Did you go out for pizza as a kid?

[MommyinHonduras]

When my sons were very young we had a pizza place that was like sort of similar to Chuckie Cheese. But you could watch them make the pizza and then sit down in this big area and there was an animontronic band of animals that played and entertained (sort of like Country Bears at WDW) and then on the other side there was another room of a huge number of video games. Anyone else remember a place like this? It was really good pizza--not like Chuckie Cheese at all with that. They had a nice salad bar. And the way it was set up, you could go in and sit down and eat without the kids even really noticing the video games. I mean sooner or later they would know they were there but they weren't surrounding you.

Showbiz Pizza, Chuck E Cheese bought them out

 

[Soldier's*Sweeties]

We've always called it a "pie" too. My dad was a Long Islander and DH and his family are all native NYers. Maybe it's a regional thing

The thing that gets me though is how they order it. A lot of places around here don't go by sizes like small, medium, or large. They are ordered by the number of pieces in each pie. Like, "Can I have a 8 cut... 12 cut...etc.?"

 

[Vicki926]

LOL. I haven't heard anyone call a pizza a "pie" in a long time.

I never really thought about it, but that’s what I order..I don’t call the pizza place and order a large pizza, I say a large pie.

Anyway, we had pizza often when I was a kid. A few times a year we used to go to a restaurant in River Vale, NJ(I think) that had very thin crust pizza that my parents loved, and we’d eat there.
Most of the time, we ordered from the pizza place near our house. Once or twice a month. My brothers and I walked up there all the time when we were kids to get a slice. It was only 2 blocks away.
My husband was Catholic, and his family ordered in pizza every Friday night, no exceptions, all year long.

 

[luvsJack]

Showbiz Pizza, Chuck E Cheese bought them out View attachment 304267

Ohhhhh so that's what happened to them. They were redesigned into that mess they call Chuck E Cheese! It was so much better then! Oh well.

Of course Chuck E Cheese used to be a lot better too. When there was only like 2 in this state, they were big and had lots of stuff for the kids to do. The big rat would come out often, the kids would have fun dancing to the music. Now they are in every town and half the size they used to be.

 

[SC Minnie]

We had a Pizza Inn in the town I grew up in that had a buffet. We would go and get the buffet most of the time but occasionally we would get a pizza that we ordered. We would go a couple of times a year. We probably ate out less than once a month total.

 

[mousefanmichelle]

I grew up in the 70's/80's and we didn't go out much when I was a little kid - mom cooked. When I was a teenager we went out more often. During Lent my mom would go to Long John Silvers to get carry out and go to a bar to get pizza for carry out. We rarely went out as a family - my dad didn't like eating out unless it was date night with my mom and their friends. He was a truck driver so I supposed he ate out often on the road.

For my own family we probably used to get carry out pizza every couple of weeks and now it less just because I am trying to eat better aka dieting and there is only 3 of us home now vs 5.

 

[CdnCarrie]

Once in a while. We didn't eat out much.

 

[NYCgrrl]

Pizza was 25 cents for a slice and an orange drink in a Nedick's type cone cup back in the Bronx, late 60's. You didn't have to look at an array of pies to know which one was fresh and no self respecting owner would try to sell you that. If we had pizza it tended to be at the shop sitting at the luncheon counter and my elder sister and I shared the drink. It was a lot of fun since no adults went with us. I didn't realize it then but when that was our dinner Mom never ate just had more cups of tea. Guess we had used up the food money.

Eating out was a treat that happened infrequently but my mother knew how to make the best of our Sunday adventures. We never ate at the Chinese-American restaurants near home with the family menus where you picked one from column A and another dish from column B. Cost too much money and besides visiting Chinatown was a lot more fun. We'd have lunch in places where we were the only non Asians, and decisions were made on what to eat based on what other customers were having. She'd take us to the airport to watch the planes and marvel at the clothing the passengers wore. It was probably JFK since the garb was often from other countries. On airport trips it was fried chicken, a mayo jar filled with chopped salad and johnnie cakes. The night before one of us would help Mom in the kitchen and the other would line a shoe box with wax paper to store the food.

When we went to the museums of Manhattan it was Chockful of Nuts or Horn & Hardart's and we always ordered the same thing. Frankfurters with that special relish for the kids and datenut bread with cream cheese and a cup of tea for Mom. H&H was the only place I was allowed to indulge my sweet tooth and have dessert only: I loved their lemon meringue pie!

I know now we were really poor but it didn't seem like it at the time...Mom had a few sayings about it: Life was what you made of it and even if you had a beer bottle pocketbook remember what champagne tastes like, LOL.

 

[MomofKatie]

We rarely ate out (child of the 70s)- mom cooked every night and we sat at the table for dinner. The few times we went out, we usually ate at McDonalds, because my brother was an extremely picky eater and that was about the only place he'd eat at.

