How much pizza is too much? Is there even such a thing? How would you know?

In search of answers, my wife and daughter and I found ourselves at Emma’s Pub and Pizza in Bridgewater, a landmark among local pizza enthusiasts known for its daily specials, their commercials starring a wild-eyed guy with a peanut-butter-thick accent, and their frozen pizzas available at local supermarkets. The first sign that you’re in the right kind of place to test the limits of pizzadom is the statue of “Crazy” Ron Emma perched outside over the door. He’s the owner and mascot. You’ll see “Crazy” Ron’s face plastered everywhere touting their prices, which are, one gathers, low enough to be symptomatic of psychological instability.

Inside, the place is split in half. The bar side was night-time dark even just after noon on a Sunday, loaded with TVs blaring sports. I asked for a table in the dining room, and we were shown to a booth that was brighter but still way too dim — the lights wouldn’t be switched on for another 20 minutes. Between the gloom, the weak paint job on the walls, a well-loved claw machine against a wall and the sparse decor consisting mainly of “Crazy” Ron signs, the place had a dingy atmosphere that I felt would benefit from a redo.

We ordered lemonade and iced teas ($3 each), but Emma’s has a hefty selection of beverages — a handful of wines, a couple of dozen beers including several microbrews, and cocktails like the laser beam with Southern Comfort, amaretto, sloe gin and rum or the Chila ‘Ochocolate with Chila ‘Orchata, vanilla vodka and creme de cocoa.

Looking at the menu, you get the impression that Emma’s is eager to please, often desperate to do so. There are tons of options, mostly family-friendly crowd-pleasers, the portions are colossal, and value is the main selling point. If you didn’t notice their list of daily specials on the wall as you enter the restaurant, or on the sign in the dining room, they’re listed also in the menu. They drive those specials hard, but they truly are great for the budget-conscious — half-price pizza on Monday nights or half-price off a second appetizer on Saturday nights is a genuinely good deal.

This being a Sunday afternoon, the special was 89-cent cheese pizza. Cheese pizza is exactly what my daughter wanted. Sold!

You’ll find all the usual sports pub apps, like wings in a few standard flavors like barbecue, teriyaki and Buffalo ($8.50 to $14), Mexi-skins with melted cheese, chili and jalapeños ($9.30), ribs with fries ($10.80), and humongous combo platters of everything for sharing. We went for the steak and cheese egg rolls ($11).

While we waited, my daughter noticed that every other table had a bowl of popcorn for snacking — but they’d forgotten ours.

“I wish we had some popcorn,” she said.

Right on cue, another diner who’d helped himself to an extra bowl walked by, slipped on the tile, and spilled a bunch of popcorn on my wife and daughter’s heads. Not content to pick a few renegade kernels out of each other’s hair, I flagged down a server for a full bowl.

Soon our egg rolls arrived. I would’ve been happy with a couple of dainty delectables to whet my appetite, but these were monsters — what any reputable nutritionist would consider the equivalent of three full steak sandwiches sliced in halves for six portions, ringed around a ramekin of mild spicy mayo. We relished the crispy golden brown wrappers and greasy, savory shaved steak inside. They were tasty on the way in but heavy, sitting in our stomachs like chunks of lead. They would have — and maybe should have — made a meal unto themselves.

The portions at Emma’s are, appropriately, crazy. Entrees include Italian-American favorites like chicken parm with two chicken breasts ($16) or pasta and meatballs ($11). Seafood dishes are available like all-you-can-eat fish and chips ($14.50) or the Titanic lobster roll, which is topped with (brace yourself) a half-pound of lobster meat ($20), or the seafood tsunami, a head-spinning two lobster sliders, fried clams, scallops and fish ($20). Burgers and sandwiches aren’t any lighter — the Maverick is stacked with two half-pound patties ($12.50), and the steak tip sandwich heaps 10 ounces of beef onto a bulkie roll ($11). The house special is the 20-ounce steak tips ($17), or over a pound of meat. You can even destroy a perfectly good salad by topping it with a 12-ounce sirloin ($18).

I tried to sweet-talk my wife into the 20-ounce steak tips, but being a reasonable person she chose a mushroom bleu burger ($10). I had pizza-work to do. There’s a selection of specialty pies from $8 to $9.50 for a small to $14.50 to $18 for a large, like Joe’s spicy sausage with hot pepper relish and onions, Mexican Ronnie with chili, cheese, onions and jalapeños, BBQ Hawaiian, and chicken bacon ranch. I picked the Raven’s Heart Attack, featuring a suicidal seven kinds of meat: ground beef, salami, linguiça, Italian sausage, ham, pepperoni and bacon.

I ordered a large ($18). For myself.

After a moderate wait, we were confronted with the largest, meatiest pizza we’d ever hope to see in our lifetimes. My daughter’s 89-cent cheese pizza was still a good size, plenty for anyone, and for less than a buck you can’t complain — it’s a fluffy, not crispy crust, which I prefer, and while it wasn’t gooey with cheese I still found it deliciously golden and satisfying. My wife’s burger was thick and cooked well enough, topped with mushrooms and bleu cheese, but it felt undistinguished and, in a strange turn, sane.

I hoisted a slice of my pizza, dribbling meats of all kinds onto my lap. It was layered with meat beyond all reason. It was hard to distinguish one meat from the other — a tangle of hyper-salty proteins, with pleasant bursts of linguiça spiciness and bacon smokiness. Like the steak egg rolls, it felt good going in. But once I had two slices in me, I realized this was a tragic mistake: I should have gotten a small, since a large seven-meat pizza was obviously meant for sharing among three or four people, not one stupid person, and definitely not after steak and cheese egg rolls.

I soldiered on with another half-slice in the name of journalism — and since it really was pretty good — then felt the meat-sweats take hold of me. I began to panic. My vision tunneled as my body tried to cope with the terrible thing I’d just done to it. I became convinced I might actually be having a heart attack. I focused on my breathing and checked my left arm; no pain. I’d just discovered the point of too much pizza.

There are several dessert options at Emma’s, including apple and strawberry dessert pizzas around $8, and sundaes around $5. We skipped it, since another bite might’ve ended with an ambulance ride. Taking our to-go boxes and leaving behind a sweet $40 before tax and tip, I trembled and sweated through a mob of hungry people waiting for a table.



Emma’s Pub and Pizza

American

Address: 1420 Pleasant St., Bridgewater

Hours: Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, 12 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Handicapped access: yes

Parking: lot

Credit cards: yes

Phone: 508-697-8815

Website: emmaspubandpizza.com


food: 3.5 stars

Service: 3 stars

Atmosphere: 3.5 stars

Cleanliness: 2.5 stars

Price/Value: 4.5 stars


Dine Out's reviewer visits restaurants unannounced and at his or her discretion. The newspaper pays for the meals reviewed. The reviews merely reflect one diner's experience. Ratings range from 1 to 5 stars.