Jar of Goodness 9.4.22: Shakespeare’s Pizza South

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for Shakespeare’s Pizza South.

First, because it’s Shakespeare’s Pizza, and that’s my hometown, college-town pizza.

Second, because Shakespeare’s Pizza South is on our way home, and (coming into town) it’s on our way to my parents’ house, so it’s mighty, mighty convenient for us.

Pizza night!

We go there a lot, and it makes us all smile.

Yes, this is a “Panda’s Pepper” pizza, “Brought to you by the letter ‘P.’ This is one that a whole bunch of Shake’s emps like, but we don’t know why. Must have been the Eighties. Pepper Cheese, Pepperoni, Green Peppers, Jalapenos, and Banana Peppers.”

It’s become a recent favorite of ours. Try it sometime!

More Little Travels

I’m sure it says an awful lot about my life that I’ve been so itchy for travel these days. In part, it reflects my summer reading, including Teale’s Journey into Summer and Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt.

But here in Central Missouri, this hottest part of summer presents us with another kind of “cabin fever,” analogous to the kind we experience in the icy-cold winter months.

So yesterday we took another little in-state road trip, in part on a quest to check out some restaurants that have been “on my list.” But mainly, just to enjoy a change of scenery and see something new.

East on 50, North on N

From Jeff, we headed east on Highway 50, through Linn, Missouri, home of “Linn Tech” and possibly one of Missouri’s narrowest towns (check it out on a satellite view—it’s basically a widening of Highway 50, which is its Main Street; at most the town is about two blocks “wide”).

We turned north at Freedom onto Missouri Route N in Osage County and continued through Ryors to Hope. How about that! We went through Freedom and Hope in about fifteen minutes’ drive!

That area there—Route N and Route J, and the land between those roads and the Gasconade—is really pretty and makes for a nice drive.

Pershing and Hop’s Hideaway

Our first stop was at Pershing, Missouri, a community that you simply don’t arrive at “by accident.” It’s in Gasconade County, at the end of Highway OO (double letters = extra small). Imagine a town situated at a dead end! (Well, the roadway splits and continues as two gravel county roads.)

I’d heard about a restaurant there called Hop’s Hideaway. According to a man we talked to once at a church supper at Bonnot’s Mill, Hop’s Hideaway is a hidden treasure, absolutely worth checking out. The buzz online about it is pretty good, too.

From what I’d gathered, the restaurant was pretty remote and kind of “backwoods”; I’m not sure what gave me the impression, but I had the idea it was in a low area, off in the bushes or something. But it’s nothing at all like that.

Pershing, the town, is perched on a ridge and has marvelous views of farmland to the north and south. Hop’s Hideaway is right on the side of the road, with a sign and everything. It’s in an old store of some kind—maybe a hardware store, or a grocery—one of the few storefronts that was probably ever in Pershing.

Pershing, by the way, has an interesting place-name history. It was named in 1921 for General John J. Pershing, the great commander of American troops in World War I. Originally, however, the town’s name was Potsdam, a name transplanted fondly from the Old World by the Germans who settled the area.

(Robert Ramsay, in Our Storehouse of Missouri Place Names, points out that Wilson Avenue in Columbia was once called Keyser Avenue—after a family with English roots, no less—but “Keyser” was too close to Germany for comfort, and patriotic Teutoniphobes changed the name. Ramsay mentions his relief that efforts to rename sauerkraut as “liberty cabbage” were unsuccessful. I feel the same way about more recent attempts to rename french fries.)

What’s Pershing today? A very small town with an awesome view. A place completely off the beaten path. A town where several old buildings are crumbling, where you can take a lot of neat photographs of decrepitude.

But it’s also a place, we noted, where several of the homes had many hummingbird feeders and purple martin boxes. We saw lots of pretty flowers—hollyhocks, zinnias, that sort of thing—growing in the hot sunshine and smiling.

