: “The Very Best”—hahahahaha. So let me tell you about Bellagio’s located on 8112 SE 13th (503) 230-2900. This pizza shop is part of a collection of pizza places, of the same name, located across Oregon. As such, it naturally suffers the way any food suffers when it is subjected to a scientific construction that guarantees consistency across retailers.

The cheese pie we picked up could be confused, in a pizza lineup, with a pie from Rovente’s, except it’ll set you back about $7 more than a slice from that beloved Hawthorne shack. The pizza is characterized by a thin crust, with a layer of cheese so bound to its bready foundation that it might have been painted on. Faint traces of sauce tinted red the between-space, but any flavor remained elusive to the taste buds. The XL pie is also cut in to 12 pieces, which I sort of like, since you don’t have to commit yourself to big slices, and so there are more opportunities for equitable distribution among various group sizes.

Though the standard extra-large cheese pie will run you about $15, it is only a dollar or so for more toppings, so it sort of fills a niche left wanting by the gross price differential between Rovente’s plain pizzas and their fancier toppinged siblings. The two establishments also share a similarity in their unwelcoming atmospheres (one, clean and corporate, the other, dingy and on the verge of collapse), so any reader contemplating a slice “for here” is advised to reconsider.  I will give Bellagio's Pizza in Portland 1 out of 8 slices.

DT. Portland Pizza