Silver Beach Pizza Company
410 Vine Street
St. Joseph, Michigan
269-983-4743
http://www.silverbeachpizza.com

St. Joseph, Michigan is a beach town on the southeastern portion of Lake Michigan that’s about three hours from Indianapolis.  It’s a straight shot drive up US 31 to get there and the lake and beaches are very pleasant in the summer time.  The town of St. Joseph is quite charming, with almost no chain restaurants downtown, except for Jimmy Johns (?), and also not too many antique stores (I hate antique stores).  This is a very nice town with a lot of character and it’s a great place to spend time with your family.  I also get the feeling it may be okay without kids as the beach seems to have a ton of college age kids running around it.  

Silver Beach Pizza is a restaurant located at the Amtrak train station about a thousand feet from Silver Beach.  It’s a ‘live’ train station too where you can actually take the train from this station to Chicago in under two hours.  We were here with the kids after riding the midway rides at the Venetian festival in St. Joseph on a Saturday afternoon.  This year’s carnies looked distinctively less disturbing than last years, though the carnie that was sleeping in the cart next to us on the Ferris wheel was definitely disturbing.  After riding the rides, we were ready to eat, and despite the pleas from the children, we were not having carnival food for lunch.  What I was looking for in lunch was air conditioning, comfortable seating, and some pizza in a kid-friendly environment.  We definitely found all of that.

What I Got:  We started with the “Nacho Mama” nachos, which was the simplest nachos you can have; corn chips with two plastic bowls of melted nacho cheese. 

While this may not be an acceptable restaurant form of nachos for most people, it was, for three dollars, perfect for little kids.  Our children liked the simple chips and dipping cheese (no jalapenos to navigate around).  I thought they were too salty, but I was in the minority, as I usually am.  This was just enough to take the edge off the kid’s hunger while we waited for the main course.

We then had a medium cheese pizza with pepperoni on half of it ($12.50).  The pizza was actually very good.  It had a slightly sweet taste, and the cheese topping may have had some cheddar mixed in.  The crust was tasty and the serving size was quite good. 

For a family lunch, taking a break in the air conditioning from the hot sun, this was a great lunch.  Also, my wife points out that they had stepstools in the bathroom for kids to wash their hands.  The ambiance was actually much nicer than we would have expected from the fairly modest exterior.  You can eat indoors or outdoors as well.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes.  I’ve heard from numerous people that this is a favorite pizza spot in St. Joseph, so I figured I’d better try it.  It was a terrific place to eat with children (there were many children, and even stroller storage near the bathrooms); they actually gave the kids little globs of pizza dough to play with while we were waiting for our food.  And the pizza was good enough that I would go back just for that.  They also have an extensive beer list, salads, sandwiches and pasta.  Add all of this to their terrific location right off the beach, and this can round out a perfect summer day with the family.

We also love the town of St. Joseph.  I highly recommend it as a summertime destination, particularly from Indianapolis.  It’s just far enough away that you feel like you’ve gone somewhere, but not so far that it’s a hassle to drive.  The town, weather, and lake are all lovely.  It’s not unlike Cape Cod, except that your dog can drink the beach water, and there are no funny accents (well, except for some of the folks from Chicago).

-BigRedEater

HotBox Pizza
12510 East 116th Street
Fishers, IN 46037-8907
(317) 849-4200
http://www.gethotboxpizza.com/

If you spent any time in Bloomington, you would know that for a while Pizza Express owned the town.  Mostly because of their breadsticks, cheese sauce and super cheap Big Ten Special  (Large one topping, breadsticks and two sodas in plastic cups).  Most of my friends still have the cups somewhere around.  I’m rambling, but note that HotBox and Pizza Express basically have the same food.  HotBox has six locations with five in Indiana and one in Texas.

What I Had: Large BBQ Pizza, Large Sausage, Pepperoni and Mushroom and two orders of breadsticks.  I had a buy one-get one coupon and the total was around $25.  The BBQ chicken was $18.95 for a large alone and breadsticks are $3.99.

I ordered the S,P & M on thin crust.  Wow, this was bad.  I think they were going for low carb, but the taste was really bad.  The sausage pieces were so small, it had the consistency of sand.  The mushrooms were very small and really sparse as well.  There was very little sauce, but the soggy crust couldn’t handle the weight anyway.

The BBQ was ordered on hand tossed crust which I enjoyed more, but it was pretty weak as well.  Very small pieces of of chicken were sparsely scattered throughout the pizza.   The BBQ sauce was too sweet for my liking and the red onion didn’t add anything.   The crust to toppings ratio was flirting with them being pretty cheap.