We parked in a gravel lot next to Hop’s Hideaway and admired the view across the roadway. How far could we see? Northward, at least a couple miles to the hills on the other side of the Gasconade. It was so refreshing, compared to going to restaurants in the city, where the scene out the front window is constant traffic and passersby.

And there was no traffic. As we stood in the parking lot, a young girl emerged from the side door of Hop’s. (We would later realize the side door is where everyone goes in and out—not the front door, which is the door we used, being ignorant strangers from out of town.) She started absent-mindedly pitching rocks from the driveway toward the blacktop and soon approached us and asked us where we had come from.

We certainly weren’t from Pershing! We chatted a bit and learned that she lives in Hermann but was vacationing with her grandma in Pershing. She said she really loved it there; she loved the quiet atmosphere and the friendliness of the people. And she had discovered Elvis Presley via her grandma’s record collection! She seemed to know every soul in town.

I’ll save an “official” review of Hop’s for later, when we’ve had a chance to visit it again and really sample the menu. As it was only late afternoon, we weren’t very hungry yet, so we just had some onion rings and beers. (Don’t worry, folks, I had a Busch N/A, but it tasted more or less like a beer. I was glad to see they offered an n/a option besides soda and milk and stuff.)

So no review for now—but let me briefly say that it was fun to get there, and relaxing to be there, and we didn’t regret the trip for a minute, even if just for libation.

But we weren’t done yet. We backtracked to J and to N and continued north on N. (By the way, y’all, there’s another fun restaurant called “The River’s Edge,” a little north of Pershing, off of J, at the “burg” of Fredericksburg, which is right on the Gasconade. But we didn’t go there yesterday. But someday I’ll get around to “reviewing” that place, too!)

Following the Missouri

So, north on N to Highway 100. Now, if you’re not familiar with these east-west routes, Highways 50 and 100 both run basically parallel to the Missouri River, both on the south side of the river. Highway 50 is farther south of the river and is more of a beeline; Highway 100 is a curvy-windy route that is more scenic.

Once we got to 100, we continued east on it, through the town of Gasconade, which is on the Gasconade, and then we crossed over the Gasconade. Highway 100 then angles northeast to Hermann (which seemed lousy with tourists), where we got on Highway 19 to cross over the Missouri on that new-fangled, wide Christopher Bond bridge (which lacks the, um, drama of the old Hermann bridge—but then I creak with age, so what do I know).

We weren’t on 19 for long, because just a little north of the river we turned onto Missouri 94, which is a lot like Highway 100, just on the north side of the river. It’s scenic, too. In fact, just beyond Pinckney, almost halfway to Treloar, there’s a place where 94 gets within feet of the river’s edge.

Our destination? Marthasville.


Marthasville

To be quite honest, I don’t know much about Marthasville, except that it is the home of one of Missouri’s—and possibly the nation’s—top heritage festivals, Deutsch Country Days, held every October (in 2011, it will be on October 15 and 16). We don’t hear much about Deutsch Country Days here in Central Missouri because it draws heavily from St. Louis and doesn’t need to advertise much to the small fry in Mid-Mo.

Outside of that, I’m truly ignorant about Marthasville—it’s on the Katy Trail, it’s small, it’s got some neat old buildings, it’s north of Washington . . . and Daniel Boone is or was buried just southeast of Marthasville, and the marker there is something to see.

There aren’t many restaurants in town—three, maybe. One of them, however, was the entire reason we’d aimed our car for Marthasville in the first place: Philly’s Pizza, which is currently rated by Urbanspoon as one of the top restaurants in the whole state.

Well, again—I’ll save Philly’s for a separate post, but overall, yeah, I can totally see why people are so excited about the place. Considering that the local grain elevator is right across the street from it, this restaurant’s pizzas—made with local ingredients from veggies to meats, by the way—are pretty damned good. Which shows you that “awesome pizzas” don’t always come from a dirty city with cars, taxis, and brusque people whooshing by.

