Monical’s Pizza (Indianapolis)
6010 W. 86th StreetI’ve said it many times. Friday night is pizza night no matter where I am.
I had to spend a couple of nights in Indianapolis a few weeks ago for a job assignment. My colleague and I got to Indianapolis Friday afternoon, completed a couple of tasks then called it a night. She was meeting up with her parents who were also in town for dinner. I went looking for pizza.
Our hotel was in a pretty commercialized spot in northwest Indianapolis. I had plenty of pizza options to choose from but one jumped out at me right away. An old childhood favorite I just don’t get to have anymore.
The Monical’s Pizza Indianapolis location is on 86th Street near the I-465 interchange. The restaurant is part of the Traders Point Mall which is more like a series of strip malls with a couple of anchor stores. The restaurant is near the back of the property closer to the AMC theater than 86th Street.
I could go on and on and on and on about Monical’s. It was my family’s go-to pizza joint when I was a kid. The restaurants were a little different then. They were much more sit-down focused. You could do carry-out but we always went to big restaurants on US-50 in Bradley, IL and IL-1 in Watseka, IL. Both are long gone and have been replaced in the area with newer, smaller restaurants nearby.
I still had some things to work on when I got back to the room so I sat down at my computer and started that. The Monical’s was right across the street so I put in an order online and got back to work while I was waiting for my food to cook.
The restaurant was surprisingly not super busy. It was a Friday night and I’m just used to pizza places being so dang busy on Friday nights that it sometimes takes an hour or more for a carry-out. I was given a time of 20 minutes so after about 15, I headed across the street to see if it was done.
The entrance takes you right to the carry-out counter which is how I always remember Monical’s Pizzas being. I gave the lady working my name and she turned around and grabbed two boxes. I had ordered a large thin crust Mighty Meat pizza and an order of five soft dough breadsticks.
When I got back across the street I went for the breadsticks first. My family used to argue a lot over the breadsticks. I always wanted to go to Pizza Hut because I loved their breadsticks but the rest of my family loved everything about Monical’s so I usually lost. As an adult that doesn’t have a Monical’s nearby, I appreciate the bread sticks so much more now.
The soft dough breadsticks live up to their name. They’re soft and doughy. These look like breadsticks you make at home. They’re not really uniform in shape and they have large salt crystals sprinkled on top. Something that I just learned was weird to people outside of Indiana/where I’m from in Illinois is that these breadsticks have an option for a cheese dipping sauce. I wouldn’t eat these any other way. I picked the nacho cheese sauce. This combination instantly transports me back to the dark, poorly lit Monical’s dining rooms we frequented when I was in middle school. It’s so good. It’s so simple but it’s so good. It makes me wonder why everyone doesn’t eat breadsticks with cheese.
I had different pizzas preferences when I was a kid. Again, I always begged my family to go to Pizza Hut…something I would never do now. I didn’t like the cracker thin pizza Monical’s served…something I love now.
I ordered a large for a couple of reasons. The thin crust pizzas are really easy to down in one sitting…and if I didn’t, I would have some left over for the late night I knew I was going to have on Saturday.
I picked the Mighty Meat Pizza. The toppings on this are sausage, ham, pepperoni, and bacon. I’ve always just stuck to pepperoni in the past so I did something different. If you’ve never had Monical’s Pizza, it’s really hard to emphasize just how thin this thin crust is. The pizza could barely hold the weight of the layers of meat on top. The pizza is cooked to a delicious golden brown and topped off with a spice mixture. The pizza is cut in to squares which is the norm in region for this kind of pizza. To my surprise, I didn’t eat the whole thing. I got to a point where I was going to leave like two slices so I stopped, closed the box and left a little more than the top row for the next night. Future me thanked me for doing this.
I can’t tell you how excited I was when I saw a Monical’s Pizza across the street. I never used to get this excited when my parents would tell me where we were going to eat but it’s one of those things I really, really miss from the area I grew up in. I didn’t even get in to the Tart and Tangy dressing in this blog post that Monical’s is famous for so I’m not giving you the full experience. It’s one of those flavors that instantly puts me back in the mid 90’s wearing a dirty baseball uniform and arguing with my parents about eating salad with my dinner. Monical’s is a lot of nostalgia for me but it’s nostalgia that holds up. The pizza is still really delicious.
SW Michigan Dining 
My mind first went to Donato’s, but it sounds like this was even thinner than that. Guess the closest thing we might have here is Kazoopy’s? Definitely a style I want to try more of, though I often go to deep dish options since they are more filling.
Yes, thinner than Donato’s. Closest here would actually be Bimbo’s but the crust is more pressed so there’s not as many air bubbles in it.