A cool breeze has blown through Wichita and on it the scent of pizza, but not your average greasy pizza scent with pepperoni, instead it’s a little smaller, a little flatter and equipped with nonstandard pizza toppings.

In the middle of a pandemic, Cool Breeze Pizza, a carryout personal-sized pizza restaurant, opened in the Riverside neighborhood of Wichita. This new pizza place comes at a good time when social distancing is the norm and local restaurants with a delivery/carryout model are thriving.

Cool Breeze resides on the opposite side of the street from R Coffeehouse in a small shack-like building, which if it weren’t for the large sign denoting the business it could be easily overlooked.

Cool Breeze has a small yet interesting selection of pizza. One of the most basic options was a pepperoni with red onion, sausage, mushrooms and kalamata olives, so if you’re the foodie-type with a penchant for weird toppings, you’re in for an adventure.

The pizza I ordered was the Green Machine, which had sliced balsamic turnips, turnip greens, asparagus and feta on a garlic base. I’m sure at least three people are decrying the existence of such a pizza abomination.

As excited as I was to eat the 9-inch pizza, after the first bite that excitement quickly dissipated.

It was impressive that Cool Breeze Pizza was able to make the toppings of asparagus and turnips work together on a pizza, but everything else about the pizza was uninspiring.

The crust was bland and overly floury in taste — luckily, it wasn’t as bad as the cardboard you’d get from Little Caesars. I’m not even sure what type of crust it was, it had the makings of a Neapolitan crust, but the edges were more like a thin crust. It was almost like the terrible biscuits I made during the quarantine.

Then the garlic base was the strongest flavor of the pizza, overpowering everything, save the feta cheese, making the toppings feel like an afterthought of flavor.

It wasn’t a bad pizza, but there’s a lot more to pizza than just crazy toppings and an interesting location. However, Cool Breeze Pizza will need to improve on their recipes if they want to throw some weight around with Wichita’s pizza giants like Knolla’s, Ziggy’s, Picasso’s and Wichita Brewing Company.

I give Cool Breeze Pizza two pepperonis out of five.