Pizza Sam’s

• 102 W. Main Street
• Midland, MI 48640
• (989) 631-1934
• Website
• Menu

One more individual figure skating competition this year. It’s almost synchro season, but first, Midland.

It’s not my favorite competition to go to. Midland is kind of a pain to get to. There’s no freeway that goes there and when we leave at 5:30, it’s dark by the time we get off I-69 and start the trek north on two lane roads.

My plan all along was to keep my Friday night pizza thing going. I knew my family wouldn’t be able to eat until we got to the hotel around 8:30, but I didn’t want fast food.

We stopped at Wendy’s in Charlotte for everyone else. It took a lot longer that we were hoping it would but we got back on the road toward Midland just as it was getting dark out.

When we got about 40 minutes out of town, I decided to put in an order for pizza. I needed a little help from J to do it while driving, but the plan was to get to Midland, pick up my pizza, then head towards the hotel.

I got recommendations for pizza places last year when we came for this competition but we didn’t stay in town Friday night last year. We didn’t have to be at the rink as early as we did this year so we did it all in one day.

I never let a good recommendation go to waste so I still had them for this year.

I picked Pizza Sam’s in downtown Midland on the corner of Main Street and Ashman Street. The building has been in downtown Midland for many years but it looks like it went through a make over in 2018. The pizza place kind of blends in to the atmosphere of downtown. There’s a seating area outside that has a fireplace. My kids actually considered getting out of the car and having me eat my pizza there just so they could sit in front of the fire.

The restaurant is much bigger than I expected it to be. It’s counter service whether you dine in or carry out so everything starts at the order counter with the chalkboard menu hanging above it.

We were looking for a place last year to take a big group after the competition and this place was on our list but we were worried about space. We shouldn’t have been. There is actually a pretty large dining room and plenty of space for large groups. There’s quite a bit of seating and a lot of it was full on this Friday night.

I was the only one eating so I just got a pizza for myself. I did a 14″ pepperoni and Italian sausage. It was ready by the time I got there and I had already paid the bill the $19 bill when I put the order in online.

We got to our hotel on the northside of town and got settled in. Once J started getting the kids ready for bed, I opened the pizza box to eat my very late dinner. I opted for the standard crust instead of the thin crust which is an odd choice for me. I usually go with the thin crust.

The pizza had the toppings piled on mostly in the middle. There wasn’t a ton of sauce and most of the flavor came from the meat and the deliciously golden brown cheese. The pepperoni’s had all kind of cupped up and those good bits of crispiness around the edge. The Italian sausage was plentiful and added a lot flavor to the pizza but could have been dispersed a little more. The standard crust was not a detriment to the pizza at all. I was pretty hungry having not eaten since…well, I’m not sure if I ate at all that day…so the extra bread helped fill a gap.

I love a good recommendation and Pizza Sam’s was a good recommendation. We’ll likely be coming to this competition in Midland (which I’ll write more about in my next blog) for at least a couple of more years now that my son is competing too. I don’t know much about the dining scene there so I’ll rely on recs from people I know. Hopefully they come up with more good ones like this.