But every once in a great while, we would pick up a burger for him and head over to Shakey's Pizza for dinner. I seem to remember that they had a player piano? We were able to pick out music rolls to play on it? I was only 5 or 6, so I might not be recalling correctly.

As a teen, the only time I got to eat pizza out was at Pizza Hut or Godfather's with friends after I started working part time so I had enough $$ to pay for restaurant meals. We never had delivery- I didn't know there was such a thing until I got to college! There was a Domino's near campus, and I went there with some friends (other sad, never-had-delivery people, lol) for dinner. We were confused when we saw no tables to sit at! We ended up eating our pizza in the parking lot.

 

[NYCgrrl]

Grew up in the 70's. We ate out so seldom (not just we as in my family, but everyone that I knew) that a local pizza place was THE place to go for prom night. I miss that place it was really good. But back then we had two options for pizza Pizza Hut and that place.

In fact, eating out at all was a treat. My grandparents opened a catfish restaurant when I was in jr. high so the vast majority of our take out or eating out was from there. Previous to that it was from the fast food/drive in place that was started by my grandparents and ran by different parts of the family over the years. But, the food was soooo much better than it is at most places today.

When my kids were little, Friday night was take out night. So usually either pizza or fried chicken. Sometimes hamburgers but not often.
Now it seems like its every other night and like there is no way around it!

When my kids were little the moms of the block celebrated "Sippy Sessions" every Friday night during the summer. I would pass out recipes from Family Circle or Woman's Day and we'd have a theme dinner. Our favs were Chinese and I still use some of the same recipes today. We'd make dishes, buy cheap wine and sit on one of 2 stoops on the block, eating dinner, gossiping, and watching the children play in the street or sidewalks. We were lucky because we lived on a street that was almost a dead end so had very little car traffic. The ex worked in restaurants then so generally on Saturday night I'd go into the city(Brooklynese for Manhattan; in the Bronx we knew we were part of the city and called Manhattan downtown, LOL) to pick him up and we'd have a late dinner together at the place he worked at or wherever the restaurant workers were hanging out at the time. But Fridays belonged to the Sippy Session crew.

 

[Bianca and Bernard]

Kind of a Spin off from the Do You Remember Things Differently thread.
I grew up in the 1960's and early 1970's.
Looking at the local Things I Remember Growing up Facebook page, seems like everybody but me was eating pizza out all the time.
Money was tight. So much so that President Nixon froze wages and prices in 1970.
There were pizza places here, but they were just too expensive for us.
Mom would buy a frozen pizza and add extra cheese and meat, or a Chef Boyardee kit, but we never had pizza out.
Mostly because of the cost of Pizza out, but also because most of the pizza place appeared to be more like bars or night clubs than restaurants.
I can't speak to the $8 large pizza Domino's is advertising to death right now, but most large pizzas around here are about $25, so still not a cheap meal.

We did, sometimes. Shakey's pizza was a big hit, and usually where we went for us kids celebrations.

Also, there used to be a small pizza place in the old Cinderella City Mall (Denver) that had the BEST pizza ever. I loved going shopping there, just to get the pizza. I have no idea of the name, but I remember the pizza.

As a teen, we hung out at the Pizza Hut after roller skating.

We did the Chef Boyardee thing too (still love doing those) or Totino's frozen.

We occasionally do homemade, but I like getting Papa Murphy's. They taste so much better than ordering from Dominos or PH or Papa Johns. We had a local place that did coal fired pizza and wings (the pizza was good, but the wings were amazing), but it closed down a few months ago.

ETA: going out for Chinese food was a thing too. We went to this local restaurant, and it was the best.

A&W was a once a month or so meal.

Kmart's ham and lettuce sandwiches from their snack shop.

Arbys was a real treat.


When it became just dad and me (after mom passed and my siblings all flew the nest), we'd go out to eat 4-5X a week. Three usual places: a diner called Sugie's, a buffet called Royal Fork/Queen's something or other (it changed names a few times) or a little Mexican place in teh bar by our house; sometimes Church's Fried Chicken and occasionally McDonalds or KFC.

 

[chartle]

I was born early 60's we never got take out pizza. Now we did go to Pizza Hut when we occasionally ate out or on vacation but the first take out Pizza, mid to late 70's, my mother asked if it could be half baked because she assumed it would be cold when it was delivered.

I had a friend whose mother I guess didn't cook a lot and he would get take out pizza from the corner store. It was a premade baked crust where the little old lady that ran the store would add sauce and cheese. It was then put in one of those short commercial pizza ovens with sort of a drawer on the front. Pretty much church festival pizza.

After I got married and in the same area just a few years on I think I counted 11 or so places that would delivery a pizza to me. Its when Pizza Hut started to move away from sit down places to only delivery and when Godfather's Pizza moved in.