The breadsticks were okay.  The cheese has to be straight from a can and the breadsticks were really chewy and salty.

Would I Buy It Again?   No.  I’d rather make a Red Baron and get a kick in the nuts as I would feel better than I did after this meal.  Even with the buy one-get one coupon, I didn’t feel as if I got a deal because the toppings were such low quality and very sparse.  Honestly, it is my least favorite pizza in Indianapolis.  No, scratch that…Indiana.  Sorry.

-wibia

Tony Sacco’s Coal Oven Pizza
Clay Terrace Mall
14402 Clay Terrace Blvd, Ste 150
Carmel, IN
http://www.tonysaccos.com

Florida based Tony Sacco’s is brand new to Indy.  It was on my list to try, but somewhere in the middle.   BigRedEater and I grabbed a weekday lunch to give it a try. If you look at their website, they bring in coal from PA and filter the water separately for the crust.  Overall, it looks like they pay attention to all the details.

What We Ate:  Garlic Rotolis $5, Caesar Salad $7, Pepperoni Pizza $12.00.

The garlic rotolis were highly recommended for our server, so we would give them a try.  Eight Rolls, olive oil, garlic and basil dipping sauce.  The fat part of the rolls was about as big as a squash ball.  As far as the taste….eh.  Nothing to talk about.  There was a lot of oil and it was really too much.  A few of them were stuck together, so that makes me think that they were pre-made and then torn apart?  Now that I am writing the review, I realized that we didn’t receive any of the basil dipping sauce.  They really need a sauce…and about 3 tablespoons less oil.

This is how they were served as well, just tossed in the bowl…

Caesar salad was a base of romaine lettuce with Romano cheese and Caesar dressing and a few crostinis.  What I did like is that the salad was lightly dressed and the dressing was not the heavy thick out of the bottle stuff.  However, not a lot going on here.  It was a good size, but very little flavor.  Fresh pepper was not an option, though it would’ve been nice.  You can add chicken for $3.00 more, no thanks.

A small pizza is 12”.  $10.50 to start for a small, then toppings are $1.50 extra.  Specialty pizzas are $15.95 for a small.  The menu states that the sauce is homemade and the cheese is a mozzarella/romano cheese mix topped with olive oil and basil.  When the pizza arrived, I expected to see the black marks of a coal oven pizza, but that was not the case here.  The slices had a nice fold to them, but I found the pizza to be about a minute under cooked.  The dough was finished, but it just lacked crispiness.

I didn’t love the pizza.  It wasn’t bad, but there was nothing about it that I couldn’t find anywhere else.  They have all the right elements going into the pizza, but it just doesn’t transfer to the final product.

Would I Buy It Again?   No. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t spit out the food, but this meal didn’t leave any memorable moments.  The total bill was around $30 for lunch for two.  I can’t say that the food validated the price tag.  They do not have a lunch menu, so if you want pizza, you are stuck ordering a $13 pizza and assume that the other person wants what you do.  Let me be clear when I say that the business lunch crowd does not want to be roped into buying an entire pizza.

I have to admit, the service was quite good though.  Very attentive and friendly.  Honestly, I am interested to hear other people’s opinions.

-wibia

Donato’s Pizza

I enjoy pizza so much that I should stop reviewing it.  Even when pizza is bad, I usually like it just because… it is pizza!  Don’t get me wrong, I know the difference between good and bad, but even bad pizza is usually edible.

Donato’s is always a few bucks more than every other pizza place and it kills me.  Large Pepperoni is $12.99 and Large Founder’s Favorite is $16.39.  I can’t say their ingredients are far superior than their competition, but I do enjoy the edge to edge toppings.

The Founder’s Favorite is on the right and pepperoni on the left.  As you can see, the toppings are piled on with a heavy hand.  Founders Favorite has sausage, ham, pepperoni and banana peppers.   They cut the pizza in little squares which I like because it is more difficult to track and I usually end up eating part of my wife’s side without her knowing!

I really enjoyed the combination of the Founders Favorite.  The salty pepperoni matched with the vinegar undertone of the banana peppers was a nice touch.  Ham was really a non factor, I really didn’t taste it that much.  It felt like a quality pizza, though I could’ve used a little sauce, but I say that a lot when eating pizza.  The thin crust stood back in the mix letting the ingredients take center stage.

The large pepperoni pizza has more than 100 slice of pepperoni on it.  As you can see, there is no shortage here.  They put some italian seasoning on top and this is one of the better chain pepperoni pizzas that you can buy.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes. Donato’s is one of the better pizza chains out there.  It’s consistently good.  However, I wish they would bring back the Firehouse BBQ Pizza, it was topped with Onion Rings on it!

-WIBIA