A few years ago our northern neighbor, Portland, was named “The Best Pizza City in the U.S.” by writers who traversed America in search of the best za, beating out such obvious competitors as New York, Chicago, New Haven and newer-to-the-table stalwart, Detroit. Portland achieved this by offering excellent pizza emulating each of those municipal styles. Happily, Bend has great options aplenty. But what we don’t have is a distinctive topping like pepperoni is to NYC-style, sausage is to Chicago’s deep dish, pickled jalapenos are to Detroit’s rectangular royalty or clams—yes, clams—are to New Haven’s white “apizza.” We don’t even have a ridiculous spelling like that Connecticut town has. We have something better. With a hat tip to our Canadian brethren who literally invented “Hawaiian” pizza, we have a pizza joint that eschews vats of chunked pineapple in favor of topping its Hawaiian pizza with freshly shaved Maui gold. We have an opportunity to put Bend-style pizza on the map.
God bless Bend Pizza Kitchen. And kudos to BPK founder, Robert Eisenberg, for taking pizza’s best (as well as its most divisive) topping and topping it by serving it not manufactured, but naturally. Eisenberg and his partner, Holly, bought the Martolli’s Pizza in Northwest Crossing in 2015 and spun it into Bend Pizza Kitchen early the following year.
Admittedly, BPK’s pineapple suffers from lacking that big burst of juicy piña found in the tinned stuff that spends its entire life bathing in its own nectar. But in an era where we’ve learned to appreciate freshness, why settle for standard toppings like canned, sliced black olives or canned artichoke hearts or canned tomatoes? The pineapple at BPK is straight-up fresh fruit that gets skinned then sliced as thin as the Canadian bacon that harmonizes it into the ultimate in pizza.
If you’re one of those folks who think fruit doesn’t belong on pizza—and need I remind you that tomato is, botanically-speaking, fruit—you’ll hate knowing that Pacific Pizza & Brews lays claim to offering one of Bend’s best pizzas with its Bacon & Fig pizza, further ameliorated with fresh arugula and balsamic drizzle.
“The Hawaiian is Holly’s favorite,” says Eisenberg. “We wanted to create an elevated pizza experience with BPK. Fresh cut pineapple was just part of that equation. I believe that pineapple belongs on pizza just as much as any other fruit like olives, tomatoes.”
Botanically-speaking, you cannot argue with him. Speaking of tomatoes, Eisenberg adds, “We make our pizza sauce from scratch daily and push blocks of cheese.” No industrial tubs of red sauce. No beanbag-chair sized bags of pre-grated cheese. And no barrels of pineapple chunks drowning in juice or, worse, syrup.
“The customers love all the fresh cut fruit and veggies we put on the pizza,” says Eisenberg. “You can really taste the difference.”
There are other notable toppings around Bend beyond fresh-sliced pineapple (and fig). Ladybird Cultural Society in the Old Mill offers all manner of upscale offerings such as decadent burrata cheese. Abe Capanna’s Detroit Pan Pizza, easily my favorite of Bend’s pizza trucks, lists pistachio nuts as a topping. And keeping in line with Abe Capanna’s Detroit-style pizza where the buttery crust caramelizes into crunchy-chewy perfection, Kitchen Window on Galveston augments that crust with sourdough and features the Spicy Chicken Parmesan pizza, a super strong contender for single-best pie in town. By incorporating dollops of chicken parm, and drizzling it with a spicy vodka sauce, the unique toppings and delectable crust are sublime. The only way to make it better? For $2, add on Kitchen Window’s roasted pineapple!
Keep in mind, the beauty in BPK’s pineapple isn’t just that it’s actually fresh, although that is the primary magnificence. It’s also that the whole slices—not just rings because who convinced society that the center or core isn’t delectable?— truly cover each slice, blanketing them in the right amount of sweet to counterbalance the tanginess of the fresh-made sauce, the saltiness of the Canadian bacon, and the starchiness of the crust. It’s pure za zen.
There’s a scene in John Cusack’s masterpiece, “The Sure Thing” (anyone who tells you its “Say Anything” is as wrong as anchovies on pizza), where his character pens a punctuationless, run-on love letter to pizza. It begins, “The big bubbles of crust that expand right up through the sauce glistening pools of oil as still and inviting as a mountain lake the ropey knots of cheese that gather to a chewy perfection in the center as the slices are pulled apart.” Fear not, as he eventually tackled the importance of “cheese-to-sauce ratio.” All but the gluten- and lactose-intolerant among us can agree that pizza is worthy of a billet-doux and, with admiration and affection for BPK retooling its deli slicer as a pineapple preparer, this is mine.
This article appears in Source Weekly June 19, 2025.
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Can easily order a $50 pizza here. It’s pretty ridiculous. It’s pizza. Food for poor Italians. Aside from the cost, it’s not any better than pizzas half the price in town. Pizza we got was extremely thin on the sauce/cheese/toppings. Wasn’t mad…..more hilarious than anything.