As a couple on a journey to perfect our homemade pizza, we’re often trying new pizzerias around our home state as well as out on our travels. Today’s Doge Pizza review is from a small shop that kind of went hugely viral last year: Doge Pizza in St. Paul, MN.
We were actually doing something right down the street from this place one evening at the Youth Performance Company, so we decided to finally stop on by.
The Memes & The Crypto
As proud consumers of internet memes for over a decade and pseudo-investors in altcoin crypto, we are the best people to try out a pizzeria where memes, crypto, and pizza meet! Right?
The Doge meme originated in Japan around the year 2010 with an extremely cute photo of Kabosu, the now internet-famous female Shiba Inu dog. As with most cute things online, it spread quickly through blogs, forums, and videos. By 2013, it had amassed a large cult following, with meme creators making new iterations on a daily basis.
As for Dogecoin, that started as a joke on Bitcoin. And as with most jokes online, it spread quickly and is currently one of the biggest investments in the cryptocurrency space. Do you have at least .01% of your net savings in Dogecoin!? We are not financial advisors one bit, but definitely have fun watching the line go up! And down. Much sad. So scare. Concern. NOT! We just hodl. It will go to the moon eventually.
Finally, as for Doge Pizza, the place was birthed and opened up during the pandemic as a pizza place to combine all the love for everything doge and dogecoin. And as with most unique things online, news spread quickly.
Doge Pizza Location
It’s located at 629 Aldine St, St Paul, MN 55104 on the corner of Aldine and Lafond in the Midway neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Not too far from where Snelling and University Avenues meet.
Doge Pizza’s Atmosphere
It’s a very small takeout place, with just a few chairs and tiny table at the window for sitting. We decided to eat there and we’re glad we did. People were coming and going, delivery drivers were racing along, and lots of visitors were curious about the origins.
Doge Pizza’s Menu
The digital menu at Doge had all the classics. The meats, the veggies, the cheeses, the supremes. For their “special menu” they listed all of their top picks. Don’t worry, if you’re not glued to your Dogecoin price charts, all menu prices were in dollars for easy understanding.
Ultimately, we decided to order the Meat Attack Pizza with a side of Garlic Balls and dipping sauce. We kept our expectations low, but at the same time we were kind of hungry. We’d been working hard all day and were ready to enjoy some internet-famous pizza.
Our Doge Pizza Review
The Good
So with our low expectations, we were pleasantly surprised with our meat lover’s pizza! The toppings were all fresh, the cheese was abundant, and the sauce went perfectly with the crust. It wasn’t too thin or too thick and much better than the chain shops.
And the little pizza saver tables had a Dogecoin symbol on them! Apparently, if you save up nine of them, you get a free small pizza. A nice little loyalty program that stays on brand.
The Bad
In all honesty, the place was kind of in an old run-down building that might not live up to any health code standards in this country. Not a big deal to us. We didn’t ask or look for any certification. Just keep in mind it’s a small neighborhood pizza joint with no frills.
The pizza was not cut into squares, like traditional Minnesota tavern-style pizza. They were pie-cut. Not really a “bad” thing, per se, but we cherish our authenticity sometimes.
And sadly, the garlic balls were almost inedible. And we love our garlic. The only thing we could think of was that the garlic cloves were left out too long and were old or sprouting new cloves? The taste was extremely bitter and combined with the oily nature of the treats, it just didn’t go right.
Even dipping the balls into the delicious red sauce didn’t help. If we’re feeling adventurous next time we go, we’d probably try these again, because we really think it was just an old batch of garlic cloves.
The Beauty
The overall business plan and ingenuity of basing your small biz on a pizza meme was simple delightful. It made the whole experience that much more engaging and fun. More entrepreneurs should totally start meme-based projects. The millennials would love it!
And just look at this slice of heaven… our low expectations were far exceeded with this beauty of a pizza.
We will definitely be back to Doge Pizza when we’re around St. Paul again. We hope you, in particular, enjoyed our Doge Pizza review and that you will get a chance to try these tasty pies sometime soon.
And don’t worry, we didn’t spend our precious few dogecoin on a pizza like that Bitcoin guy did many years back. We paid in dollars and will be saving and hodling our DOGE for years to come!
And by the way, if any of you have any fun or unique pizzerias that you’d like us to review on any of our travels, please contact us and let us know! Don’t let our Doge Pizza Review deter you from honest yet generous reviews of other places.
We’re going somewhere new at least a few times a year and are always looking for tasty treats on our journeys. Thanks! We recently stopped by another local pizzeria called Boludo in Minneapolis which was amazing. And also recommend our review of Godfather’s Pizza Sauce.
