Slice by Saddleback (South Lansing)
3135 S. Pennsylvania AvenueI’m sorry. This blog seems to be turning back in to Midmichigandining.com.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Lansing recently and this won’t be the last blog post from the Capitol.
I was the Lansing area for a full day a couple of weeks ago. I got there early and picked up lunch from Raising Cane’s in East Lansing then needed to go to downtown Lansing to meet a colleague. We finished up a little after 5:00 and I figured I would order a pizza before I headed back to Kalamazoo.
I lived in Lansing for about a year and a half. We never really found a good pizza. We found pizza that was fine…but never anything that we would crave once we left.
I didn’t really know where to start looking so I just googled it thinking maybe something had opened up since we left 14 years ago.
I got a lot of results for places that I remembered but also got one for a newer place that caught my attention.
Slice by Saddleback has two locations in Lansing. One is on the west side in Delta Township. I chose the South Lansing location on Pennsylvania Avenue and Alden Drive. The restaurant was most recently a Halal Food Grocery store that also had a pizza and sandwich operation. Before that, when I lived in the area, it was a liquor store.
I put my order in using Toast and it told me it would take close to an hour. I had to get gas and something to drink then I just kind of hung in the parking lot for a while until I got closer to that hour.
The restaurant is set up with a counter when you walk in. The large hot-fired oven sits in the back corner. When I told the cashier my name, she went over to the oven and threw the pizza in. Not sure why I got an hour estimate when they put the pizza in when I got there. The cooking process is similar to something like MOD Pizza or Blaze Pizza. The cook took less than 10 minutes then it was boxed up and handed to me.
If you’re not looking for a whole pizza, they also have slices ready to go. There’s a warming cabinet near the cash register with several options.
I took a seat in the dining room while I was waiting for the pizza to cook. They have a pretty big space to sit and eat if you like to dine in. There’s also an area past the dining room where they do cooking classes.
I had put in an order for the Wednesday special (obviously it was a Wednesday night) The special is a Specialty pizza, bread sticks, and a 2-liter for $20.
When I got to the car I immediately popped open the bread stick container. The bread sticks are made from the same dough as the pizzas and cooked in the same wood fired oven. When they come out, they’re coated with garlic butter, parmesan and served with marinara on the side. These bread sticks were delicious. I was going to eat a couple to hold me over until I got home to eat the pizza but I ended up eating all six of them before I got back to I-69. They were soft pieces of bread with a generous coating over butter and garlic. I would have been happy with these for a meal if they had been all that I had ordered.
I was going to wait until I got back to Kalamazoo to dig in to the pizza but I had to make a stop at the rest area on I-69 just before the I-94 interchange. I was still hungry so I started with a couple of slices while I was there.
I got the Meat Lover’s Pizza. This pizza is topped with pepperoni, bacon, smoked sausage, and ham. All the pizzas are made with a sauce made from fresh tomatoes and whole milk mozzarella cheese. The really unique part of this pizza is the sausage. As the name of the restaurant implies, the same people own Saddleback BBQ in REO Towns and Okemos. Instead of using boring sausage, they make their own smoked sausage. It’s sliced in to large chunks and generously spread on the top. It’s impossible to take a bite of this pizza without biting in to at least two of the meats. Like other fast fired pizzas, this pizza has a crispy bottom with a slightly burnt outer edge that gives each slice a crunch. I found it easiest to eat the slice like it was a NY slice by snapping it over on itself.
If this place existed when we lived in Lansing, we would have eaten here all the time.
Slice by Saddleback is not the typical pizza place. The freshness of the ingredients and the fast fired wood ovens give it such a unique flavor over the typical carry-out pizza joint.
SW Michigan Dining 