Big Apple Pizzeria

I wish I would have reviewed some of the posts on Unilocal before stopping in. The service was terrible, the pizza was a pre-​made cheese pizza with the toppings you want added in on after the fact-​and not even warmed enough to cook the meat or veggies that top the pizza. Everything was set up as self serve, which was fantastic, except no one bothered to let us know and just ended up watching us wander around looking for plates, napkins, forks, etc. The food was over priced for what we got and the menu was inaccurate with the toppings. This may be a great place for a group of kids for a birthday, but it was a horrible experience for my family of 5. I will pass next time.

I just moved in right down the street and decided to give this place a try my husband had eaten here many times before a few years ago and said it was good pizza so I called up and ordered take out the guy taking phone orders could barely speak English and kept getting my order wrong I was ordering off the menu they have posted on there website guy didn’t seem to know his own menu. Then I ask to speak to a manager he was such a nice guy and I feel so bad about giving a bad review but it is what it is and the food was awful. My husband went to pick it up and said management must have changed because he didn’t recognize any of the people. Again my husband said they were very nice but we get the food home and it looked so gross I didn’t even want to eat it. We ordered a calzone to share which looked more like cheap pull out of the freezer stuffed bread sticks. Took a bite it was awful. Then I open our salad I didn’t even take a bite it looked so gross warm uncut cabbage with mozzarella cheese was the only ingredients, and last but not least the hot wings were cold and not hot or spicy at all they again like all the other food just looked and tasted gross. They seemed like nice people but just because your nice does not mean you should run a restaurant. I will never eat there again.

would give 0 stars if possible.
first of all, when i googled the menu, i was thinking of a different place… one that wasn’t so divey and run down. we already agreed the menu sounded like something we were in the mood for when i realized it wasn’t the (much nicer) place i thought it was, so we stuck with our decision. big mistake.
i cannot emphasize enough how disgusting and run-​down this place is. it looks like a giant hollowed-​out convenience store (complete with the awful lighting) with «menu pictures» of «their pizza» above the register that must have been relics from the 70’s. the décor is non-​existent.
the lady running the cash register (because they don’t take orders at tables… uhhh) was, just, she was awful. just, a dummy. i feel bad being that blunt about it but the fact is she was completely confused and had NO idea what she was doing. she really has no business running something as clearly difficult for her as handling orders.
i said i wanted the philly cheesesteak with fries and she repeated «chili cheesesteak». i was like noooooo PHILLY cheesesteak with fries. she (sort of) wrote down what she thought i said, which i won’t replicate here because that would just be mean. she didn’t write down fries despite repeating it a third time. my boyfriend ordered the gyro with fries and she (sort of) wrote down what she thought he’d said as well. i didn’t have a good feeling. we told her we wanted a couple sodas, and she went to the register to ring it all up, where she got even more confused about what she was doing and whether she’d forgotten something. she ended up overcharging us.
she brings out our food about 20 minutes later (we were the only people waiting for food). a pile of fries was on my plate, and there were no fries on my boyfriend’s. as he was charged for 2 orders, i said, «he ordered fries too.» she said — and i still cannot believe this — «oh, well, your plate got extra.» she seemed to realize this was not the right thing to say and attempted to save it with, «we have a little extra back there. i guess i can give those to you guys.» walks off with the plate, brings it back. says, «see, THIS is how many are supposed to be in an order, so you got more.» oooookay. how about just serve the small, easy order correctly in the first place and we could have avoided all that? it could not really have been that hard could it?
meanwhile, there is one tiny 1-​oz cup of ketchup for 2 («3»?) orders of fries. i asked for more ketchup cups, or even just a ketchup bottle if they had them. she says she will bring me more of the kind that’s in the cups.
she comes back with a giant (and empty) bottle of ketchup that has a triple-​dispensing nozzle.
k, so service is laughably bad. there’s always the food, right? yyyyyeeeeaaaaah. not so much.
the gyro meat was dry with old-​looking shredded lettuce on it. the fries were all inconsistently cooked, as if someone put some in the frier, thought about it a short while later, added more fries to the same basket that was already cooking, and served them together.
the philly was… ugh. i just, i can’t even begin to describe everything that was wrong with this sandwich. apparently it’s $ 6 for a reason — which i almost feel is my own fault for trusting, because i frequent food carts and have apparently come to expect to find something tasty for $ 6 ($ 8.50 after fries & drink). anyway… the philly. everything that could have possibly been wrong was wrong. just a lukewarm mess of everything totally wrong. i understand not everything can be perfectly authentic, but i at least expect… palatable.
the meat had an awfully strange flavor to it i couldn’t put my finger on. after a couple more bites i realized i was tasting ginger. ginger. ginger on a fucking philly cheesesteak.
i took my plate back up to the cashier, cook, and who appeared to be the cook’s son, and said «hi, i noticed my sandwich tasted odd, and i realized that there is barbecue sauce on it. you don’t put barbecue sauce on a philly. i can’t eat this.»
the dummy cashier /​waitress (WHO WAS NOT THE COOK!) chimes in «oh that’s not barbecue sauce. i put steak sauce on it.»
*stare* «…and you also don’t put steak sauce on a philly.» i didn’t even bother to ask why in the fuck she was adding sauces to things right before serving them.
the lady who was a cook was very nice about it and apologized. she refunded the $ 6 for the sandwich. if i’m forced to give this place a minimum of one star, she is the reason this place earned it. she was nice.
i’m also not even going to begin to comment on the types who seem to hang out here. obnoxiously drunk, gross people, tweakers, seedy looking regulars who are obviously comfortable coming out of the bar to yell at people working out front. just, ugh.
terrible food, terrible service, and gresham’s finest on display? no thanks. i will never enter this establishment ever ever ever again. i feel gross.