By the time we left Philly’s, it was dark and time to head home. To make the drive as easy and quick as possible, we drove south on Highway 47, which included the current detour between Marthasville and the river (MoDOT—“bridge maintenance” at Tuque Creek). The detour would have been scenic if it hadn’t been dark!

Really, the drive home—south through Washington and then west via Highway 50 all the way home to Jeff—was pretty uneventful, except that we were pulled over twice by highway patrol officers.

—What!?

Well, my left headlight must have gone out sometime after Rosebud! The second patrol officer, in Linn, told me to just drive with my bright lights on. So if you were out driving on Highway 50 last night and were annoyed by my glaring lights, I apologize, but the Law told me to do it!

So, it was a pretty good little trip for an afternoon and evening, and just as we’d had to trouble finding adventure, we had no trouble getting to sleep.

Peet-za, United States, 1949

Another treasure from my beloved copy of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book of 1949!

I’ve told you about this book before; the more I cook out of it, the more impressed I am with its recipes. It must have been one of the last thorough, general-use, make-it-from-scratch cookbooks to be published before “instant” this and that, and all kinds of needless shortcuts, came into vogue.




I was reading it recently and discovered a recipe for pizza! Curiously enough, it was in the “Vegetables” section, under “Tomatoes”! Huh?

Well, what was the American version of pizza in 1949? I mean, what constituted the basic, no-frills pizza that a generalized cookbook would offer for the standard American cook? Pizza! It has garlic in it! That’s ethnic! That’s Eye-talian!




Another thing that caught my eye was the subheading under “PIZZA,” informing the reader that it’s “pronounced peet-za.” Yes, pizza was that novel in the 1940s. (Anyone remember when Taco Bell, and thus Mexican food, first came to the Midwest, and the menu boards coached us in pronunciations like “buh-REE-toe” and “TAH-co”?)

Well, guess what: This pizza recipe is dang close to the real thing, the traditional pizza napoletana. And the one variation for toppings that is provided—for Anchovy Pizza—is very close to pizza marinara, which has no cheese, plus the added anchovies (which is a very traditional topping). I was surprised to find such authenticity, when I was expecting something frightfully, embarrassingly Americanized.




I guess what happened was this: The Good Housekeeping Cook Book (“copyright 1942, 1944, 1949”) completely preceded the births of Pizza Hut (1958) and Shakey’s Pizza (1954), whose presence would play a huge part in establishing the “norms” for the American idea of pizza. And before the arrival of chain pizza joints (and not counting various regional versions of pizza that emerged in big cities like Chicago), the only kind of pizza most Americans knew was the authentic kind—made by immigrants, or tasted in Europe.

And yeah, a lot of Americans had been introduced to authentic Italian pizza during and after World War II!

So I suspect that there was a window of time, post–World War II and pre–Pizza Hut, where the only pizzas available were ones made by ethnic Italians and available to other Americans only in big cities, and those made to be as close as possible to the traditional Italian pizzas.




So this recipe must be one of the latter. Yes, there are clearly adaptations for the limitations of the typical midcentury American pantry (note the use of “shortening” in the dough), but even then, the recipe is strikingly authentic. It doesn’t say to use a rolling pin, and it calls for olive oil. (Just Google “authentic pizza recipe,” and see the Wikipedia article on “pizza,” to see tons of examples of what I’m talking about: rolling pins are verboten, and olive oil is a requirement.)

I was so curious! I had to give it a try. I’ve retyped the recipe below. My changes and comments are noted at the end.


PIZZA
(Pronounced peet-za)

It’s like a huge pancake, topped with a tomato-cheese mixture, and baked until crust is crisp and golden brown. Hot out of oven, it’s cut into wedges. You fold a wedge; eat it with your fingers. Use as appetizer, bread with dinner, main course for lunch, or evening snack.