 

[mumto3girls]

I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. The only pizza place that existed around us for years was Pizza Hut. By the mid 80’s some of the chains started popping up. I rarely went out to eat with my parents. I had 3 sisters and we just didn’t have the money for that. I don’t recall other families eating out much either. We did go to Florida every year and would eat fast food on the way there and back (we drove) and maybe 1 nicer restaurant while we were there. We didn’t eat pizza and tomato sauce didn’t agree with my dad so we never ate anything with sauce.

My grandparents, however, ate out almost daily. My grandfather grew up poor during the depression and he loved to eat and watch other people eat. We spent a lot of time with them and ate out with them frequently. They favored diner type places, nothing upscale, and did occasionally take us to Pizza Hut.

 

[Diznygrl]

I once watched a documentary on Netflix that was all about the old Showbiz Pizza animatronic band (Rock-afire Explosion). Yes, there really are documentaries about everything, LOL.

 

[mmouse37]

I never really thought about it, but that’s what I order..I don’t call the pizza place and order a large pizza, I say a large pie.

Anyway, we had pizza often when I was a kid. A few times a year we used to go to a restaurant in River Vale, NJ(I think) that had very thin crust pizza that my parents loved, and we’d eat there.
Most of the time, we ordered from the pizza place near our house. Once or twice a month. My brothers and I walked up there all the time when we were kids to get a slice. It was only 2 blocks away.
My husband was Catholic, and his family ordered in pizza every Friday night, no exceptions, all year long.

We live not too far from River Vale, NJ...

I grew up in the 60's and 70's and one of five kids. I remember my parents ordering pizza for dinner about twice a month and I remember it being about $3.50 for a pie (still call them a pie when ordering). We also went out for Chinese food once in awhile but now there are hardly any sit down Chinese Restaurants around us anymore...everything is take out Chinese. On Saturdays we would walk to the movies in the afternoon and have a slice of pizza for 50 cents before the movie. The movie was 50 cents as well.

I remember a funny story about pizza. When I was finally able to drive my parents sent me to pick up the pizza. I had the $7 it would cost and went to get the two pies. I put them on the roof of the car while I opened the door and got in. I drove up the hill to our house and look in the rearview mirror and there go the two pies flying off the roof of the car and getting run over by the car behind me. I had to go in the house and tell my parents I literally lost our dinner. I felt so bad. Luckily they weren't too mad.

I can't stand Pizza Hut or Domino's pizza but my kids loved going there when they were young. I remember we had to collect all the Land Before Time movie dinosaurs that they offered at one time as a "kids meal" gift.

Anyone remember the hamburger chain Wetson's? My father used to Skydive and we usually spent the day at the jump center down in Lakewood, NJ and we would often go to Wetson's for burgers on the way home. I can still taste those yummy burgers and salty fries.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=wetson's+photos&form=EDGEAR&qs=AS&cvid=5c66ea3b9a1b42768bfb614a70fd353b&cc=US&setlang=en-US&PC=HCTS

MJ

 

[SeeDisney]

never as I grew up as a child in the 70's. We hardly ever never went out to eat. As it was too expensive. I remember a friend's mother took a bunch of girls out to eat at a pizza Italian restaurant and IT WAS A TREAT!!!!!!!! I remember being in awed. Nowadays, I take my kids out five times a month. Life was sooo different.

 

[Skippy918]

I grew up in Brooklyn, NY.
We didn't "go out" for pizza. We walked to the pizza shop(after school, while playing outside with friends...) and ordered a slice. When I was in elementary school, a slice was 50 cents and a can of soda was 50. By the time I graduated from high school (1986) a slice was $1.00.

Now a slice is about $2.50

Same here. If I was out with my mom or dad, we’d walk by the pizzeria and grab a slice. It was so cheap back then, only $1.

 

[brooke789]

I remember getting my pizza hut "book it" pizzas! Also remember getting the Little Caesars pizza that came on the big tray of two pizzas. Seems to me those little Caesars pizzas were even cheaper than they are today!

 

[tvguy]

We had a local place that did coal fired pizza and wings (the pizza was good, but the wings were amazing), but it closed down a few months ago.


Kmart's ham and lettuce sandwiches from their snack shop.

.

Coal fired pizza? That almost sounds politically incorrect! Wood fired is big here.

My mom lived for the days we would talk into K-Mart around lunch or dinner time and the submarine sandwiches at the deli went on Blue Light Special, 2 for 80 cents!

 

[mom-2greatkids]

As a kid we'd go to Godfather's Pizza every month or two. I remember they had a promotion where you bought a glass pitcher and would get free refills for life. So every time we went for pizza mom would bring the pitcher for free soda. The pitcher had a lid that sealed, so before we left Godfather's dad would get a refill to bring home.

As a teenager I remember going there with friends. Mom would always tell me to bring the pitcher with.