Restaurant Review: Conan's Pizza

Day one of Vegan MoFo! I was going to save this review until a little later in the month, but I couldn't wait, especially after Gerald was so kind as to offer up a donation of delicious, delicious pizza for VRA's Halloween party. I figured I owed it to vegans all over Austin to tell of the wonders that are only a phone call away.

It all started when Gerald from Conan's posted a note over at Vegans Rock Austin! that starting October 26, Conan's Pizza would begin offering Daiya on their pizzas, and that both the wheat and white deep dish crusts were vegan.

Wait, a local chain that is in my neighborhood AND delivers to my house is offering Daiya AND they have vegan deep dish crusts? This is amazing! I knew this deserved further investigation.

We drove by and sure enough, their sign proudly proclaimed that they had vegan options. I got a small Don't Choke Art! which includes artichoke hearts, spinach, garlic, and tomatoes. Conan's put a perfect amount of Daiya and toppings, and I have to say, I think the pizza was even better after it had cooled. I've always been a big fan of cold, leftover pizza, and for me, room temperature Daiya pizza is the way to go. I'm not a huge fan of cold Daiya pizza, since, as Daiya doesn't really firm it when it's chilled, it seems kind of soggy.



My favorite noncheese of choice for pizzas is still FYH Monterrey Jack, but Daiya is definitely gaining ground. And I'm really glad that so many restaurants are offering it. It seems to be opening a lot of doors for vegans and other dairy-free people. As I said on my twitter stream, I feel this is truly the start of a vegan revolution.... If you're not a fan of fake cheese, I think this pizza would be great without any cheese or Daiya.

I've never had deep dish pizza other than Pizza Hut's Pan pizza, which was my family's pizza of choice when I was growing up and this was so good! It was really comforting, because it kind of reminded me of the pan pizza, but at the same time, it was also completely different. The crust was soft and bready just under the toppings but perfectly crisp, with that fried dough texture all along the edges and bottom of the pizza.

Look at how thick this baby was!

Conan's has four veggie "specialty" pizza options and ten vegetable/seasoning options. They also offer barbecue sauce and pesto, but as of this writing, only the tomato sauce is vegan, however, it sounds as if they might be looking into making a vegan pesto.

They do charge a little more for the Daiya, but they offer a 10% discount if you have a Go Local card, and you can print out $2 off coupons. I got the small, which I believe is about 8 inches. My small deep dish was about $11, which is not bad all, since it was fresh, super thick, and mega delicious, plus, it will feed me at least once more. It was perfect and could feed about 2-3 people if you had a salad or vegetables on the side. Of course, you could also be like JD and eat the whole thing in one sitting....

The south location is also really cute, with a Colorado table, a rock'n' roll table, and plants with names like Alabama and Batman. It gets extra points for being right next to my favorite library on the south side and right across from the park, although it's also right across the street from a high school and college, so it's likely to be packed at lunch time on weekdays.

At the VRA Halloween party, I got to try a slice of another pizza, which I think was either the Veggie or the Veggie Supreme (I didn't see any tomato or pineapple slices, but I did catch a few pieces of jalepeno, so maybe it was something else entirely). As my first pizza confirmed, Conan's makes a great pizza, and Austin Vegans are lucky to be able order deep dish pizzas.