Mama’s Pizza is an institution. Period. The ma-and-pa pizzeria that’s had about a million locations over the years has a new home, on Camp Bowie Boulevard by Bryant-Irvin Road. The new place isn’t far from one of the Mama’s empire’s most popular outposts, on South Hulen Street, where Arlington Heights High School students – jocks and band geeks alike – used to flock.
(There’s a story about a Heights kid’s party there in the early ’80s. During a post-pizza jam session among some local musicians, legend has it that a guitar player with the initials “SRV” on his axe jumped in. A Heights student named Mike Looper ran to the pay phone and dropped a fortune in quarters, broadcasting to his buddies that Stevie Ray Vaughan was playing Mama’s.)
The memory of the flavor and texture of Mama’s crust – crunchy yet chewy and brushed with a little garlic oil – is etched in my brain and on my taste buds from repeated exposure. The only thing better than Mama’s pizza in my memory: their cheese “stix,” featuring the same pizza dough plus oregano, garlic, and mozzarella.
By the late 1970s, Mama’s had become a mini-chain, operating several locations in North Texas. Many of the locations closed after the oil-and-gas bust of the ’80s. The Farkas family originally owned most of the Fort Worth locations, and when co-founder Chris Farkas passed away in 2003, he willed the last Farkas-owned store, on West Berry Street, to his godson, Jordan Scott. Scott opened Mama’s locations in Arlington and Mansfield and was ready to re-open Mama’s in the old Camp Bowie spot but was stopped by a family/business dispute. He opened Mama’s by Bryant-Irvin in mid-2008.
I was surprised when a chef buddy selected Mama’s for lunch recently. “Best pizza in town,” he said. His resumé includes a stint in New York City, one of the epicenters of great pizza, so I figured he was right.
Mama’s No. 5 looks nicer than the old Camp Bowie joint. There are a few video games tucked in the back, but the place is brighter, with big-screen TVs on either side of the ample dining room. The menu is simple: four kinds of sandwiches, two kinds of salads, and lots of pizzas. Most of the toppings – including the green and black olives, green peppers, and mushrooms – are fresh. Dough is made on-site as needed, according to Scott, and the 100-percent mozzarella cheese is grated in the store. Mama’s real cheese is completely different from the 60-percent-soybean pellets you’ll find on national-chain-store pizzas. All of Mama’s pies are sauced lightly with a tomato base loaded with chunks of whole tomato. The list of toppings is comfortable in its predictability. There’s no prosciutto or goat cheese, just five classic meat toppings, six veggies, and pineapple. The personal-pizza size runs between $5 and $7. The extra-large with seven or more toppings runs $25 and features about a pound of mozzarella on top. The lunch buffet, including a drink and salad, is a steal at $7.50.
When the cheese sticks appeared I realized that nostalgia smells like garlic butter and tastes like oregano-covered pizza dough. Exactly as I’d remembered.
My chef friend likes Mama’s pizza so much because of the crust. “See,” he said, unrolling the garlicky top, doing a little show-and-tell, “they don’t just smoosh the crust against the side of the pan like piecrust. They fold it over.” The fold creates a toasted breadstick-like bonus to the pizza, offering a slightly crunchy outside and chewy inside.
The perfectly browned bottom crust managed to be both chewy and slightly crispy. Mama’s has only one kind of crust: thick but not overwhelmingly so. If you’re a fan of the thin-crust, fold-over pizza, go someplace else. If you get toppings, the gooey, cheesy top will come blanketed with them. Overall, Mama’s pizza leans toward the non-greasy side of the pizza spectrum. The slight brush of garlic oil on the crust and the sweet taste of the real mozzarella create a unique flavor.
On the day I visited, the lunch buffet included six different pies. Some were traditional, others adventurous, like the sausage, pepperoncini, and jalapeño number. The buffet was replenished often, although I observed that most of the pizza didn’t have time to get stale under the warming lights. When one customer requested a specific pizza for the buffet, it came out a few minutes later. The salad bar also was extremely simple: an iceberg-lettuce mix, with all of the veggie-pizza toppings, plus pepperoni, several cheeses, and the creamy Italian dressing that also was as good as I’d remembered.
Mama’s buffet apparently attracts customers as diverse as the pies. Guys in suits, moms with toddlers, folks in scrubs, and beer delivery guys packed the dining room during my visit. It was interesting. On tap, Mama’s has the locally made Rahr, Anheuser-Busch’s Ziegenbock, and Coors – the beer guys there were from another company. I guess when it comes down to noshing on some of the best pizza in town, company allegiances go right out the window.
Mama’s Pizza, 5800 Camp Bowie Blvd, FW. 817-731-MAMA.
11am-10pm Mon-Thu, 11am-11pm Fri-Sat, noon-10pm Sun. All major credit cards accepted.