Pizza Dough:

1 pkg. dry or compressed yeast
2 tablesp. lukewarm water
1 cup boiling water
2 tablesp. shortening
1 1/2 teasp. salt
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Sprinkle yeast in lukewarm water; let stand 5–10 min. to completely dissolve. Pour boiling water over shortening and salt in a large bowl. Cool to lukewarm; stir up yeast, then add. Add half of flour; beat until smooth with spoon. Then add remaining flour; beat smooth. Divide dough in half for 2 thin pizzas such as are served in restaurants. Or use all of dough for 1 thicker pizza. Place dough on floured board; pat gently with hand into 2 11” rounds or 1 13” round; have edges slightly thicker (this keeps filling from running over during baking). Place on greased cookie sheets. Let rise in warm place (85° F.) until double in height. Then proceed as directed in Tomato Topping.

Tomato Topping:

Pizza Dough
1 tablesp. olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 lb. sliced Italian mozzarella cheese or process American Cheddar cheese
2 cups diced, peeled ripe tomatoes, drained
1 minced, peeled clove garlic
1/2 teasp. salt
1/8 teasp. pepper
1/2 teasp. dried oregano or thyme
1 tablesp. olive oil

Heat oven to 450° F. After the round or rounds of Pizza Dough doubles in height, brush with 1 tablesp. olive oil. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese; then arrange 1/3 of mozzarella cheese on top; sprinkle with diced tomatoes combined with garlic, salt, and pepper. Arrange rest of mozzarella on top. Sprinkle with oregano; then drizzle on 2 tablesp. oil. Bake in hot oven of 450° F. for 25–30 min., or until crust is golden brown.

Anchovy Pizza: Make Pizza with Tomato Topping, omitting all oil and all cheese in Tomato Topping. Dot tomatoes with 2 oz. can fillet anchovies, finely minced; drizzle on oil from anchovies. Garnish with a few slivers of green pepper. Bake as directed.





My Changes and Comments

The recipe gives you the option of making one large or two smaller pizzas; I chose the latter. However, I made one pizza be the standard type, and one the anchovy version (halving various components as necessary). Why? Because variety is the spice of life!

Another thing I changed is that I used diced, drained canned tomatoes instead of fresh. Why? Because it’s February, and even the tomatoes that look ripe taste pretty lame (especially given the price). (But see my note about salt, below.)

Also, as you can see in the pictures, I didn’t have any green bell peppers, so I used the yellow one I had on hand.




Finally—and I think I wasn’t giving enough credit to the writers of the cookbook—I used a plain old bouncy-bouncy rubbery brick of grocery-store mozzarella instead of the fresh kind I know is authentic (and much better). Why? Because I assumed that’s what people had access to in 1949. Now, however, I’m not sure about that.

Indeed, the recipe calls for “3/4 lb. sliced Italian mozzarella cheese”—and I’m betting that in 1949, anyone with access to any mozzarella at all probably knew where to get the good stuff. In fact, Kraft might not have even been making the rubbery kind back then. I’ll bet that’s why the recipe calls for “sliced” mozzarella, and names the alternative (for the truly limited grocery shopper) as “process American Cheddar cheese.” (Yuck!) Next time I make this, I’ll go for a ball of genuine, fresh mozzarella. (Or else, if I use the rubbery kind, I’ll be sure to shred it, so it melts better.)

Hopefully I don’t need to tell you this, but use real Parmesan cheese, and not the dusty stuff from the green can.




Finally, if you try this recipe, I recommend cutting the salt way back for the tomato mixture, especially if you’re making the anchovy version and using canned tomatoes (which are already salted)—heck, even the cheese is salty enough. In fact, you probably don’t need to put salt with the tomatoes at all.

I kept a close eye on the pizzas, and I found that they only needed about a third of the cooking time recommended—ten or twelve minutes was plenty! Trust your instincts, check the pies, and the crust will turn out fine.




