Boondock’s Pizza
111 N. Main StreetEvery so often, there will be a pizza place in the middle of nowhere that people rave about. I travel around Southwest Michigan quite a bit so I’m always scheming ways to go to these place. If the locals and/or semi-locals are raving about, it’s worth finding a way.
I was coming home from Lansing one day last week and I realized I finally found my opportunity to stop at a place in Bellevue. I think I’ve only been in Bellevue twice in the twelve years I’ve lived in Kalamazoo so it’s not someplace that I drive through or near very often.
The pizza place in Bellevue is Boondock’s Pizza. I keep reading rave reviews from a the Battle Creek based Facebook group The Carryout Club. The pictures look like the kind of pizza I really like so I was excited to put in an order.
Boondock’s Pizza is on Main Street in downtown Bellevue between Capital Avenue and Jackson Street…which is pretty much all downtown is. The pizzeria is a small one story brick building connected to the building next to it. The building has been some sort of pizza place for several years.
I put in my order when I stopped for gas in Charlotte. They don’t have online ordering so I actually had to call and talk to someone. I timed it out pretty perfectly as there was about a 20 minute estimate given to me over the phone and Charlotte is about 20 minutes from Bellevue.
The restaurant is a pretty typical pizza joint setup. The order/pick up counter is in the back of the dining room connected directly to the kitchen. There’s also an ice cream freezer her for the summer time…or I guess if you’re a glutton for punishment in February, but I was not. I just asked for and paid for my pizzas then got back on the road.
There is a pretty good sized dining room with some seating options. This is the kind of small town pizzeria you do special events at. Birthday parties, graduation celebrations, etc…and you know some families have done those things for years in this room.
I ordered myself a 16″ pepperoni pizza and an order of the Loaded Hot Pepper Cheese Garlic Butter Sticks. The total was a little under $25 before tip.
I grabbed a slice of pizza in the car because I just didn’t want to wait. The regular crust is actually pretty thin which is what got my attention to this place. The pizza goes almost all the way to the edge of the crust with a thick layer of a sweet marinara sauce topped with a thick layer of cheese. The pepperoni is sandwiched between the sauce and cheese layer which gives the sauce a little bit of a spiciness to go with the sweetness of the sauce. The pizza is sliced into a party cut…which means it’s in squares instead of triangles. Maybe it’s a psychological thing but I will die on the hill that pizza tastes better when it’s cut this way. In Chicago, we call this “Tavern Cut” because it’s how all the good tavern’s cut their thin crust pizzas…and it just tastes better.
J had asked me to get the garlic butter bread but didn’t specify which one she wanted. She told me to pick so, of course, I got the Loaded Hot Pepper Cheese Garlic Butter bread. These pieces of bread are garlic knots with pepper jack cheese on them. The appetizer comes with marinara sauce for dipping but I just went straight up with the hot pepper cheese. They were a little too spicy for J so she just stole some of my pizza and told me to eat the bread. I thought that was a pretty fair trade off.
If I lived in Bellevue, I’d eat Boondock’s Pizza every Friday night. That’s about the best compliment I can give the place. It’s a really good pizza. I’m really partial to pizza like this. The crust isn’t too thick but it’s not thin enough that you need to eat the whole thing just satisfy your hunger. The party cut squares also give this pizza a leg up on the competition. I swear, pizza just tastes better when it’s cut in to squares. I have no idea why.
SW Michigan Dining 