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Dining Review: Killer Pizza From Mars

By Robert Gounley

This is all true. It’s too bizarre for me to make up.

During a weekend outing, my wife and I were making dinner plans with some friends. Our culinary preferences argued for fine steak at a four-star restaurant; our budgets argued for bringing pizza back to our motel. Budgets won.

We drove to a local shopping center. There was nothing immediately distinguishing it from several hundred other mini-malls found throughout Southern California. It had a supermarket, a dry-cleaners, a fast-food Mexican restaurant, and as expected—a pizza place. There was, however, something very unusual about the name: “Killer Pizza from Mars”.

Seeing is Believing. Killer Pizza. Really. Photo by Craig Ward.

We had to explore.

Inside, dark walls were covered with space photos, futuristic toys, and science fiction posters. Models of spaceships and dolls shaped like the aliens were hung from the ceiling. The service staff was dressed as if they were reporting for duty on the galley of the Starship Enterprise. What little indoor lighting there was came from the glow of phosphorescent paint excited by black-lights in the ceiling.

I was a bit unsettled. Had some alien intelligence been reading my thoughts back in high school? How else could someone depict my secret vision of an ideal bedroom so precisely? Even in college, I was only able to hang a meager handful of space posters. This restaurant seemed to have every one I’d ever owned and several I hadn’t even known existed.

This restaurant could only have designed under the direction of a space geek. In another life, it might have been me.

While I stood gawking, our friends ordered pizza - the “Killer Pizza from Mars”. Back in our motel room, away from the black-lights, we regarded our meal under more natural lighting conditions. Over a thick crust was spread a thin layer of tomato sauce heavily garnished with sausage, pepperoni, ground beef, and bacon. The cheese seemed less plentiful than the norm. Did this possibly indicate a shortage of Martian dairy products?

Overall, we thought this was very good pizza. The crust was dense and flavorful without being doughy. The sauce had a slight bite of pepper, which accented rather than overwhelmed the other ingredients. The toppings were a meat-lover's dream. I’m partial to bacon, but I’ve seldom found it used so effectively on a pizza. The only shortcoming was that each slice had to be carefully cradled to eat lest many of the toppings roll off. A bit more cheese would fix this structural shortcoming.

I enthusiastically recommend “Killer Pizza from Mars” to space and science fiction aficionados looking for good pizza. Let’s hope these guys will deliver to the first space motel.