Cheap greasy food has always been popular with college students, and pizza fits that bill perfectly. There’s more than one pizza joint around Walla Walla where Whitman College students can go to get their fix. This guide to the major pizza joints downtown will help students decide where they might want to eat.

Big Cheese Pizza

Big Cheese delivers, so I ordered a medium cheese to my room in Jewett Hall. This pizza was much thicker than the offerings at Olive and Sweet Basil. As advertised, there’s plenty of cheese on the pizza: a big, leathery layer on top. The cheese is so thick that it overpowers both the tomato sauce and the bread. The result? A greasy, rubbery offering that’s a lot like Domino’s. Overall, I found that Big Cheese is an average pizza that’s not worth the price of delivery.

Sweet Basil

At Sweet Basil, Whitman students can get two slices of pizza for four dollars. That’s one of the best pizza deals available for Whitman students: making Sweet Basil very popular. The pizza is baked New York-style: thin, but not flimsy, and with a well-textured crust. For the adventurous, there’s a range of daily specials, including a Thai and baked potato option. The variety of individual slice choices is somewhat hurt by the price of a full pizza: who wants to pay 18 dollars?

Brasserie Four

Tucked away on the intersection of East and West Main, this restaurant is lit with candles and easy to miss from the outside. There’s a chalkboard menu, a wide selection of wines and a clean white aesthetic that’s a bit fancier than most student destinations. Don’t let that deter you; their margarita pizza is thick on crust, cheese and tomato sauce. It’s well-balanced and quite good: the same price as Olive and much more appetizing. Plus, there’s complimentary bread that’s still warm from the oven.

Olive

Olive strikes an uncomfortable middle ground. Like Sweet Basil, their pizza has New York-style crusts. Like Brasserie Four, they’re a slightly nicer restaurant. Unfortunately, they’re neither as classy as Brasserie Four nor as tasty as Sweet Basil. Their Mediterranean pizza had almost no tomato sauce: and the crust is flat and insubstantial. An excess of toppings made every bite a cascade of goat cheese, olive and eggplant. In my opinion, there are plenty of better pizza choices available.