and overall I'd say the place was ok.  Of course, it's kind of a moot point because it's in Vermont.

The Pizza

No I did not eat them both by myself.
I did consider it.

The crust on this pizza is excellent.  Its a medium thickness, with a nice chewy center but a crunchy bottom surface.  So it crunches in your mouth, but without turning into a mass of pizza shards.  It's chewy but chewable.  The cheese was stretchy and enjoyable.  Overall, one of the best basic pizzas ever.  We ordered one buffalo chicken pizza and one barbecue chicken pizza.  After all, if that was my last visit to Junior's, I had to try them both!

The Chicken
Being an Italian restaurant, I was excited for what I suspected might be coming:  flattened breaded chicken.  I was right.  It was like eating a chicken parm on a crust...but with bbq sauce.  Ok, maybe it wasn't like chicken parm at all, but it was delicious!

The Sauce and the Taste
The buffalo sauce and the barbecue sauce were both pretty tasty.  My big issue was that neither pizza included other toppings.  The buffalo chicken really could have used some bleu cheese and the BBQ chicken really could have used some onions.  I feel like these uni-flavor pizzas really kind of dropped the ball.

Overall
A very well constructed pizza.  I think that Junior's is, overall, high quality food.  I just don't think they put in the effort to coming up with a barbecue chicken pizza that is their own.  It really needs to be a special thing, not just another topping.  I give it a B!