MOD Pizza (Oshtemo Township)
5097 Century Avenue, Suite DWhen the homes and trees along Century Avenue in Kalamazoo were taken down several years ago and Costco was planned, we were told how that area was going to be bustling with shops and restaurants. For the longest time, we got a bunch of empty storefronts and banks…seriously, this town doesn’t need anymore bank branches. The township to limit those like they limit liquor establishments.
A little over three years later, the rest of the development is starting to fill out. Trader Joe’s and Field & Stream are the big stores, but there are finally more restaurants going in to the slots that we were promised.
The newest restaurant to open is MOD Pizza. They take up a little corner shop in the building connected to Trader Joe’s and Chowhound Pet Supplies. It can be hard to see from the parking lot off of Century but if you just follow the lot around to the backside facing Stadium Drive, it becomes more obvious where the fast fired pizza chain set up shop.
MOD Pizza’s concept isn’t new to Kalamazoo. We’ve had a Blaze Pizza for over four years now just up the road in Oshtemo Township. However, MOD is the originator. MOD got it’s start in 2008 in Seattle. Blaze copied the concept three years later.
The restaurant has the familiar set up of the Subway-like order counter. All the ingredients are laid out in front of you behind a glass wall and team members build your order as you go or, Made On Demand (that’s where the MOD in the name comes from).
The big difference between MOD and Blaze is MOD has a lot of specialty pizza options. There are at least ten options if you’d rather not create your own plus they have 6″ pizzas for a small appetite and 11″ Mega Dough thick crust pizzas for a large one.
Another big difference? MOD has beer. There were two Bell’s taps and a Founders tap the day we stopped in for lunch. I still had to go to work so I stuck to a Pepsi.
L was still at school when we made our first stop in to MOD so it was just the three of us. J ordered a specialty pizza and a salad, B got a 6″, and I did a MOD Create Your Own. The cost was a little over $30 with three drinks.
The process is familiar. The pizzas are assembled in front of you then handed off to a team member who puts the pies into an 800 degree pizza oven.
It only a takes a few minutes for the pizzas to cook and we got ours to go so we just kind of camped out at the end of the order counter where you would go if you had put your order in online.
There is a decent sized dining room but we were there just a few days after the grand opening and it was pretty full.
I did pretty much what I always do at places like this. I ordered a pizza with pepperoni, ground beef, basil and garlic. The pizza was nice and crispy all the way through and there was enough garlic on there to kill a vampire (that’s a good thing.)
J’s pizza order was the Kevin. This pizza is pumpkin, arugula, mozzarella, Canadian bacon, mama li’l sweet hot peppers, and a balsamic fig glaze. As you can see, J is much more adventurous than I am. Pumpkin on a pizza? I never would have thought of that but she seemed to like it.
The salads at MOD are pretty interesting. In fact, my sister-in-law was just in town and saw the sign that we were getting an MOD. She was pretty excited. She travels a lot for work and MOD is one of her favorite places to go when she sees one. She loves the salads. They don’t have anything like it where they live south of Chicago. In fact, when my family comes here, Blaze is always one of their preferred stops for food. Next time they come, we will more than likely end up at MOD at least once if not more than that.
Anyway, the salads are served on a pizza crust. We got ours to go so they kept the salad and the crust separate and so did J. The crust is just topped with Asiago cheese so it becomes a pretty good cheese bread.
The salad J chose was a Create Your Own. You can get any of their toppings that you can get on pizza on a salad. J loaded up with mixed greens, veggies, and cheese.
B kept his pizza simple. We got a 6″ for him with just pepperoni. He ate half of it so I’m glad they have the option for the smaller pizzas for the kids instead of having to get a full 11″ and they end up only eating one slice.
MOD Pizza is pretty much exactly what we were expecting. It’s very similar to what we’ve been used to with their competitor. MOD has a few advantages like I mentioned. Beer and salads are something the other place doesn’t have. The pizzas themselves are about the same but I haven’t been to a fast fired pizza place that really has a different pizza….the concept is easy to replicate but hard to improve on. MOD is close to home for us and that will be it’s main advantage
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