Looking Back at My Childhood in Iowa: How Pagliai’s Pizza Became an Unforgettable Experience

You know how certain aromas and flavors from childhood send you screaming back in time like a 1.21-gigawatt Delorean—to your first sleepover, celebrations with your tee ball team, or your then-best-friend's post-Star Wars birthday party? The common flavor in these very specific memories of mine, and many others, is pizza from Pagliai's in Iowa City.

I grew up non-chronologically in Iowa City and Decorah, Iowa (shoutouts, as well, to Tipton and Lowden, between which I spent my first five years). We moved to Iowa City during my first grade year, but my parents divorced a couple of years later. Mom stayed in Iowa City, and Dad moved to Decorah. I attended (mainly) Iowa City schools from first through fifth, half of seventh, all of eighth, and half of ninth grades. I spent sixth grade and the last 3.5 years of high school in Decorah. I spent much of my time in Decorah bragging about or pining for Pagliai's Pizza, eagerly anticipating the next time I would taste it.

When we went as kids, my brother and I loved to watch the pizzas being made. The whole process is open to the restaurant and takes place in front of windows, so you could even stand outside and watch when there was a wait for a table. The workers twirled and tossed the dough like we'd seen on TV, but never at other pizza places in town. We'd watch them ladle sauce onto the thin-stretched dough, cover it in handfuls of mozzarella, and sprinkle on ingredients like they were constructing a Jackson Pollock painting. We'd try and guess which pizza was ours, watching with mouthwatering anticipation as they slid the hopeful candidate into the oven on a big wooden paddle.

Then we'd hurry back to our black vinyl booth, usually a good vantage point for watching a worker fold and stack pizza boxes with unbelievable speed and dexterity, and announce that our pizza was (hopefully) in the oven. Because of the divorce, almost all my childhood memories of Pagliai's involve my mom. Once, my ebullient and... colorful... mother struck up a conversation with a couple sitting across from us, one of whom turned out to be the then-president of the University of Iowa. Mom, who had a high school education and no affiliation with the school (except as a sports fan and frequent user of its hospital), peppered the president with suggestions for running the university and what he could do better with respect to the medical school and hospitals. Bless the couple for their patience with my mom—I imagine they were as relieved as I was to see our pizza heading for our table. (My mouth is watering as I write this, thinking about Pagliai's perfect sauce, tangy with just enough spice to let you know it's there.)

My adoration for Pagliai's has continued into adulthood. Every girlfriend I ever introduced to Mom or made stroll down the lane of my memories has eaten at Pagliai's Pizza. I introduced my future ex-wife to Mom, and we told her about our engagement at Pagliai's. My own children, adults now, grew up in the Twin Cities but ate a lot of pizza from Pagliai's in Iowa City during their childhoods. Every time they've done a tour of their father's childhood, they've been required to eat at Pagliai's. (For all I know, they hate it and only pretend to like it for my sake, but I don't care.)

Pagliai's Pizza is so intertwined with my memories of Iowa City that I was shocked—shocked!—when I learned only a few years ago that Pagliai's is a regional brand, and the Iowa City pizzeria, which opened in 1963, wasn't even the first one. Pagliai's was founded in Ames (don't get me started). In fact, as I sit here in the southwestern Twin Cities suburbs, there's a Pagliai's Pizza only an hour away from me in Mankato, Minnesota. I've never been. In fact, to this day, the Iowa City Pagliai's is the only one I've visited. It is so consistent every time I go, so evocative of my growing up, that I don't feel the need to try another Pagliai's only to be disappointed that it doesn't measure up—I mean, how could it?

Simply put, Pagliai's Pizza in Iowa City is the foundational pizza of my youth. After spending so much time in Decorah, I eventually allowed Mabe's Pizza into the pantheon (Pagliai's has the edge, if you must know), and together, they are the twin pillars against which all other pizza I consume is judged. Some has come close, but none will ever win. Again, how could it?

What are some of the places in Iowa that are etched indelibly into your memory? We'd love to hear about them.