Kazoopy’s Pizza & Grinders (Gull Road)
5030 Gull RoadDoing something a little bit different for my typical Friday night pizza.
I still had my overtime shift on Friday night but I was staying close to Kalamazoo. I actually had a pretty relaxed day at work and decided to just order my pizza dinner for lunch instead then take the leftovers with me for an after my shift meal.
I thought about some of my usual haunts for Kalamazoo pizza and actually decided on one of my favorite places…but at a new location on the east side of town.
Kazoopy’s Pizza & Grinders has opened their third Kalamazoo location on Gull Road near Rockingham Avenue in Kalamazoo Township. They’re now the pizza place inside Frosty Boy. This space was a Cottage Inn the first time we ate there although we didn’t get pizza…we just got ice cream. After Cottage Inn moved out, Frosty Boy did their own pizza thing. It became a Kazoopy’s location last fall.
I was going to get two meals out of this order so I put in an order for a St. Louis Style pizza with pepperoni and Italian sausage and for an order of Italian Herb Kazoopy Bread. I think I confused this location with the St. Louis style pizza order. I’ve ordered it many times from the Westwood location and that was always the only place in town that did StL pizza. I used the online ordering and it was an option for Gull Road so I did it.
I got to the store about 45 minutes after I put in the order. That’s when my e-mail said the pizza would be done. I got to the counter and I could tell something was a little off. The guy running the counter was trying to juggle a ringing phone, a lady in front of me who came in for the lunch special, and trying to figure out if my pizza was the one they couldn’t quite figure out.
Someone else came from the back and said they aren’t able to get the Provel cheese for the St. Louis Style pizza so they weren’t able to make it. She asked if I wanted a thin crust with pepperoni and Italian sausage instead. I was bummed because I’m really weird and really like the St. Louis pizza. It’s a bummer if they can’t get it anymore because, as I mentioned earlier, they’re the only ones in town that make this really unique and highly controversial pizza. I told her that was fine and I took a seat in the dining room, watched some Tik Tok’s and waited for the pizza to come out of the oven. This is the thing that makes this location different from the other Kazoopy’s locations. The other two are carry-out/delivery, but this one, you can actually dine in.
And yes, they still have the Frosty Boy ice cream counter so you can get pizza or ice cream at any time.
It took about another 15 minutes for my pizza to be made. Not a huge deal because I wasn’t super busy. I just hung out and watched some videos on my phone while waiting.
When I got the boxes back to the car, I started in on the Italian Herbs Kazoopy Bread on my drive back to the office.
The Kazoopy bread is their version of bread sticks. They’re a little thicker the typical bread sticks and a little fluffier. This bread is covered with garlic butter, Italian herbs and Parmesan cheese. I’ve ordered regular Kazoopy bread before and loved but holy cow is this stuff good. The Italian herb mixture and Parmesan taste like the stuff you dip bread sticks in at fancy Italian restaurants. There were six pieces in the box and I made the decision very early on that I was going to eat all six for lunch and save most of the pizza for dinner.
The pizza I ended up getting was a thin crust pizza with pepperoni and Italian sausage. I like Kazoopy’s thin crust better anyway, so this was not anything I wouldn’t have ordered on my own.
The pepperoni and Italian sausage were loaded on pretty heavily on top of this pizza. I could almost imagine the taste of this pizza with Provel cheese. It was still a really good pizza the way it was. I love Kazoopy’s pizza anyway so there was no real disappointment in not getting the StL pizza. I would eat this pizza every day if I could. The crust has a little bit of snap too it and the sauce has a flavor to it like no one else in town. This really is a great pizza.
Every time I blog about a new Kazoopy’s I tell you how much I like the place. The only reason we don’t order from Kazoopy’s more is because they’re so popular on Friday night’s we can end up waiting quite a while for a pizza. They’re probably the best delivery pizza in town…definitely better than the big name chains. Spreading the love out to the east side of town lets the east side of town in on a secret we’ve known on the west side for quite a while.
SW Michigan Dining 