Pizza. Almost everybody likes it. Not everybody, though. My wife doesn’t. I wish I would have known that before we got married. You hear about people finding out after the wedding some deep dark secret, but this must be the worst kind. I could handle discovering previous marriages, undisclosed children, or belonging to a cult, but you don’t like pizza? What kind of monster are you?
They say that pizza showed up in the United States with Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. Most agree that the first documented pizzeria was in New York, in 1905, and since then, not only has America put its own spin on the pie, but many towns have as well, with New York-style, Chicago deep-dish, Detroit-style, and California-style, just to name a few.
We have a lot of places that serve pizza in Central Oregon, well over 50, so when a friend of mine at the Source mentioned Pizza Week, I volunteered to try every one of the featured slices. That’s going to be a lot of pizza, but I believe I am up for the challenge. There are over a dozen restaurants and food trucks participating, so I started a few days early.
My first pizza was the Dirty Italian from Little Pizza Paradise. My son and I ordered the 10-inch pizza online and picked it up at their store by Best Buy. I was looking forward to the marinara, mozzarella, pepperoni, salami, grape tomatoes, ricotta, fior de latte mozzarella and red pepper flakes finished with a honey drizzle & basil, and it was good, but the big bonus was their crust. Honestly, I could just eat that as a snack. There are a lot of flavors on this pizza, and that crust is good!
Next, I went to 10 Barrel (on the east side) for The Italian Bee Sting, featuring marinara, pepperoni, Soppressata, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and hot honey. I’ve had pizza there before and it’s always good, but this was something new, and quite good. This pizza is sure to please, after all, pepperoni is said to be the most popular pizza topping in America, with studies showing that about 65% of people prefer it.
As I write this, I’m waiting on a Soprano from 10 Barrel West. I believe I’ll have nine more pizzas to try during Pizza Week, and I’ll let you know how it goes.
Dave Clemens is operations manager and on-air personality for Horizon Broadcasting Group
This article appears in the Source February 19, 2026.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Ken’s Artisan Pizza is amazing and well worth the wait in my opinion.
Dave (& Jimbo)
We’ve eaten too much pizza this week.
(Is there such a thing?)
I feel like now,
I have a case of
‘pizzeria’.