The Pizza Locust

I don’t live too far away from the Parlor, and it’s not uncommon that I’d pass by it 4 to 8 times a month. Despite that, I have no clue how long they’ve been there. I’ve passed it thousands of times and I’ve never seen it. It wasn’t till I picked up some random chatter a couple months ago that I’d ever heard of it, and when I checked the address… well, I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it.

I made the effort to drive by and almost missed it, even with the address in hand. It’s tucked into a series of businesses along the north side of Camelback, just east f the Squaw Peak Parkway. These are mostly older buildings that have been adapted to different purposes over the years. The Parlor is no exception, having been, I’m told, a former hair salon for many, many years. Perhaps I should say “a hair parlor.”

We arrived at the Parlor a little before the dinner hour on Saturday and it wasn’t too busy, although it was full by the time we left. It is an interesting building and before I knew what its history was, I was sitting at the table, contemplating, unsuccessfully, what it might have been originally built for. It’s an odd but pleasant space.

The entrance is on the side and the restaurant is split into two areas. Towards the back in a bar and a series of almost cafeteria-like bench tables. In the front is more traditional restaurant seating and there is a fully enclosed outdoor patio, which is fair weather would make for lovely dining. The front of the building a large glass window, which faces out onto the rather unpicturesque Camelback road. Fortunately, there’s a brick wall a foot or so in front of it allowing in natural light but sparing us the unending progression of cars.

Slightly off-center is an odd wine shelf, which is partially obscuring some pipe works that were obviously essential to the original building, but are now bifurcating the eating space in an odd way.

The only piece of decoration on the walls is tucked away in one of the corners and wouldn’t be out of place in an “Our Man Flint” or Austin Powers movie – a monochromatic representation of two naked women. Tasteful, I suppose, but I wanted to say, “yeah, baby, groovy!” when I saw it.

Of course, the test of a pizza parlor isn’t the decor, but the pizza.

The Parlor has a series of stock pizzas, plus a build-your-own menu. Rather than just telling your waiter what you’d like, they provide a form that you can fill out, giving you various choices of meats, vegetables, cheeses and the like. Slightly novel, I suppose, but unnecessary in this case as a pepperoni pizza is one of the stock pies. My wife, on the other hand, crafted a rock shrimp and calamari pizza.

When they arrived, both were perfectly cooked. The crusts were light brown with a crunch, but still soft. The sauce was good as was the mozzarella, but try though I might, I really don’t have much comment on them. They didn’t stand out, but they were good. The pepperoni was really good. It wasn’t terribly greasy and it had a good strong flavor without being harsh, like typical supermarket pepperoni. The crust was just about on the money. The stock pepperoni pizza also came with fresh basil. Basil is good in Italian food, and an important spice in the making of pizza sauce; however, I’ve never been too crazy about leaves of whole basil sprinkled on a pizza. It don’t mind it, but after basil has been cooked in, it’s limp and lifeless and looks too much like cooked spinach to be appealing to the eye. At the Parlor, they did the right thing: the basil was uncooked and placed on the pizza after it came out of the oven. That’s a distinct improvement over the usual presentation.

When finished, my impression was simply this: Good pizza, not a single thing I could complain about.

The Pizza Locust will be eating at the Parlor again and I recommend it to others.

The 8″ pepperoni pizza was $10, making it $0.20 (0.198) per square inch, a little on the expensive side, but not unreasonably so.

The Parlor
1916 E Camelback Rd
Phoenix, AZ
602.248.2480

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