And yes, these were really good! I was kind of worried about whether I would like the anchovy pizza, since there was no cheese (whine, whine!), but I didn’t miss it at all. The saltiness and richness of the anchovies and their oil completely made up for the lack of cheese.




As an added bonus, the Good Housekeeping Cook Book includes the following variation, as well:

Kitchenette Pizza: For 2 people, or a few guests, use 4 English muffins, split in halves, instead of Pizza Dough. Top with 1/2 recipe for Tomato Topping. Bake at 450° F. 20 min.

How about that! I thought the kid-friendly English-muffin pizza was a relatively recent invention/bastardization, but here it is alongside fairly authentic recipes, made for an American audience that had never even sampled Jeno’s! I’ll be darned.

The recipes on this post were published in The Good Housekeeping Cook Book, ed. Dorothy B. Marsh (New York: Rinehart and Co., 1949), 418–19. It’s long out of print, but it’s truly worth hunting for! See this blog post for more on this book.

The Amazing Zip-Bag Trick

Busy, Eating Out of the Freezer

Everyone else in the world has this weekend off, but I’m working. So I don’t have a lot of time for cooking, much less blogging. And the reason I’m working this weekend is so I can have money. Until there’s more money, I don’t particularly feel like going to the grocery store—and who has time for that, anyway. So thankfully we have the freezer to fall back on.




Preserving the Pesto

Part of my annual end-of-the-garden ritual is harvesting my beautiful, lovely herbs, particularly the basil, which always seems to me like tomatoes, they love the hot weather so much.

I have dried my basil in the past, but I’ve found I don’t tend to use a lot of dried basil. I don’t like using many dried herbs, in general. However, if I make pesto, I use it. And whatever it gets used on turns into something, well, a few notches above a cheese sandwich and a bowl of chicken noodle soup.


My Zip-Bag Idea

First, though, I want to share this with you. Sue thinks it’s a pretty doggone smart idea, and she keeps saying I should blog on it.

So! If you make up a bunch of pesto, how do you store it? Well, Martha S. and others say to pat it into ice cube trays, freeze it, and pop the pesto-cubes into zip bags.

But there are problems with this: First, maybe you don’t need exactly one ice-cube-sized quantity of pesto, and to get more or less pesto from a frozen “pesto cube” would be kind of difficult. Second, a cube takes a while to defrost, requiring advance planning. And who does that? And third, if you put the cubes into a plastic bag, it allows air in the bag to touch the various surfaces of the cubes, making for more freezer burn.

I have a better idea!




Spoon pesto into freezer-style zip bags, get rid of the air bubbles, lay it flat, carefully press out any remaining air, and seal it. Freeze it flat—like on a cookie sheet. The result should be a layer of frozen pesto less than a half inch thick. The flattened bags store extremely well in your crowded freezer, and when it’s time to cook, it’s easy to break off however much pesto you need. Because the pesto’s all stuck against the plastic, freezer burn is minimized.

I’ll bet you didn’t know I was this brilliant, did you!




Super-Easy Pesto Mini Pizzas

So with me being so busy forever tapping on my computer, I depend on my frozen supply of goodies. Yesterday, I made us super-easy, awesome pizzas. It was the highlight of my day. You can make these in the toaster oven, in fact, so it only takes a few minutes to prepare.

For the base, I use good-quality pitas that I get from the international grocery—the kind you often get when you order a gyro sandwich. Not the “pocket” kind—the kind that’s kind of fluffy. You can also buy naans that are essentially the same, just usually oval. We get flatbreads in abundance and keep them in the freezer, too. Here are a few brands we like: Kontos and Kronos. (Kontos, you’ll notice, offers a multigrain flatbread! And yes, it tastes good!)

