Empire Pizza

i love this bar! barstool bingo on Tuesdays is the best! the bartenders are all very cool and the food is pretty good. karaōke on fri and sat and a good crowd for football on Sundays. their salads are ginormous.

A social joint for alcoholics? YES! Mostly the Empire is a bar attended by locals, but outsiders are welcome, and yup, sometimes we do get loud and rowdy. It’s fun.

Visited on Saturday October 26, 2013 at 4pm
Well, let’s just say this is a low end beer joint posing as a pizza place. When I went inside, the bar was crowded with barflies who had overindulged in beer. When the (only) server finally got around to me I asked «hey, got a pizza menu?» to which she obliged me with a list of their offerings. Twenty minutes later she finally got back to me and asked me what I wanted. When I started to order a pizza, she said «Oh I’m so sorry, but our pizza cook is not here — he’s at least 25 minutes late.»
I’m not kidding. You would think she had enough brain cells to let me know that when she handed me the menu…
This is obviously a social joint for alcoholics. Don’t bring the kids to this place.

I drove to Empire Pizza based on the reviews here. Even though every red flag was flying as I pulled up, I thought I’d give it a try. First I avoid any restaurant that looks dirty from thirty feet away. If the door isn’t clean, expect worse in the kitchen. Still, I thought, well, I’m here, I may as well give it a try.
It just wasn’t good. While not terrible, I did manage to eat three slices, that was as much as I could take before I tossed it. Domino’s is better and that’s not saying much. I really root for these in the middle of nowhere places, and yet it was as if they just didn’t care about the quality of their product or something. They don’t seem to understand that if you’re going to survive in a remote location, you have to be good enough to draw people from a long way away to make the business fly. Instead, they go cheap and seem to think they got you because there isn’t another pizza place for miles.
The people were all nice, but it’s just not the kind of place where you’d be pleasantly surprised. Really great pizza seems harder and harder to find these day so I’ll just keep on looking elsewhere. It’s a shame really.

Wow… what’s happened here? Been here in the past a few times but it’s been, oh, maybe a year or so since our last visit. Things have changed. First off, it seems to be getting pretty run down. Really needs some cleaning and updating. (Wondered how it could pass inspections). Next, it was all about (loud, foul mouthed) drunks playing darts. It was obvious they’d all been at it for some time and this was 5 PM on a Saturday. It was either sit amongst them or in the «dining area» that’s limited and under some pretty obnoxious lighting. Anyway, the atmosphere could use some updating. Figured, it’d be worth it as we know the pizza’s good. Well, not this time. We got our usual and found that it was NOT good. The crust was so thin but figured, well, it’ll be cracker crisp, right? Wrong! Soggy and about ½ cooked. And it was all so tasteless. A couple of drinks and pizza cost the two of us almost $ 35. Oh, and I don’t think it was just us – in the hour or so we were there, no one came in to eat and we never heard the phone ring once. Think this place is mostly just catering to the darts folks now. They might as well give up on the food part of it. ‘Course, then again, I think they already have. The last time we’ll be there. Sad.

The inside of the place is nothing special and has a grungy local bar feel. We got there just before the kitchen was closing, but the cook said she would make one last pizza for us, which was nice of her. We ordered the Mediterranean. We were all pleasantly surprised! I was expecting this to be a bar with only decent pizza. Instead, it’s a great pizza parlor with a decent bar. They have a nice little selection of beer on tap to go with your pie as well.

I like the pizza here and prefer it over any chain. It happens to be close by my friend’s house, so we have gotten pizza there several times.
However, it’s always something. Most of the time the phone call to place an order is an ordeal as the person on the other can’t seem to track someone down to take the order or has to ask the same questions 3 – 4 times for some reason. I’m guessing that’s why the order is wrong about 50% of the time. It’s also rarely ready when they say it will be. I have never gotten there early and had to wait sometimes as long as 40 minutes for a pizza order they haven’t even started yet.
Again, the pizza is really good, but I think I am done tolerating the terrible service. It’s just not worth it.

By far best pizza in Port Orchard! Dive? Yup! Cheap? Yup! Great food! Place is small and only one cook but the woman that served us last week was outstanding! Anyone that can cook for a full bar and still have a smile on her face is A-​OK in my book. Pizza is New York Style… Great crust… Buttery and thin… Prices are super good! Pizza was huge! Its a bit out in the «country» but worth the drive.