I do not like buffalo. The sauce, I mean…I’ve never visited the city. It just always has a sourness to it that I don’t like in the least; it’s as if it hits my tastebuds with a dull “thud” that doesn’t match the ensuing heat that takes over a short while later. The first time I tried it, at the urging of my wife several years ago, I just thought it was a bad example of it—until I tried a couple more, all with the same flat flavor. Buffalo is not a thing for me.

My wife, on the other hand, absolutely adores the stuff. She greatly enjoys the buffalo chicken pizza at Rooster’s, citing it as one of her favorite overall pizzas, and also gets the same at a sports bar that’s right down the street from us. I don’t know that she’s tried enough different variations to be considered a connoisseur, but it’s got to be one of her favorite condiments (or sauces, or dressings, or whatever category it would fall into).

Yet, as much as I try to avoid it, there are times when you’ve just gotta suck it up and give it a shot. I mean, hey, I did hate blue cheese before I met my wife—a hereditary hatred that my mother still has—but I tried a couple bites of my wife’s wedge salad at a restaurant once, and now I can’t get enough of the stuff. The biggest kicker in this whole story, however, is that I had to fast for an entire day of work, just so I could get some blood tests done afterwards. To say that I was hungry felt like a complete understatement—I was hungry enough to eat just about anything, and I even surprised myself when I was the one that suggested this. After all, her love of cheese won me over, so why not her love of buffalo sauce?

It’s going to take a lot more than this pizza to get me to love it, but it tries its darndest: It’s quite delicious, and it’s not just the intense hunger pains telling me that. The buffalo still has that same flavor that I’m indifferent to, but everything around it is so delicious that it compliments the sauce as best as it can for me. The cheddar has a sharpness that plays off the spicy sauce layer, while the crust—which is somewhere between “thin” and “standard”–cooks up nice and delicious thanks to its thinness, while still giving you something to dip in ranch at the end.

So, to sum up, if you’re a fan of buffalo, then you are going to love this. If you’re not, then there’s really no need to give it a try.

Overall: 6/10. It’s as fine an example of buffalo as I’ve had, but that’s a confusing statement, considering I don’t like buffalo sauce all that much, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Still, as much as I still dislike the buffalo flavor here, the supporting cast work so well around it that it is one of the most delicious uses I could ever imagine it in: the cheddar has that perfect amount of sharpness to compliment the sauce as best as it can, and the crust cooks up perfectly crisp, giving you something to dip in a sauce other than buffalo to get a break from it all. I’m not sure I’d ever get this again, and I definitely wouldn’t seek it out, but for those that have a stronger affinity to buffalo sauce than I do, it’s worth a try.