King's Pizza

On March 27, 2014, I had lunch at King's New York Pizza, 2206 Wilson Boulevard in Winchester, Virginia's Pineville Shopping Center. Opened about three months ago, these premises once housed Domino's Pizza.

King's opens at 10:30 AM Monday-Saturday and at 11:00 AM on Sunday. It closes at 10:00 PM Monday-Thursday and Sunday, and at 11:00 PM on Friday and Saturday. It offers dining, carry-out, and delivery service. The phone number is 540-722-2209.

Entrance is by a single center door with no vestibule arrangement to keep out the cold air. The dining area has one large room, with five booths seating four apiece along the right wall, then two tables for four, and two round tables seating two all the way back.

A large flat screen TV is on the back wall on the right, above the passage to the rest rooms. Two smaller flat-screen TVs are in the front of the room in the right and left corners above the plate glass windows.

In the center of the room, just inside the door, is a table for two. Further back is a table for six. Along the left wall, from front to back are two more tables for six and a refrigerated display case for bottled soft drinks. The rest of this wall has a soft drink dispenser behind a counter that has the cash register, in front of the kitchen area in the back of the room on the left.

The folded menu offers headings for Appetizers, Soups and Salad, Pasta Specialties, Seafood Specialties, and House Specialties. All Specialty items are served with fresh salad and bread.

Also, Desserts, Drinks, Children's Menu, Famous New York Pizza including Sicilian Pizza, New York Style Pizzas, Pizza Slices, Pizza Specialties, and Turnovers. The pizza sizes are sm. 12", md. 14", and lg. 16". Further headings are Subs and Sandwiches, listing Hot Subs, Cold Subs, and Sandwiches. Subs are sm. and lg., but the size in inches was not shown.

I was not there for pizza, but to check out the Italian entrées from the House Specialties category. As usual, I selected Eggplant Parmigiana as my benchmark. It was advertised as being deep fried in eggs with tomato sauce and mozzarella. For my beverage, I ordered a Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb.

My salad was served fairly promptly on a round platter and was fairly large. It contained chopped lettuce, onion strings, cucumber slices, black olives, and halved cherry tomatoes. It was cold, but not chilled, and my blue cheese dressing was served in a plastic envelope. The salad was accompanied by a small loaf of fresh Italian bread, still warm.

The entrée was served on a large, warmed platter. It appeared to have a single slice of eggplant, covered with melted mozzarella, at one end of the platter. It was on a large bed of pasta, and the other end of the platter was drenched with tomato sauce covering that part of the pasta.

I was disappointed in the eggplant not being served separately from the pasta, and have concluded that it's a mistake to expect a satisfactory eggplant Parmigiana from a place specializing in pizza.

It's taken me a long time to learn this truism, and I'll order the eggplant only from real Italian restaurants in the future. King's may be a fine place to order pizza; in fact, they have eight locations in nearby West Virginia.

There's another one in Hagerstown, Maryland, along with various other locations in Virginia. I'll keep this place in mind if someone wants to go out for pizza sometime, but it's not a keeper for my list of Italian eateries.