So, break off a piece of pesto, let it thaw, and spread it on the frozen pita as the sauce. Then, the toppings are up to you. Hunt in the freezer and the fridge; poke around in the pantry. Yesterday, I used our last piece of awesome Schubert’s kielbasa (also frozen), which I sliced thin and precooked on the stove while the pesto thawed.




A tilapia fillet is good, too (precook, of course, and coarsely crumble it).

Then some feta, or mozzarella, and whatever else seems good, such as chopped kalamata olives or slices of grape tomatoes, or whatever. Chopped bell peppers? The red or yellow ones are especially pretty.

I think sardines would be good, too, though I haven’t tried it yet. Sardines are making a comeback, you know—Omega-3’s and all.

Anyway, I gotta get back to work. But one more thing.


Use This Trick on Other Stuff

My zip-bag trick also works well with other goos and sauces. When I open a can of chipotles in adobo sauce, I rarely use the whole thing at once (who does?)—a little of that goes a long way! So I dump the rest into a freezer zip bag (breaking up the larger pieces for uniformity’s sake) and freeze it flat, to use up at my leisure—a teaspoon into some mayo for easy chipotle mayo for your sandwiches; or mix a dab into some plain hummus so it’s not so plain anymore; spike up the vegan posole . . . you know.




An abundance of late-summer tomatoes from the garden? Clean, chop, put into the zip bags, and freeze them flat, just like the others—great for stews, curries, and sauces.

When I process a mess of concord grapes, I do extra and freeze enough for a pie. This is a great way to preserve them.

You can also keep fresh grated ginger this way. (I told you the magic trick for that earlier—remember when we made that cantaloupe sorbet? Ah, summertime.)

Okay—I really have to get back to work now.

—Later!

Clara Day

Today’s a special day in our family, because it’s the anniversary of when Grandma Renner was born—on a farm in Kincaid, Kansas, on September 17, 1897. She grew up in Washington, Missouri, and lived her entire adult life here in Jefferson City. She lived to be nearly 101 years old.

The things she saw. Horse-and-buggies. Cars, radio, television, airplanes, lunar landings . . . Ballpoint pens . . . Digital alarm clocks . . .

Anyway, I just wanted to say that Sue and I commemorated her a little this evening with some “everything” pizza from Pizza Hut (the Pizza Hut on Christie Lane is right across the highway from where Grandma’s house was, so she became a fan of it).

She always wanted to pronounce it “peetzer.”




We also picked up some “peach shodie” from the supermarket—back in the 1970s, when Nehi or one of those companies came out with peach-flavored soda, Grandma decided she loved the stuff. And she always pronounced it “peach shodie.” Maybe it was just a collision of enunciation, or maybe it was a denture thing.

Anyway, it’s a fond memory—of Grandma sitting in her chair next to her big picture window, sipping that fizzy orange stuff so contentedly.




(Yes, my brother, my cousins: This is indeed one of Grandma Renner’s glasses; remember them, with the tulips?)

When I was preparing for this post, I looked through an old photo album of my parents’, and I decided to take pictures of some of the pictures (yes, we do have a scanner; no, I don’t know how to use it).

Because Grandma had such a long, gradual decline, I find it hard sometimes to remember her when she “had it goin’ on.” In part, it’s because she always seemed “old” to me—I was the youngest of all my generation, and my mom was the youngest of her siblings. Grandma was sixty-eight when I was born. And sixty-eight was a lot older in 1965 than it is today.

Also, Grandma had extremely poor hearing, which prevented her from wanting to go out a lot, and I often had a hard time communicating with her, since I was a soft-spoken little girl.

. . . Anyway, I’m posting these pictures to help me celebrate Grandma the way I want to remember her. Like on Christmas morning, 1970, when she was explaining something to me.




Or the day after my birthday in 1971.




She was a really warm and nurturing grandma.




--------------------------------

Then, on September 17, 2001, the day Grandma Renner would have been 104 (three years after Grandma’s death), we welcomed little Daniel August into the family—Grandma Renner’s newest great-grandson, my brother’s second child.

