by Terrance Mc Arthur
In August, the Great Food Search brought you PIZZA! Pizzas from Clovis, Reedley, Sanger, and Shaver Lake. Was that enough for you?
NO!
There are worlds of pizza left to explore, and the Great Food Search is dedicated to finding restaurants of the San Joaquin Valley that are worth a nibble, so Kings River Life On-Line Magazine brings you . . . PIZZA 2!
SEEK—Unique roundels of tempting taste!
TRAVEL—From the Lowlands of the Valley to the Foothills of the Sierra Nevada!
TASTE—The Unexpected!
Hold on to your taste buds, friends! Here we GO-O-O-O!
Behold! The Chicken Fajita Pizza from YRPizza Planet in Reedley
South of Reedley College, in a shopping center/strip mall on the southwest corner of Manning and Jensen, is YRPizza Planet, part of a small chain of pizzerias with outlets in Orosi, Orange Cove, and Dinuba. It’s a clean place with an outer-space theme, with friendly, industrious employees. The menu has some standard pizzas, calzones, pastas, salads, sides, and specialty pizzas. Specialty Pizzas? Chipotle Chicken, Chile Verde, Spicy Chorizo, Caliente CCQ, and . . . Chicken Fajita Pizza! That’s right! Chicken Fajita Pizza! It was something else—Onions, peppers, sour cream, chunks of chicken, and a buzz to your lips and tastebuds! It wasn’t flame on, but the flavor combination does open your eyes. YRPizza Planet is out of this world!
It’s Chicken, it’s BBQ, it’s pizza. It’s Mountain Mike’s in Sanger
From the Pacific Coast to Texas, there are hundreds of Mountain Mike’s Pizza restaurants, so they must be doing something right. There’s one about a mile from my home, on the southwest corner of Jensen and Bethel. I have purchased a number of pizzas there, but I wanted to try one I hadn’t already had. Most of their specialty varieties are named for mountains, but the BBQ Chicken Pizza is not, so I decided to give it a go. Grilled chicken, bacon, tomato, BBQ sauce. It’s like Naples meets Fort Worth! Yippee Ya-hoo!
Polar Bear? But it looks like a pizza! It’s the altitude at Bear Mountain Pizza in Yokuts Valley
Where is Yokuts Valley? It’s along Route 180 in the foothills and used to have another name. The area has also been called Bear Mountain, so Bear Mountain Pizza seems like a logical name for a pizzeria. Just as Mountain Mike’s names pizzas after mountains, Bear Mountain Pizza goes ursine (bearish), with the Big Black Bear (Combo), Grizzly Bear (All Meat), Hawaiian Bacon Bear, Brown Bear (Veggie), and . . . wait for it . . . Polar Bear (otherwise known as Garlic Chicken). Creamy Garlic Sauce, Seasoned Chicken, Mushrooms, Green and Red Onions, Tomatoes, and Olives. It’s colorful, it’s creamy, it has a lot of cheese and fillings atop a lot of crust, and it’s something to bite into (even when it’s warmed up two days later). The place is friendly, with soft booths, a TV, a handy charging station set-up for travelers going to and from Kings Canyon National Park, and a stuffed bear looming over a “stone” archway to the storeroom where they keep the take-out boxes. Bear Mountain Pizza is easy to find—just look for the metal conifer on the north side of the road.
The Verdict—Each of these pizzas has its own unique qualities, but my choice for this month is the Chicken Fajita Pizza at Pizza Planet, with a Polar Bear right behind it.
That’s it for Pizza 2! Will there be a Pizza 3? Maybe, but it will have to wait until after the holidays. Until then . . . Happy Eating!
Check out more food articles and more of Terrance’s Great Food Search column in our Food Fun section. And check out a KRL staff profile this week on Terrance!
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