Day Six - Happy Joe’s Pizza
The final stop on our trip back home was originally going to be Davenport, IA, but we decided to press on and ended up in the land of the Hawkeyes. We actually ended up staying in Coralville, right next to Iowa City. I had originally thought about Happy Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream as a final stop on our trip. Although it is a regional chain, there has not been a Happy Joe’s in the Kansas City area since 1987, so it still met our criteria. I found out the Happy Joe’s restaurant in Iowa City had been demolished courtesy of a tornado that came through the area in spring of 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Week_2006_Tornado_Outbreak_Sequence
So, since it was raining pretty heavily outside, I decided not to try and brave it all the way to downtown Iowa City anyway and just find something close to our hotel. The answer came in the form of the remaining Happy Joe’s Pizza in the area – a delivery and carry-out only place.
I decided to pick up the pizza just so I could have a glimpse of the operation. The Happy Joe’s in Coralville, IA is pretty Spartan, as one might expect. I did see a big Hobart mixer in the back, indicating they probably make the dough on site rather than get it shipped frozen. However, the mixer could just have been leftover from a by-gone time. The oven was one of those conveyor types, which I am not particularly fond of. Give me a good Blodgett deck oven any day. One thing I noticed as my pizza was coming through is there was a little door on the side of the oven where the cook could stick a long hooked metal rod through and punch down any bubbles that crept up. I am sure I have seen this done before in other places using similar types of crusts and deck ovens but it looked kind of funny to me seeing it done with a conveyor oven. Once the pizza was ready, I took it back to our hotel room. By this time my wife was rebelling against the whole pizza thing, going on about something called vegetables. Although I offered to let her choose whatever toppings she wanted, she was adamant about something other than pizza. So I purchased a medium pizza, this time half Italian sausage & mushroom and half Canadian bacon and pineapple.
It has been at least 25 years since I had an authentic Happy Joe’s pizza, so my memory may be a little off. One thing that struck me was how the look of the pizza reminded me of Round Table pizza from the West Coast. I don’t recall the taste being completely the same, but the thickness and texture are the same and certainly appearances are worth noting. I also noticed the HJ guys had docked the pizza, as evidenced from underneath.My overall impression of this pizza was a letdown. I’m not sure if my memory had failed me, or if this Happy Joe’s did, but the taste was not there. There needed to be just a little more sauce. And the sauce that was there tasted different than I remembered. It needed something, but I’m not sure what. The cheese was good, and they clearly use a blend (probably mozzarella, cheddar and provolone). The toppings were okay. The Italian sausage was not as good as Marty’s, the mushrooms were canned instead of fresh, but the shredded Canadian bacon and pineapple were fairly good. I couldn’t finish the whole thing, nor did I want to. I’m not certain if my taste buds were off at this point, or the pizza was, but overall I would give this HJ pizza 3 of 5 pizzas. It was okay, but probably not worth going back for. I might be willing to try a different HJ’s in the future just to compare and not totally fault the brand, but the one in Coralville was lacking, in my opinion.
As an aside, I have been to a pizza place in Independence, MO called Tim’s Pizza which does a kind of Happy Joe’s clone. http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurant/Reviews/3352/tims-pizza
I would say Tim’s does a better job in all categories, both in replicating my memory of Happy Joe’s Pizza and just in general taste than the pizza I had in Coralville, IA.
No comments:
Post a Comment