The Pizza Therapy Forum and Pasta Therapy Forum

[Jimmy D]

What are your earliest pizza memories?

For me, the monthly trips to Shakeys Pizza Parlor in Peoria, Illinois were the beginning of my love affair with pizza. We lived in a small farm town 30 miles away and several families would make the trip to Shakeys once a month.

There, us kids would get to stand and watch the guys make pizza behind thick windows. We used to love to watch them toss and twirl the crusts in the air and claim each pizza they were making was "mine".

Then we'd all sing along with the banjo and piano players as the words to old ragtime standards flashed on a screen above them. We would sing as loud as we could in hopes that the musicians would call us up on stage to sing along with them and get a balloon.

I remember the huge bubbles in the crust and how the crust had a slightly "beer" taste to it which I guess could be attributed to the amount of yeast in the crust.

I found a Shakeys in Boise a few years back after not eating in one for 30 years and it just wasn't the same. They had a buffet with hour-old pizza sitting under heat lamps and getting dried out.

I'd like one good piping hot Shakeys Pizza one more time before I die.

Anybody else wanna share their earliest and fondest memories of the 'za?