The Coffee House: Coffee And a Lot of PIzza

It's a cozy spot in residential San Jose

894 Emory St, San Jose, CA 95126

Style and Character:8
Service: 8
Coffee: 8
Food: 9
Value: 9 

Date of visit: 2019-01-05

Yelp sends me recommendations all the time. Most of the time, in fact all the time, I ignore it ... until a couple of days ago when they suggested The Coffee House. There were three things the made me interested

1. It was in San Jose, an easy bus ride away. Nice for me.
2. It's a coffee place I haven't been to before. I'm always looking for new good coffee places
3. It's getting good reviews. This is a little iffy since I don't really trust Yelp reviews without hesitation, but review were very promising
4. It's a coffee place and has good pizza. What? I mean ... OK! 

First off, let's discuss the coffee. We got americanos since there were out of Vietnamese coffee (bummer). Still the americanos were smooth and served with cream. That's 100% cream, not half-and-half. Cream and half-and-half are not the same thing. Cream is better. We'll leave it at that. We need to come back sometime and try the Vietnamese coffee.

This image doesn't show the lovely cream (not half-and-half) we were brought seconds later

A coffee place that serves pizza. You might think that this is some sort of afterthought. No. The pizza is excellent, and interesting. It's Detroit style pizza. I didn't know what that was either. It's not something they made up. It has a Wikipedia entry and everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit-style_pizza

How were our Detroit style pizza? It was meaty with Canadian bacon, sausage, pepperoni, salami, and some olives, bell peppers, and onions between the meats. They have a a three cheese option as well, but we got the Supreme, their "meat lovers" pizza. It was big (1x2ft) thick (2 inches?) and really good. The sausage had a nice spiciness to it. The sauce was rich. The crust was nicely crisp.

It may not look like a pizza, but it is, and it's good

My biggest complaints about the pizza was that it's definitely not pizza that you want to eat with your hands, but it's actually hard to eat with a knife and fork. This was exasperated by a plate-table combination with a very low coefficient of friction. As I struggled to get my knife through the delicious by blade-resistant crust, my whole plate would slide about. It brought back memories of childhood dinners when I was still struggling with using a knife and fork and getting through a meal without incident.

I should also mention that this is not a fast food place. The pizzas are double baked and take some time. This is not Dominoes. If you order pizza, be prepared to wait. If you don't have the time, just enjoy some coffee.

I would suggest The Coffee House have the option for a smaller size pizza. The pizza only come in one size, that looks large, but as you start eating it, it starts to look larger. Let me be clear, we eat a lot, but we struggled to eat half this pizza. A smaller size could make a big seller. Anyway, I know what I'm reheating for brunch tomorrow.