Ned's Corner Pub was our first review—it may still be my favorite pizza in Kokomo. And even though ASOK has undergone some shuffling around on the staffing side, which tends to happen with youthful blogs, I like to think the content—if not always the frequency (sheepish chuckle)—has at least kept pace with the quality of the pizza I'm reviewing.
That's my story, anyway, and I plan to stick to it.
As a special treat, for this anniversary I opted not to bust the predictable move (lazy meme, "found" footage, clip show) and instead get out of the apartment, get some never-before-reviewed Kokomo pizza, and actually write a review I might be willing to show my creative nonfiction students.
As for finding new pizza here in the City of Firsts, the list is dwindling. Alas, I no longer have my Chuck E. Cheese "pass" (i.e., girlfriend with toddling toddler), so anyone longing for investigative reporting on the working conditions in these animatronic sweatshops will just have to wait. As the great Zach Galifianakis is reputed to have said, "When you look like I do, it's hard to get a table for one at Chuck E. Cheese." In my case, it's just too much trouble to review the national chains when there's so much great local pizza right here in town (awwww....).
Of the 20-something independent pizza joints in the greater Kokomo region, this blog has reviewed 11 of them in toto in the last year. And yet, I have been troubled lately that my first-ever Kokomo pizza has thus far gone unreviewed. That pizza is none other than the appropriately-named "The Veggie" from Mike's Italian Grill.
It was a mild, 82-degree day in early August 2012 (widely known around here as one of the hottest, driest summers on record) that the original Cook clan first descended on Kokomo. We moved all day, from sunup to sundown. Naturally, what does one do on the first night in a new town, in unfamiliar surroundings, when there's a hammer in the sink and the stove isn't even plugged in?
You dig out your phone and, throwing caution to the wind, appeal to the almighty hive mind of those same food-crazed freaks whose dominance of the Interwebs is rivaled only by porn.
As I said, our first was the deep dish veggie, which is a fantastic pie, but I've since moved on to some of Mike's more adventurous tastes, such as the Hawaiian, which the menu describes in crystalline-sincerity as a "tropical trip."
Let me get things rolling with a couple of honest critiques. The biggest one being that Mike's doesn't really stray too far from the SYSCO bandwagon, a small irony that will become perhaps a bit clearer below. This means that the jalapenos, for example, are either canned or jarred (which is fine for pizza), but so is the pineapple (which is not. Shame). Fresh Dole Pineapples can be had here in Kokomo for $2.99 each at Kroger (price current as of yesterday) in the dead of winter, which is probably a few dimes on the dollar more than the canned, syrupy nonsense Mike's insists on using. Why such a harsh critique? Because Mike's has potential. Real potential. I gripe because I love.
But also because Mike's has an interesting backstory. Indulge me for a moment.
Skimming through the detailed "About Us" page on the restaurant's website, it soon becomes clear that Mike, like many Kokomoans, spent the early 1980s in a sort of layoff limbo: now employed at Delco, now not employed at Delco, now employed at Delco again, but only part-time, now not employed at all. And on and on.
Fed up or scared or just looking for a change, Mike started a produce stand on the side of the road. (Ironic when you consider the canned pineapples... Okay, letting that one go for now.) He soon realized that there was no money in fresh produce in Kokomo.
Pizza, however, has one of the most generous profit margins in the restaurant biz. Think about it. Sauce? Cheap. Dough? Cheap cheap. Virtually cost-free, actually. (One estimate puts it at around $0.011 per ounce if made from scratch, which it damn well should be.)
The average small-business pizza restaurant in the US will capture close to a 20-percent profit on each pie, according to internal industry studies. When you consider that Americans gorge themselves on about $36.2 billion worth of pizza pie each year, you can sort of understand why Mike made the switch from fresh produce. (And apparently he never looked back...okay, really done this time).
In a way, Mike started doing with pizza what American manufacturers were doing with him—and have been doing to workers ever since, slicing them up into segments, charts, numbers, cost-benefits analyses, Taylorized metrics, basically making them pawns or cogs—if we're being honest with each other—and so on. Which would you rather exploit, a person or a pie?
So, in the midst of all the dewey, nascent neoconservatism that was Reagan's "Morning in America" (gag), Mike's Pizza, as it was first called, opened its doors in 1980, making me almost the same exact same age as the restaurant. (Mike's was born in August; I didn't show up until a month later, in September.)
And, I'm happy to say, Mike's Italian Grill, as it's now called, has been churning out good pizza ever since. We'll both turn 35 later this year. (Happy early birthday to us.)
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| Nacho cheese. My cheese. (In any case, not a urine sample.) |
Now for the good. Mike's mozzarella—while certainly nothing that will blow your hair back—is a completely serviceable complement to the twin saviors of the overall pizza experience: the crusts and the sauces.
The menu claims that Mike's BBQ sauce, which can be had on any pie and comes gratis with the Hawaiian, the Western BBQ, and the Chicken BBQ, is house made. For my money it doesn't really matter because this sauce is damn-near perfect for the following improvisado selection of toppings: Hawaiian, no pig, add jalapenos.
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| The cook clearly rage-topped our pizza, but that's cool.¹ We were hungry. |
Mike's Italian Grill serves up a whole bunch of other stuff, too: pasta, bread stix (why always with the x?), salads, cole slaw, even a bucket of spaghetti. Yes, really, no joke: according to the menu, the bucket's enough for four or five people, and it's available in carry-out only. Because, you know, we don't want to have to look at you sitting alone in the restaurant eating spaghetti out of a bucket.
It sort of reminds me of this scene from Magical Mystery Tour, a truly shitty Beatles' movie if there ever was one, even by the somewhat loosey-goosey standards of psychedelia:
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| Little-known fact: John Lennon worked briefly at a Golden Corral in Hamburg. |
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| Surgeon General's Warning: meatball subs have been shown to cause cancer of the rectum in laboratory animals. |
So give Mike's a try. The physical location boasts a cozy, cordoned off interior, but not so cozy you can't people-watch with your friends. (*Highlights: a chipmunk-faced woman, a family of six who each ordered extra-large Dr. Pepper's, and most disturbing of all: a bearded man who doesn't like the taste of any holiday-related food. Turkey, dressing, casseroles by the truckload. You name it.)
And look at it this way: if you really want to do something vaguely patriotic, save the $9.50 you would've forked over to Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper, and instead throw a few bucks to a small-business owner and a guy lucky enough to make it out of the rat-race with his hat on his head. [ ]
Grade=B-.
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NOTES
¹ "rage-top" (Amer., colloq., trans. verb): to lavish a pizza, submarine sandwich, or other topping-laden food with far more toppings than are required (or even allowed) in an enraged manner, usually out of frustration that the customer strayed from the established menu items. For example, "That dude at Subway totally rage-topped my meatball sub when I asked for extra olives."
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