CRUST: White

BASE: Olive oil

SAUCE: Hot Buffalo

TOPPINGS: Jalapeños, olives, spicy chicken, cherry tomatoes, pepper flakes

Confession: I don’t like pizza. I know this is blasphemous, especially because pizza is a major American staple food (along with hamburgers, steaks and other ovular hunks of meat). But that’s mostly because I don’t like cheese. Luckily, for anyone who’s vegan, lactose intolerant or otherwise dietary-restricted, Pieology is one of the most versatile and customizable pizza options in Cupertino, if not the most. Cheese is merely an option, and with an infinity of choices it’s hard not to walk up to the counter feeling the metaphorical and literal heat of those combinations.

On to the actual pizza: Pieology, much to my disappointment, doesn’t offer different thicknesses of crusts, and its standard is very thin, perhaps in order to meet its promise of cooking in five minutes or less (I timed it: it was no lie.)  The dough itself was not too doughy and didn’t clot in your mouth or crumble like a stale cracker. Instead, it had that satisfying balance of initial crunch and chewiness. The servers certainly made an effort to arrange toppings artistically, so chances are you might be a little hesitant to bite in. But ruining the symmetry is worth it: it’s fresh and whisked from the oven to the plate still slightly bubbling, the sauce has a zing that wards off any suspicion that it’s from a can and the toppings (though many were suspiciously Saran-wrapped) were high-quality. That is, as high quality as a canned olive can be.

If anything tastes particularly heinous, the fault might be yours: if you have a penchant or talent for creating your own flavor combos (though you might be judged for asking for every single spicy condiment, as I was), Pieology’s out-of-the-oven whole pizzas are an alternative to the predictability of a slice that’s probably been sitting under a heat lamp for hours.