Midwest Pizza Pilgrimage, Take 2

Last year in May, my family made a trip up from the Kansas City area through Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. I documented on this blog 5 pizzas freom 5 different pizza restaurants that we sampled along the way. This year in April, we made a similar trip. However, this time, the trip took us to the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, IL. We (or at least I) again sampled 5 different pizzas from 5 different pizzerias. The pizzas varied in style from Midwest thin/crackery crust to deep-dish to Neapolitan. The most part, I stuck to my usual toppings of sausage (Italian, if possible) and mushrooms.

Stop # 1 - Perna's Pizza

Our first stop was in Rock Falls, Illinois. We noticed a sign for Perna's Pizza so we drove in and arrived at opening time on a Friday. We were the only customers in this quaint, old family restaurant that looked like it had been around for 40+ years (a stone outside was dated 1962). Taking a look at the menu we ordered a regular sausage and mushroom pizza. My wife ordered a salad and we were given complimentary bread while we waited. The salad was most likely from a plastic bag. I asked if the bread was homemade and was told "yes". I'll mention more about the bread later. I noticed after had ordered that Perna's had pizza slices available for lunch - had I known or been told that fact earlier, I would have opted for 1-2 slices instead. Our pizza was ready in about 15 minutes.


The style of pizza here is decidedly a Midwestern/Bar-style, thin, crackery crust based. My initial impressions were of a similar pizza we had eaten a year earlier at Primo Joe's Pizza in Dixon, IL on our previous trip in 2009. However, I have to say that after a couple of bites, all links to any other pizza I might have eaten in my lifetime were broken. In a nutshell, the pizza we had at Perna's was totally bland, devoid of any flavor from crust to toppings. The mushrooms were the canned variety. The sausage was flavorless, let alone having any spice or redeeming quality to it. The sauce was minimal, but what little I could taste might have had some flavor to it. As for the bread I mentioned earlier, it was equally devoid of flavor as the pizza, perhaps more so. I suspect they use the same dough for their bread as their pizza dough.

It is difficult to put into words my impressions of Perna's Pizza. Was it bad? Well, it certainly wasn't good. It's hard to describe an eating experience when there is no flavor on which to comment.

All in all, I would not go back, nor recommend it to anyone who still had their taste-buds intact. Not a good way to start off a pizza crawl across the cornbelt of America.