Pizza Sam Restaurant
104 E. Superior StreetOne more week with a Saturday trip to Mt. Pleasant.
I’ve mentioned over the last couple of months that I’ve been doing some side work on Saturday’s. That work has seen me spend the better part of my Saturday in either Ypsilanti or Mt. Pleasant.
I had to go to Mt. Pleasant three of the last four weeks. They were super early mornings. I had to be on the road by a little after 4:30 AM after not getting home from my regular job until closer to 11 PM.
This past Saturday, my job was done around 5:30 PM and I headed home. I’ve been grabbing something to eat along the way because I don’t get to that part of Mid-Michigan very often.
I had been taking M-46 then cutting up to Mt. Pleasant on a country road but last week, the GPS took me home US-127 so I stayed on the highway the whole time.
I realize going this way didn’t add much, if any, time to the drive and there were a few more options for stops along the way.
I decided I was going to go home this way last weekend and once I made that decision, I started looking in Alma for a place to eat. I figured being a college town, I should be able to find something amazing.
My first instinct was to look for pizza….and I’m so glad I did.
My pick for dinner this week was Pizza Same Restaurant in downtown Alma. The restaurant has been a mainstay of the small college town since the early 1960’s. It sits on Superior Street just to the east of State Street. The original restaurant actually started a few blocks away in 1960 but moved to this location in 1962 and quickly expanded in to neighboring buildings due to it’s popularity. The restaurant has been owned by the family of a Sicilian immigrant from the beginning and they continue to use the same recipes that have made this place popular enough to win Mlive’s Michigan’s Best Pizza when they went around the state in 2013.
I picked Pizza Sam because it is one of those places that ha been in the community for so long. That’s always a good sign with a pizza place. I said the same thing a few weeks ago when I was in Ypsilanti and stopped at Jenny’s Pizza Perfect. There are sorts of new, fancy pizza places in all of these cities but it’s the old mainstay that usually has the best pizza at the best price.
I was really happy to see Pizza Sam had online ordering so once I got back to my car at the job site, I sat there for a few minutes and put in an order. I picked the Afterburner Pizza and an order of Parmsean Garlic Sticks. The cost was a little over $34 and it gave me a 45-55 minute ETA. I was only about 20 minutes or so from downtown Alma so I took my time and sat in the car for a while once I got there.
Pizza Sam is an old school pizzeria with the order counter, oven, and work area right inside the door as you walk in. I was a few minutes early but seeing the number of people waiting, I knew my pizza wasn’t going to be ready early.
I put my name in at the counter and was told they’d call my name when my order was ready. There was a small army of people working taking orders, making pizzas, boxing it all up and getting it out the door. There was what seemed like a never ending row of tickets laid out on the counter that they were getting through as fast as humanly possible. I just found a space out of the way to stand and wait for my name to be called.
I didn’t do a ton of research before I ordered from Pizza Sam and that almost bit me in the butt. Apparently, ham is a big deal at this pizza place. I watched the guy making pizzas constantly pulling huge handfuls of ham out of a bucket and dropping it on the top of each pizza. It wasn’t just a few sprinkles of ham, it was two giant handfuls that were just dropped on top of each crust. Fortunately, the pizza I ordered included ham. I would have really had some FOMO if it didn’t.
Back in it’s heyday, Pizza Sam was one of the finest restaurants and town. They had a full dining room with a menu bigger than pizza. That’s not the case anymore as the restaurant sticks to carry out pizza. The dining rooms are still there. The original dining room is used for pizza box storage. The dining room expansion that went in to the building next door sits in the dark with the the tables and chairs stacked like they could be taken down at a moments notice. It’s hard to see how they could do this volume of carry out and still do a sit down restaurant which is probably why they made the switch.
If you’re wanting to sit and eat your pizza while it’s fresh out of the oven, there are some picnic tables on the sidewalk next to Superior Street in front of the restaurant. It was still a pretty nice night out when I was there and that absolutely could have been an option.
I waited for ten, maybe fifteen minutes for my name to be called. Once it was, I grabbed the two boxes and headed back to the car.
The pizza I got is called the Afterburner. I ordered the thin crust and it’s topped with ham, pepperoni, bacon, sausage, jalapenos, and spices. The first, very obvious thing when you look at this pizza is just how much meat they put on top. It’s piles of it. They’re not counting out individual pepperoni’s. They just grab handfuls. The sausage is sliced sausage and there’s a lot of that as well.
And the ham…there is so much shaved him. It cooks down some in the oven and what you’re left with is crispy, thin bits of delicious, salty ham.
I ordered the thin crust and that as probably a mistake. There was no way that crust was going to hold up to the sheer volume of the toppings. This is one case I should have just left alone and got the regular crust. It was still really delicious but all the water from the meat released during cooking kept the crust from getting really crispy. Still, this is easily one of the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten. I ate a slice standing alongside the road so I could have one hot. Then I had another slice once I got back to Battle Creek where I stopped to get gas. I ate the rest of it at home either later that night or for breakfast the next morning which is my MO.
The other thing I ordered was the Parmesan Garlic Sticks. This is pretty typical for me as it’s easier to eat breadsticks while I’m driving. I’ll save the pizza for once I get home and just eat the sticks on the way. The Parmesan Garlic Sticks were just a pizza dough covered in Parmesan cheese and I assume garlic butter. For as amazing as the pizza was, these sticks were just the opposite. They had zero flavor. I actually wonder if they forgot the garlic butter. The only thing I could really taste was the excess flour that was likely used to stretch the door. I did my best to power through them using the marinara sauce to dip them in but I didn’t finish these. I couldn’t. They were super bland. It’s nuts how amazing the pizza was and how not amazing these breadsticks were.
I’m sure this place was on my radar when the Mlive rankings came out 13 years ago but I must have forgotten about it. This is a pizza well worth going out of the way for. It was sooooo good. At a time when so many pizza places are counting every shred of cheese that goes on your pizza, Pizza Sam just dumps as much as they can on to each pizza. This breadsticks were a huge swing and a miss but the pizza…..the pizza was top tier and easily one of the best pizzas I’ve had since moving to Michigan 18 years ago. I’m almost looking forward to my next trip to Mt. Pleasant just so I have an excuse to be in the area to get another one of these amazing pizzas.
