People in the know will travel for hundreds of miles for a pizza at Moose’s Saloon.
Is it because you can’t get a better pizza closer to home? Probably not.
I’ve tasted better pizzas all around the country. But I still love Moose’s.
Maybe it is the sawdust on the floor. Or the thick frosty goblets for beer (or soda). Or the fact that most of the tables and booths set back from the bar exist in almost absolute dark.
The decades of names carved into the tables, walls, beams, and other wooden surfaces provide both character and reading material while you wait. I recommend a flashlight to ease your eye strain if you go looking for the name I carved into the beam above booth seven or eight during a bachelor’s party seventeen years ago, but squinting at the walls and table top is more than adequate for the casual student of saloon patrons with pen knives.
Maybe I keep returning because of the massive bag of peanuts still in their shells behind the bar that the bartender serves up in paper french fry baskets. I know I love the expectation you to throw the shells on the floor, and should note that this fact alone moved Moose’s to the top of the list of my twin boys’ favorite restaurants in the known universe.
And the pizza… competent bar pies with fairly standard toppings. It probably won’t put the kitchen up for a James Beard award, but it does stick in your memory as satisfying food.
No… the truth is that Moose’s is worth the pilgrimage to Kalispell Montana not for any one reason alone but because of the rare combination of many. I’ll most likely be back in a booth the next time I visit the Flathead and the next and the next. I may even let Peter order shrimp out of can on one half of one pie again. This most definitely is not for any defensible culinary reason, but simply because it has turned into something of a tradition and what pilgrimage doesn’t rest on sacred tradition… even if that is something as curious as shrimp in a can.
If you have a Moose’s story, please share. Or if you have a place that has inspired a culinary pilgrimage for you, do tell.
[caption id="attachment_377" align="alignnone" width="425" caption="Mr Cheese, Mr Shrimp, and Mr Canadian Bacon"]
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