(Yeah, we've heard countless times from the east coast transplants among us about the inherent inferiority of west coast pizza -- not to mention bagels -- so save it!)

But when we're not feeling up to going out and fighting for a table at Zach's (or even getting up the energy to call, preorder, and go pick the damned pie up ourselves), we have been screwed over and over and over and over and over. Yep, we're talking about the multilayered hell that is delivery pizza in the east bay. We've pretty much tried them all, finding them either from menus left on our doorknob or opening the phone book and picking ones with the same scientific method and success that we've had picking numbers at the Keno tables in Vegas. We even consulted the collective wisdom of our friends over at the Beast Blog. Nothing has helped: either the sauce is bad (seriously, cumin?), the crust is bad, both are bad, or it looks like it came over on a catamaran that had one hull hiked way the hell out.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we got another menu on the door, this time from some outfit in Berkeley called Pizza Fiesta and decided to take our stomachs in our hands one last time. Imagine our surprise when the pies arrived: they were not only hot, but they were in pristine condition as well (we can't tell you the number of times we've ended up with pizzas with the cheese and toppings all the way over on one side), and both the sauce and crust were great (we got the thin crust option -- we don't know how well the thick crust fares). We ordered it again the other night with the same happy results. Our only complaint is that the pizza could stand to be thrown in the oven a few minutes longer to finish off and crisp up the crust. Other than that, it's nothing short of a miracle, and we couldn't wait to tell you about it. Well, we took a picture of the pies and ate through them first, so we guess we could wait a little while, but we still told you within a reasonable space of time.

Pizza Fiesta can be reached at (510) 644-1222.