MacKenzie River Pizza Company

Though I did not post about it at the time, Amy and I did indeed get to have another late lunch, just the two of us, last Wednesday; but we chose to eat at a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Company, a new chain restaurant, with a hunting lodge sort of theme, in the possibly cursed location where Something Different and Snax used to live on 82nd Street. Since those two venerable eateries closed, two other establishments have come and gone in quick succession, and now this new place has opened. It’s a perfectly acceptable place to eat, and if you have no compunction about chain places, then you’ll probably like it. It’s new enough that the staff is still falling all over themselves—per the corporate training manual, of course—to make your experience a pleasant one, but it’s also been open long enough that they have worked out the wrinkles to the point that a late lunch on a Wednesday afternoon presented no problems.

We shared something called Cowboy Nachos (organic corn chips, cheddar cheese, black olives, tomato, green onion, jalapeño, and house salsa) and a small, thin-crust Rancher pizza, which was topped with ground beef, bacon, tomato, pepperoni, red onion, and green pepper. Both were, again, perfectly acceptable, although sliced tomato should never be put on pizza; and the nachos have nothing on the astonishing versions served up at the Slippery Noodle. That said, you could do much worse along that stretch of 82nd Street—one of the worst stretches of chain places in the whole city. (If the Starbucks and Quizno’s hadn’t closed, the people from Fishers would feel right at home.)