Packing for Adventure

Chris turned 40 at the end of 2025, and I wanted to do something special without throwing a big party that he wouldn’t appreciate. So I gave him what I knew he’d appreciate the most: 40 slices of pizza!

Our fourth stop was: Ogden Pizzeria
936 Washington Blvd, Ogden, UT 84404

I’ll start by saying that Ogden Pizzeria is a divisive topic in our home.

Ogden Pizzeria has a lot going for it in the way of nostalgia. It was Chris’s favorite pizza growing up. It is the restaurant Chris took me to on our third date after our first hike, and we served it at our wedding dinner (at Chris’s insistence.)

From my very first experience on our third date after our first hike (more on that in a later post), I was not a fan. But back on our third date, I kept my mouth shut about it (other than to chew on mediocre pizza).

Here’s the problem – the sauce. They don’t have normal pizza sauce. You can pick mild, hot, or mixed sauce. Chris loves the mixed pizza sauce. For him, it’s not too hot and not too mild. But the mixed sauce is too spicy for me, so I have to stick with the mild sauce, which has no flavor to it. Chris himself has even admitted that their mild sauce is not good. But also, the cheese is chewy and not very flavorful.

Since Chris loves this place so much, I have given it my all to find something on the menu I like, but to no avail. The barbecue pizza is not good, the pasta is not good, and even the cheese bread is unimpressive. The cheese bread is just garlic bread, like what you can get from a grocery store bakery, with cheese on top. Nothing special.

There is one menu item that I do genuinely enjoy – their deluxe salad. Or should we call it “cheese with a bit of lettuce.” How can you go wrong with a bowl of cheese with some lettuce, olives, ham, and blue cheese mixed in? Though I desperately wish they’d provide a bigger bowl – you can’t stir the dressing in without tossing your lettuce everywhere.

The other thing that frustrates me to no end about this place is how you pay at the end of the meal. I do NOT believe in tipping on tax. Everyone reading this – when you pay for your meal at a restaurant and you use the tipping guide at the bottom of the receipt, do some quick math to make sure their suggested tip of 20% is based off the price BEFORE taxes are added in. Listen, I consider myself a generous tipper, but I will not be tricked into paying tip based off of taxes. It’s the principle! So the problem with Ogden Pizzeria is that they try to get away with not even giving you a receipt at all. The waiter comes to your table and tries to take your credit card without you ever seeing a receipt. Sure, you can ask to see the details on the card reader, but it doesn’t specify the amount before taxes. So if you insist on it, they have to go track down the paper pad they used to take your order. And then you have to tell your waiter how much you want to tip, so it’s super awkward. I do not appreciate the shady dealings of the way they take your payment, and they really need to figure out a better way to do this. Every other restaurant has it figured out, so it shouldn’t be that hard to make taking payments a less grievous experience.

Chris rated his pizza a 7.6 – a very generous score in my opinion, and probably deep-rooted in nostalgia!

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