DiPisa’s Pizza
5858 Cleveland AvenueTwo overtime nights in one week? I can’t wait for this check.
Friday night I had a bit of a drive to my overtime shift. I got sent down to the Stevensville/St. Joseph area for a few hours of work.
I got finished with my tasks for my regular shift pretty early so I told my co-worker I was going to take off so I could grab dinner before the overtime shift started.
My plan worked out pretty well. I got to the area about an hour before the shift started so I’d be able to take a full hour for lunch…..something that is almost unheard of in my line of work.
It was Friday night so of course, my brain instantly goes to pizza. Before I left Kalamazoo, I opened up Google maps to see if there were any pizza places anywhere close.
I found a lot of chains but there was one local place that came up. Even though they didn’t have online I ordering, I decided to suck it up and make a phone call.
DiPisa’s Pizza is on Cleveland Avenue south of John Beers Road right across the street from Lakeshore High School in Stevensville. The restaurant has been family owned and a staple of the area since the late 1980’s. The restaurant is kind of unassuming and actually has a really 80’s feel to it. It’s kind of closed off with small windows and there is a row of hedges in front of the building. It’s kind of a stark contrast from more modern restaurants that have floor to ceiling windows and let in a lot of natural light.
Like I mentioned, they don’t have online ordering so I had to call it in. I did so when I was about 30 minutes away according to Google Maps. I kept it simple ordering a 14″ pepperoni and sausage. The cost for that was just under $25.
When I got to the restaurant, I parked in the parking lot and headed for the door but got stopped in my tracks by a sign on the door. The dining room is closed. Use the pick up window. Had I come from the south, I would have seen that same note on the sign by the road.
I had no idea where the pick up window was but I assumed it was on the other side of the building since I didn’t see anything on the north side. I drove around the back of the restaurant and as I got closer to the front, I saw a window that looked like a pick up window so I just stopped there and waited for someone inside to see m sitting there.
A couple minutes later, a kid showed up at the window. I gave him my name and he started looking through the stacks of pizza boxes that were sitting on the counter in front of him. He grabbed mine and handed it to me through the window. I still had about 30 minutes left on my lunch break so I headed to my job site to eat.
I had ordered a 14″ sausage and pepperoni pizza and when I opened the box, I found a pretty standard sausage and pepperoni delivery style pizza. It had a little bit of a thicker crust with flour still on the edges so it appears to be hand tossed. The crust had some air pockets which made the pizza a little crispy on the outside but light and airy as I bit in to it.
The top of the pizza was covered in little chunks of sausage and a layer of pepperoni covering almost the entire top of the pizza. The flavor of the pizza all came from the meat. I didn’t really get anything from the sauce. I hadn’t really eaten much leading up to this pizza because my plan all day had been to stop at DiPisa’s once I got to town so I was kinda saving up for this. I ate all but two slices before I had to stop and clock back in for work.
DiPisa’s Pizza is one of those hometown pizzeria’s that you crave every Friday night and miss when you move away. It’s a pretty solid pizza and I was glad I planned my evening around stopping here. I had never heard of the place before until I started looking for something to eat in the Stevensville area. I had a couple of good options but grabbing a pizza from here was the right choice.
SW Michigan Dining 