Pepperoni may be the people’s choice when it comes to pizza, but two new restaurants enthusiastically are pushing the envelope.

Opened in August and September 2011, respectively, Extreme and Cosmic pizzerias borrow irreverently from other cuisines, eschewing the traditional crust, red sauce and cheese model.

Both are locally owned and situated along the Broadway corridor — which already has more than a half-dozen pizza restaurants.

Both offer sandwiches and salads, beer and wine. Both sell pizza by the slice during lunch hours. And gluten-free crust is available.

EXTREME CHOICES

Located in the Ram complex at Broadway Avenue and Park Street, Extreme Pizza is an independently operated franchise of a 14-state chain. It’s slick, clean and professional-looking, with open ductwork freshly painted red and a windowed fishbowl of a dining room filled with flat screens. The uniformed counter staff bring a well-versed understanding of the huge menu, which also includes calzones and wings. My wife and I still had to take a paper copy to the table to plan our attack.

There are 22 signature pizzas, plus infinite ways to build your own from dozens of fresh ingredients prepped daily in-house. All are succinctly described and listed with nutritional analysis. There does not appear to be a dud among them, with touches like peanut sauce, mandarin oranges and hummus on some pies, and high-end toppings like linguica sausage on others. On any pizza larger than 8 inches, you can mix and match, even with different sauces.

The Wingin’ It is Extreme’s take on a Buffalo chicken pizza, with chicken dressed in slightly sweet, just-spiced sauce, a blanket of bubbly mozzarella flecked with Gorgonzola and a dash of fresh celery. Right out of the oven, steam curling out like a special effect, this pizza was at its best, with chewy crust and uniform flavor throughout.

The Hanoi Fever showcased the most unusual spread of ingredients: sticky-sweet hoisin pork, peanuts, shredded carrot, cilantro and jalapenos so spicy that tears welled in our eyes. These were all brought back to the pizza universe by that same crust and mellowing mozzarella.

We liked a piece or two of both of these experimental pies, but perhaps because we were surrounded by so much variety, we felt like we’d have missed something if we had tried only these. Also, on both as they cooled, we wanted either a little less cheese or something more for sauce.

By far, our favorite was the Aveiro, with smoky bacon, pepperoncinis, roasted red peppers, cilantro, surprisingly good tomato sauce and some of that delicious linguica. Though technically the most conventional of what we tried, it satisfied in exactly the way we wanted. It was better by a long shot than any other franchise pizza in town.

COSMIC EXPERIENCE

Located in a slightly different universe, Cosmic Pizza is just off Broadway on Boise Avenue in the space formerly occupied by Chef Roland’s Cajun Cuisine. It’s a bit further down the path of pizza strangeness, sometimes in terrific ways. Some of the pies are richly imagined enough to call them deconstructionist, others so crazy they just quite work.

The dining room is only slightly redefined from its last incarnation, with cool ’60s orange chairs and fireplace stonework. A spider web of lights splayed out on one wall, cubes of color pulsed behind the counter, and the clack of balls on the pool table in a side room struck a hip but relaxed moodiness for the mostly collegiate crowd.

Water is self-serve from a Gatorade cooler, soda is in cans from a regular fridge.

You can’t dine in a place kitschily devoted to the cosmos without being caught up in its atmosphere, which drives the restaurant’s whole ethos.

Here is how loosely Cosmic treats the word “pizza”: the Astro Mac is house-made rosemary-dusted crust, mac and cheese, and more cheese; the Cosmic Popper is jalapeno, cream cheese, cheddar, white sauce and a swirl of sriracha.

Recommended by the kitchen, we were intrigued by the Galactic Fair, with a layer of chili, cheddar cheese, red onion and … slices of mini corn dogs.

This is not the pizza I know, but once we stopped thinking about what it wasn’t and instead about what it was, we were kind of won over by it. The astute counter help brought out ramekins of ketchup and mustard, and she knew what she was doing.

Proving that their pizza is not just a gimmick, Cosmic will appease the middle with more straight-ahead creations such as the Stardust, with red sauce, Italian sausage, salami, sun-dried tomatoes, feta and the by-now-unsurprisingly well-chosen addition of sunflower seeds.

Cosmic is as comfortable in its own skin as I’ve seen for something so different.

BOTTOM LINE

At both Cosmic and Extreme, you pay a little more for the variety of real ingredients, which puts them both in the quality-over-quantity pizza category. My wife and I are thin-crust red-sauce minimalists, and like most people, we already have our pizza places. Boise needs another pizza restaurant like it needs another Chinese buffet, but when we opened ourselves to oddity, we appreciated both Cosmic and Extreme for what they do well.

Go to Extreme to try slices at lunch or have an Aveiro delivered for your playoff party. Go with friends for the Cosmic experience: From the pie to the Atari 2600 in the corner, strangeness abounds, but it in a joyful way that is perhaps the biggest surprise of all.

Email Alex Kiesig at scene@idahostatesman.com