Pretty good New York-​style pizza for being in Oregon. I think the owners are Greek, so they definitely put their own twist on things and have a few different pizza options than other places, i.e. artichokes, and they are super friendly. The prices are decent, although not the cheapest you’re going to find, and there is also a bar in the back. It’s kind of an odd setting, but like I said, the pizza is pretty good here and seemed to me to be more Mediterranean-​like, but you can still have your good old meat-​submerged pie. The veggies are fresh and they make a pretty good white sauce pizza.

I was hoping that «Big Apple» implied that this pizza joint was going to be in the style a la New York. When I think of a New York pizza style, I think «Escape from New York», «Straight from New York», etc. Large, fresh hand tossed pizza, with fresh ingredients.
Big Apple Pizzeria? I don’t think it could get much further away from that New York ideal.
Strike One — The first thing that worried me about the place was that they didn’t have my favorite New York style stand-​by, the Margherita Pizza. But I was with my folks who don’t like leaving an establishment to go in search for another, and this is in Gresham, where good food in general is hard to come by. I guess I’m just another «Portland snob» but seriously, there are great pizza establishments everywhere (Ken’s, Apizza Scholls, Straight from New York, etc. etc.)
Strike Two — I found an alternative pizza to order (we were all ordering pies, not slices), and it had pesto in it. I asked the girl behind the counter how their pesto was, assuming that they made it from scratch in house, like all of the other pizza places I frequent do. She says «Hmm, I don’t know, let me check.» She goes to the back and brings out this container of Costco-​bought Pesto sauce and brings it to the front and sticks her nose into the container saying that it smelled «basily» (since I was in the mood for basil, hence the desire to get a margherita pizza). Bleh, first of all — Not homemade pesto? Secondly, she dips her nose into the container? Unsanitary :(I decided to not get a pizza with pesto and just order a standard red sauce pie with mushrooms, bell peppers and sundried tomatoes.
Strike Three — After we all place our orders for our pies, we left to go to a nearby store to pass the time and came back to pick up the pizzas. When we returned, I noticed that there were several pre-​made pizza dough/​bread things, sticking out of a plastic bag, left on the counter. So they don’t even make their own pizza dough??? The girl must just take these pre-​made, pre-​cooked (a bit) pizza shaped dough forms, put bottled or canned red sauce/​pesto sauce, cheese and veggies/​meats on it, puts it in the oven, and calls it good. It was just her working there — it must be economical to just have one person working the counter and the orders and to have everything store bought and pre-​made. If I wanted pre-​made and not fresh, I would just go to the store and pick up a frozen pizza.
Strike Four — The pizza dough sucked — it was almost like a flat bread. Not pizza doughy at all. The sauce was bland — but what do you expect from pre-​bottled sauce? The slices were not New York style — they were just like regular Pizza Hut/​Dominos style. In fact, I would rather go to Pizza Hut or Dominos than this place. At least then, I could have some better tasting dough. Lastly, my pizza didn’t come with sundried tomatoes like I had asked. Upon first glance to the untrained eye, it may look like the pizza had mushrooms, bell peppers and sundried tomatoes, because you could clearly see the mushrooms, some green bell peppers, and some red vegetable of some kind, just assume that it’s sundried peppers. But instead, it was just red bell peppers — not a single sundried tomato. But that’s alright, since it most likely would have come from the bottle as well.
The prices for the pizza were also OUTRAGEOUS considering the horrible quality of the food. I don’t remember the exact prices but I think it was around $ 20 for a large with 3 toppings. Next time I’m in the mood for some cheap and not so great pizza and I’m in the area, I will go to Papa Johns, because at least they’re a lot cheaper and the pizza tastes better. The one good thing about the place, I suppose, Is the girl behind the counter seemed very friendly and nice.
All in all, the non-​fresh, store-​bought, pre-​made dough, everything… Just goes against everything I believe in as far as going out for food. You don’t go out for food and pay good money to get worse than what you can make yourself. You go out for the experience of trying something new, of having good quality food that you wouldn’t normally make for yourself at home, or would take many long hours to make yourself… Alternatively, I suppose if you work next door or very close by and you’re craving some terrible pizza and you have $ 20 to spare, I suppose this would be better than buying a bag of chips and some candy bars. But to each their own.

Was afraid to try this place it’s kinda divvy looking from the outside… but the pizza was really good at a decent price. I’ll definitely go back! Plus I won two free pinball games while waiting :-)

Decent cheap pizza served fast and friendly. It seems like there is a want inside to be a chucky cheeses or a place you take your kids after they win a ball game (specially with the childrens sports team on the wall). Its switched hands since I started going there and I have been there a good ten times.
The new people focus more on the bar but I don’t really spend very much time in it.

new owner wouldn’t honor gift certificate…1 less customer to walk through their door. Old owner must have had thin crust not any more

I’ve never actually been in the establishment, but their thin crust New York style pizza is VERY addicting. Get the works and you won’t be disapointed in the hand tossed dough, fresh sauce and loads of toppings. Sadly they only deliver Friday-​Sunday. Great local secret

Pretty good pizza but overpriced

Awesome pizza– a little greasy– but very very good. I mean hey… it’s pizza