The timing was a coincidence, supposedly.

. . . But I’m not sure I quite believe that.

So happy birthday, Grandma, wherever you are, and super-happy-birthday, Daniel. We’re tipping our peach shodies to you, too!

Shakespeare’s Pizza

It’s quite simple, really: College town, downtown, pizza. Shakespeare’s Pizza has been around since 1973, and by the time I was in high school in the eighties, it had already become a local institution.

I think most college towns have a beloved pizza-and-beer joint (like Mother Bear’s in Bloomington and Abo’s in Boulder), but Shakespeare’s also happens to be a top favorite all-around restaurant in Columbia.

Why? It’s because they serve excellent food there. Despite all the fun—the coupons promising “free chopsticks” with your pizza, the rock music, the cans of WD-40 in the beer case, the fun salvaged signage that decorates the place, the hand-tossing of pizzas in the front window, and so on—they’ve never lost sight of the prime directives: Pizza and beer. Pizza and beer.

“Peeet-za for . . . Hepzibah!”

Yeah, they take your name when you order, then call it out over the loudspeakers when your pizza’s ready. Last time I was there and told them my name was Julie, they said, “Oh—we need an initial for your last name.” (There was already a Julie waiting for a pizza.) I told them to call out “Hepzibah” instead. I’d been wanting to try that for a while. I just wanted to hear them announce it over the loudspeaker with their usual dramatic flourish.

I think everyone in Columbia has his or her own favorite Shakespeare’s pizza. We’re partial to the veggie, on whole wheat, often with broccoli added. Thus we receive a lovely, fresh-made pizza with a substantial whole-wheat crust, double cheese (we usually ask for single, however), red onions, green bell peppers, thick-sliced mushrooms, black olives, and the broccoli florets. With that nice spicy tomato sauce.



I can’t do it justice with words. The veggies are fresh and thick-sliced. You can truly taste each topping. It almost tastes . . . healthy. I say that because the ingredients are so pure.



Which leaves you some wiggle room for deciding which beer to choose, and how much!

The meats are incredible, too. The sausage is made especially for Shakespeare’s using a recipe from The Hill in St. Louis. The pepperoni is sliced especially thick. The sausage and hamburger are lean, with no fillers. Yes, it does all make a difference.



There is no skimping on the toppings; no matter how many different ones you add, they include a full amount of each topping. There’s a reason why the to-go boxes are piled up in self-serve stacks: Unless you’re with a group, you probably can’t finish your pizza.



Shakespeare’s: The Experience

Although the evening crowd can get kind of rowdy (college students + pizza + beer), in the past decade or so, Shakespeare’s has become more kid-friendly. The dough twirlers in the front window, for instance, have developed the practice of tossing little balls of dough to kids, giving them something to knead and play with while their families order and wait for their pizzas.

There is also a second Shakespeare’s on the west side, out by the HyVee super-duper-market, which amounts to the ’burbs. It’s natural that Columbians who developed their love of Shakespeare’s in college would still crave the pizza even after marrying and having children. (But though the pizza is the same, today I’m mainly talking about the downtown location.)

Are there down sides to Shakespeare’s? Sure: It’s popular, so sometimes it’s busy and you might have to wait. They do warn you; there’s a sign board with an arrow pointing to the current wait for a pizza—it ranges from twenty minutes (“Normal”) to sixty (“We’re Hustlin’”) to an hour and a half (“Anarchy”).



One solution is to call ahead and pick up your pie at their carryout kitchen around the corner, where Lone Sock Laundry used to be. I mean, in general, think ahead: Is it dinnertime? Busy. Friday or Saturday night? Super-busy.



Lunches have their own ambience, since most people are on a schedule. Shakespeare’s has for years offered pizza-by-the-slice on weekdays, and for most people, one or two slices is p-l-e-n-t-y. And unless you’re waiting for them to bring out a particular kind of pizza, you don’t have to wait, except for the line leading up to the cash register.





