Bland cheese sinks Boerne’s Broken Stone

Lackluster sauce resembled that of SpaghettiOs.

There are lots of reasons to take a trip to Boerne, a Hill Country small town gem. There’s the amazing shops and antiques, great public spaces, freshly opened breweries and plenty of peace and quiet.

Just don’t go there solely for a few slices of pizza at Broken Stone Pizza Co. Located inside the Live Oak Shopping Center off Main Street, Broken Stone has an ambitious menu loaded with specialty pizzas that sound fantastic in the descriptions but mostly failed to deliver.

The foundation for pizza is crust, sauce and cheese. Broken Stone was only able to get one of them right with a New Yorkstyle crust that performed up to task. The bright orange sauce, however, could best be described as something you would get out of a can of SpaghettiOs with no fresh tomato zip, and the blandest cheese of the series.

The menu has interesting items for a strip center pizzeria with things such as steamed mussels, salads, pasta dishes, cheesecake and cannoli for dessert, but we were there for the pie. Broken Stone also has a location in Kerrville.

Best pizza: Breakfast pizza will never overcome the popularity

of breakfast tacos in South Texas, but the version at Broken Stone could change popular opinion. It was a standout.

The Big Over Easy ($18.79 for a 12-inch) came loaded with spicy Jimmy Dean sausage, bacon, onion and four over-easy eggs that oozed flavorful yolk

over the melted blend of cheddar and provolone. It was similar to a skillet frittata, and was the kind of breakfast food that’s as good eaten at 9 p.m. as at 9 a.m.

Other pizzas: The Broken Stone Special ($18.79 for a 12inch) was a mixed mash of meats and vegetables that

forced the crust to sink like a stone, making eating it a twohand job. That’s typically a forgivable offense, but the pieces of ice-cold Italian sausage and bell peppers were not. This one needed more time in the oven.

They spell the classic margherita pizza like the tequila margarita ($14.79 for a 12-inch) here. The key to this pie, for me at least, is always the heavy hand of fresh basil and it looked like the cook tossed a full plant into a mulcher. Pretty to look at, but that’s all I could taste because the weak sauce and cheese couldn’t compete.

I attempted to order The Onassis, a vaguely Greek-inspired pizza that incorporated capicola, proscuitto, salami, feta cheese and arugula. They were out of arugula, so this one was swapped out for a Philadelphiastyle cheese steak pizza ($19.79 for a 12-inch) at the last minute. The blend of thinly sliced ribeye steak mixed with peppers, onions and provolone cheese is sandwich royalty that traditionally works well with pizza. But the steak was completely devoid of seasoning and, to continue on with the theme, was knocked down by the lackluster cheese.

Chuck Blount / Staff The Big Over Easy pizza at Broken Stone Pizza Co. incorporates four over-easy eggs.