Green Lantern Pizza (Royal Oak)
4326 Rochester RoadI spent a long couple of days in Detroit last week. I was there for work and sleep was at a premium. I worked a 16 hour day on Wednesday and a 20 hour day (not a typo) on Thursday. It was brutal but will also be nice when I get the check for those days next Friday.
I knew I wasn’t going to get a lot of time to eat. I would have to snack most of the time because I’d be going in to and getting off work when there wasn’t a lot open.
My job site was downtown Detroit but my hotel was in Royal Oak. I was off work by about 8 PM on Wednesday night which still left me a few options. I figured my best bet was to order a lot of pizza and eat it for multiple meals.
I found a couple places in Royal Oak I wanted to try but it was at the point I needed something with good reviews and was still taking orders. I had a few options.
I chose Green Lantern Pizza on Rochester Road and Bauman Avenue in Royal Oak. The small Detroit metro pizza chain has a dozen locations in the suburbs. The original is a restaurant in Madison Heights. The name is a holdover from the Prohibition Era. A Green Lantern outside of an establishment meant you could buy alcohol.
This Green Lantern location is carryout/delivery. I put my order in online before I left downtown Detroit as the business was closing fairly soon. The inside of the restaurant is small and pretty typical for this kind of pizza joint. There’s a long counter in the lobby and a bench to sit on and wait if the pizzas aren’t ready.
I knew I wanted to make multiple meals out of this order so I ordered the Octopie, an all corner Detroit style deep dish pizza, and an order of Lantern Bread. The cost was just over $30.
I was pretty hungry when I got back to my car and couldn’t wait the ten minutes it was going to take me to get to my hotel so I popped open the box of Lantern Bread on the drive. The bread is pretty typical. It’s pizza dough topped with cheese and garlic butter. It’s served with marinara sauce for dipping but I didn’t get in to that until I got to my room. The bread was tasty golden brown gooey cheese topped bread that was fine without the marinara. I ate probably half the order on the 10 minute drive to the Hyatt.
When I got settled in my room, I opened up the pizza box. The Octopie is a large pizza and more than one person can eat. I actually made three meals out of it. I got it topped with pepperoni and Italian sausage.
The pizza was a delicious, buttery crusted Detroit deep dish. There was the crunchiness of the edges and the soft pillowy crust the rest of the way through. The was a thick, sweet sauce underneath the cheese which, I know is not the Buddy’s way, but really it’s the way I prefer it to be done. The pepperoni’s on top had a nice char and there was a lot of meat spread on each piece.
This pizza from Green Lantern Pizza really hit the spot. Long days, short nights, and lack of food was the theme for two and a half days in Detroit. This pizza was really filling and I was able to fill up before leaving my hotel and once I got back to it. This is a chain I had never heard of before I started looking for pizza joints in Royal Oak and it was a good find.
SW Michigan Dining 