Another down side is that it can get kind of loud in there, with all the people talking and the concrete floors and the metal-legged chairs scraping around. But hey, that’s part of the scene.

If I could change one thing about Shakespeare’s, I’d have them offer some kind of nonalcoholic brew at the downtown location. Something. An O’Dull’s, or Clausthaler, or Kaliber, something. I mean, if they have room in their cold case for the “joke” cans of WD-40, then why can’t they squeeze in a row of nonalcoholic beers for us pathetic clods who can’t imbibe like they used to? [Note: See comments below. 8/28/09--JS]



“Have You Had a Piece . . . Today?”

Despite the rip-roaring good times we’ve all had at Shakespeare’s—the college pals’ night out; the symphony members in their concert black deconstructing after a performance around pitchers of suds, MU Tiger fans celebrating after a victory or consoling themselves after a loss—what I remember most fondly are those times . . . when time stopped at Shakespeare’s.

The story I keep telling (to anyone who will listen) is how Sue and I first felt that “ding” of mutual interest, of attraction. Back in 1991, a friend had arranged for us three to be there together, and that afternoon Sue and I discovered, first, that we both preferred vegetarian pizza, and second, we both ordered Anchor Steam beers (yes, they have an excellent selection of brews at Shakespeare’s).

And as we sat there together with our friend (who happened to be dating Sue at the time), we discovered we have a lot of other similar likes and dislikes. We laugh at the same kinds of things. We felt we could talk to each other for hours and hours. It was kind of like a chaperoned first date—one that came off very, very well . . .

Dialing back further, another Shakespeare’s memory, where time stood still for a while: One evening when I was in college, about 1987, there was a substantial snowstorm and I was out tooling around (like a crazy college kid) alone in my ’64 Dodge (actually, I’d been out hiking). It was getting late for dinner, and business was slow for Shake’s that night.

I sat gazing out the window, enjoying my view of the snowfall as well as the pizza-flavored warm air surrounding me. The music, the spicy hot pie, the drinkers at the bar, the sense of hospitality and good cheer made Shakespeare’s into a beacon that night, a way station for me.



I suspect that most Columbians have Shakespeare’s memories like these. A special date, or a time when we were starving for something and found ourselves fulfilled as well as fed. That’s how a longtime dining establishment becomes interwoven with the lives and thus the history of the community.

It’s not the Brown Derby, but even though movie stars don’t congregate there, people flock there just the same. It’s not the Café de Flore, but accomplished artists, philosophers, scholars, historians, mathematicians, biologists, journalists, agronomists, and rural sociologists all have deep (and light) conversations around the tables. It’s not the Russian Tea Room, but the food is delicious, satisfying, unique, and memorable, prepared with affection, cheer, and pride.

There are all kinds of reasons why Shakespeare’s Pizza is one of Columbia’s favorite restaurants. So when you visit my hometown, don’t miss it.

Funny Thought

Ha ha—I just sent an e-mail to the Food Network telling them about my big idea. And then my imagination took over—wouldn’t it be funny if they contacted me, now, and asked me to bring myself and my dishpan hands over to New York to discuss the fine points of my proposal?

Then I could start to regain my big-city edge!

Ha ha ha.

I’m sure my letter will get the same response as that time I sent an e-mail to Pizza Hut suggesting to them my brilliant idea for their next sensational pizza breakthrough: Fried-chicken-crust pizza! (Two great tastes in one! It would go over really well here in the Midwest!) Hee hee hee.

. . . No, I never heard back from Pizza Hut. And apparently, they haven’t used my idea yet. (Maybe they’re still experimenting in their test kitchens, eh?)

Of course, maybe the Food Network will look at my blog, show this post to Paula Deen, and she can develop the fried-chicken-crust pizza!

And frankly, she can take all the credit for it!