Jo’s Famous Pizza has been a landmark south of the Metro in Purcell since 1962. Recently, Jo’s opened an Edmond location in the rustic cabin vacated by Lottinvilles. Having heard the buzz about the original Jo’s location, I was excited to try out this new-to-Edmond pizzeria. Jo’s is known for their Canadian bacon pizzas, featuring finely-chopped meat rather than sliced. Even if you aren’t a big fan of Canadian bacon, you should give it a try.

For our appetizers, we just had to find out what the “boomers” and “rollers” were. A boomer is a jalapeno pepper stuffed with mozzarella cheese, better known as a popper. Rollers are thin pizza dough stuffed with Canadian bacon and cheese, then baked and rolled in olive oil and garlic, served with marinara for dipping. The rollers sounded too interesting to pass by, but we wish we had. The oil was overpowering and dripping off each bite. I could not find any garlic flavor, and we endured just a few bites before we had to set the rollers aside. We later learned that you may request that the rollers not be rolled in oil, which might be worth a try—I only wish I had known this sooner.

Jo’s menu also offers salads, four sandwich varieties and, of course, pizza. Three varieties of salad dressing are available: Holli’s house (a slightly sweet vinaigrette), Pa’s garlic (a thousand island cream style), and their ranch, which I highly recommend as it is very flavorful. The pizza toppings include the typical offerings you expect plus hot links as a topping, which I have never heard of as a pizza topping, but sounds yummy. The pizza sizes range from mini 6” to x-large 16.”

A lunch special with any mini pizza or sandwich, small salad and drink sounded good, and we ordered two lunch specials with pizza—one with Canadian bacon and the other with Canadian bacon, onion, pineapple and jalapenos. On the lunch special you may have as many toppings as you like, so it’s easy to create your own taste sensation. The salad is served in a small stainless steel bowl with fresh baby greens topped with chopped Canadian bacon, black olives, a tiny bit of tomato and cheese. This salad could easily feed two people. We both had the Holli’s house dressing and should have requested extra on the side.

The crust on the mini’s was thin but not really crispy enough for us, but the Canadian bacon had a nice, mild flavor and Jo’s doesn’t skimp on the toppings for the pizzas. In hindsight, we wished we had ordered more variety to taste more of the flavors. At a table next to us the patrons had ordered a large sausage pizza which looked like it was topped with a generous amount of sausage.

The staff was friendly and attentive but needed to be a little more informative about some of the dishes to avoid unsavory surprises. I was disappointed by the olives in the salad (I would have omitted them had I known about them) and the unappetizingly oily rollers we had as appetizers. The overall flavors at Jo’s were fine but just not enticing enough to demand a return visit.

2 of 4 forks
Jo’s Famous Pizza
900 S Kelly, Edmond
405-340-7070
Hours
Monday-Saturday 11am-10pm
Closed Sunday
Prices $2.95-$24.95

Annie Nashert has a husband and teenage daughter who assume everybody has homemade dessert nightly.