Happy’s Pizza (Kalamazoo)
Thursday night isn’t pizza night.
I know. I know but it’s actually been a while since we did a pizza night even on Friday. This summer has just been nuts.
My parents were coming to town Friday night because B was competing in Skate the Zoo on Saturday morning at Wings Event Center. We thought he would be later in the day but when we got the schedule, he was one of the first things scheduled just before 9 AM.
My parents didn’t want to get up at 4 in the morning to drive in from Illinois so they got a hotel. I knew they were doing that and I knew they wanted to go out to dinner Friday night so Thursday night, I ordered pizza.
We haven’t really had a pizza place recently. We did Cottage Inn for years but I think we finally overdid and no one is requesting it anymore. The problem is, no one is requesting anything when it comes to pizza.
I still had to go to Wings Event Center after work to pick L up so I decided to order from the new place on way to the rink.
Happy’s Pizza is actually “new” to Kalamazoo. It’s more of a return. They had a couple of locations in town at one time….both on Westnedge. One was in Portage. The other was on the corner of Crosstown and Westnedge. Both of those locations closed and we’ve been Happy’sless in Kalamazoo for a couple of years.
That is, until last week when a new Happy’s Pizza/Savvy Sliders opened up at the corner of Westenedge and Cork Street in Kalamazoo’s South Westnedge Neighborhood. The building is that one that is really kind of hard to get to just south of the intersection of Westnedge and Whites. It used to be a Big Apple Bagels and then it was J. Gumbo’s for quite a while before that closed and the building sat empty for a few years. Now it has a new red and white paint job and the building is kicking out pizzas and sliders.
The parking lot is in the back of the building and it’s still pretty hard to get in to. If you’re coming from the south, you can turn on Cork street just past the building and get to the lot. If you’re coming from the North, you can do that too but you’ll have to cross traffic. You can also turn on Whites, go through the weird intersection where Whites and Cork merge then turn in to parking lot for the business just to the east of Happy’s. The two parking lots are connected.
You can enter from that back parking….as long as you can walk down steps. There is a door from the back parking lot but it’s not ADA accessible. There is a a sidewalk that leads from the parking lot back to the front of the building along Westnedge. That is the ADA entrance.
The building is pretty large for a Happy’s Pizza/Savvy Sliders. Most locations are carry-out only but this one actually has a really large dining room. There are ten tables but there is space for a lot more. This place has undergone a complete makeover from the J. Gumbo’s days.
There’s also rail seating along one wall looking out over Cork Street. It’s not the best view but if you’re dining alone, there’s a place to turn your back to the rest of the space and just be by yourself.
I put my order in online for two pizzas and an order of Happy Bread. The Internet said it would be about 15 minutes. I gave it 20 and when I got to the counter, they ticket hadn’t even been printed yet. That’s the second time this week that happened to me (Jimmy John’s earlier in the week). A person I think was a manager grabbed the ticket and told me it was going in the oven and it’d be about 10 minutes. It was actually closer to another 20. I normally wouldn’t care all that much but I was on my way to pick my daughter up so I was kind of annoyed. I didn’t say anything because I also know this is their first week open so I get there are still some hiccups to work out.
After sitting in the dining room for about 20 minutes, the woman who told me the pizzas were going out in the oven came out with the three boxes. I grabbed them then headed to WEC to pick up L.
When we got home, I popped open all three boxes. I was hungry and turns out, she was too. We both went for the regular crust pepperoni. We never really ate at Happy’s when they were here before but both times I blogged about it, we got the square pizzas. I had to go all the way back to my blog post from 2008 when the first Happy’s opened in Lansing to find what I wrote about the regular crust pizza. Back then, I called it the “best chain pizza in town.” Would this pizza live up to that?
The regular crust is still pretty thin compared to most carry-out/delivery pizza chains. The thing that both L and I said something about was the sauce. It was kind of sweet but also kind of spicy from the pepperoni grease. It was definitely better than most of the big chains. Even L said the next day it was good and she’d be happy with ordering this one again.
I also got a large thin crust cheese pizza because J and B both prefer thin crust and both prefer just cheese. The pizza is actually pretty thin and cut in to triangles. Next time I would see if there was a way to request square cut on this.
This is a really good thin crust pizza. The sauce and cheese went almost to the edge so it had way more flavor in that regard compared to the regular crust. J and B both ate a few slices but I think I ate about half the pizza over the next two days. I liked the thin crust but some toppings would have made it even better.
The Happy Bread was pretty standard pizza dough breadsticks topped with garlic butter and a lot of Parmesan cheese. It came with two cups of marinara for dipping on the side. L is usually the bread sticks person in our family but I think I ate more of these than she did. They kind of reminded me of the Pizza Hut breadsticks that I have a nostalgic connection to. They were really tasty and there were a lot of them in the box. Way more than I was expecting.
The cost for the meal was just under $40 and it fed the family that night and me for a couple more days of snacking.
I’ve never really ordered Happy’s much over the years. It’s not that I’ve ever had a bad experience. They were just never really in places that were convenient for me. This one really isn’t either unless I’m go a little out of my way home from work. The pizza was good though and the kids seemed to like it so that keeps it an option. The service wasn’t great but that can get better with time. I still need to go back and do a whole other blog post on Savvy Sliders but I think I’ll give them a week or two before I do that.
SW Michigan Dining 