Sometimes, the nostalgia a bite of food conjures is as strong as the flavor of the food itself.
Though that might seem kind of deep for a pizza place called “Shredders,” named after the shiny, evil ninja in the 1990s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” cartoon, I think it fits.
In spite of the name, I kept thinking about Splinter, the aged rat full of sage advice in the cartoon, who may have rubbed off on me a little bit. Because after my two visits, I left thinking deep thoughts about the pizza I ate as a teenager in the ’90s, with one main takeaway: Man, that pizza was actually really good.
That kind of pizza is what Shredders is working to perfect. Making it taste just like it did in your memories is part of the point.
You may have seen the deluge of coverage Shredders got when James Beard finalist David Utterback and his team opened earlier this summer in Countryside Village, in the spot formerly occupied by Mootz. It seemed like overnight, the restaurant was everywhere.
Utterback told me that he’d tried to open Shredders quietly, with little fanfare and a simple goal: food for families that kids like his own would like and that reminded him of the pizza he also ate growing up in the ’90s.
“Pizza that tasted like when Godfather’s was really good,” he said, laughing. “A better version of Papa John’s.”
The opening turned out to be the opposite of chill.
People lined up around the corner waiting to get in. At times, the wait for call-in orders stretched to three hours. When he would check in on the sales figures each night, by 6 p.m. he’d sold $2,000 or more. With the most expensive pie on the menu topping out at $21, that’s close to 100 pizzas in the first two hours of business.
The team was so slammed trying to keep up, Utterback worried about the quality. He also realized, he said, that it’s no longer possible for him to do anything quietly. He has earned loads of attention — deservedly so — for Yoshitomo and Ota, his two sushi spots in Benson, which have been featured in The New Yorker, The Washington Post and multiple regional and national, “Best Of” restaurant lists.
Koji, his sushi and yakitori spot, also in Countryside Village, is regularly full on weekend nights. If you want to dine at any of his restaurants, you’re going to need a reservation. Shredders, though, isn’t a reservation kind of place. Hence the lines and the dine-in wait that one evening when I visited stretched up to 45 minutes.
“I tried to do something fun and casual,” he said, “instead of something at the (James Beard Foundation) level.”
That, he said, is no longer possible.
“I didn’t expect it. But this is the new reality.”
In my opinion, Shredders is well worth a little wait. There are only 13 pizzas on the menu, and we started with one several friends had emailed me about, the fungus amoungus. Named after a 1995 Incubus album, that particular pizza was one of the highlights. The buttery crust gets topped with big dollops of ricotta, mushrooms, asparagus and garlic cream. It’s certainly a departure from the toppings of my childhood, but the adult in me loved the rich, vegetal flavors and subtle creaminess that was noticeable but not overwhelming.
The other pizza we ordered on our first visit, a classic supreme, is just what you imagine it would be: pepperoni, sausage, onion, mushroom and green pepper piled on top of tangy but balanced red sauce.
The side salad comes served in an old-school patchwork wood bowl, which sent me straight back into one of my grandma’s dining rooms, or maybe the Valentino’s buffet. Shredders has a few beers, one red wine and one white wine on its short list of drinks; I’ve heard from friends that a popular neighborhood move is to order and then wait for your pie at one of the nearby Countryside Village bars, like Cedar or Casual Pint.
Two pinball machines are tucked into a corner of the small dining room, which is otherwise decorated with band posters, stickers and various ’80s and ’90s pop culture memorabilia drawn from the personal collections of Utterback and his operations manager, Jay Hendricksen. The doors to the restrooms are coated in stickers.
A new outdoor patio sits on the other side of big garage doors that were rolled open the second night we visited, doubling the petite dining room’s size.
When I called Utterback after dining, he told me he had already made a few changes since I visited.
There’s just one size of pizza now, a 12-incher, because the other sizes, including a Pizza Hut-inspired “personal pan,” were taking up too much valuable space in the busy oven.
He also said that, for now, the restaurant is no longer accepting call-in orders to try and quicken the pace for dine-in customers.
He’s also rethinking ingredients, aiming to upgrade the menu even more by, for example, grinding his own meats or raising the quality of the pepperoni.
To repeat: What’s already available is good.
Utterback worked with David Losole, of Benson’s Virtuoso, to create the buttery, mid-thick crispy crust, which is different from most of the newer Omaha pizza places like Dolomiti or Dante, and even different from the crust at Virtuoso.
He said they reimagined it several times before landing on the satisfying pan crust that can hold up to heavy toppings, like the Chi-talian beef, which we tried on our second visit.
A mashup of a Chicago beef sandwich and a pizza, it’s topped with sliced beef, spicy giardiniera (an Italian relish of pickled vegetables) and au jus, plus plenty of cheese. If you love the meaty, vinegary, rich flavors of a Chicago beef, I think you will like this one, too. Thin slices of beef almost melt into the cheese, all topped with the spicy giardiniera.
This is another Shredders-specific pie that I know I’ll be back to order again.
I couldn’t leave without trying the eponymous pizza on the menu, the Shredder, featuring loads of crispy, just greasy enough cup-and-char pepperoni, a drizzle of hot honey, and “riot dust,” which Utterback said is a blend of Parmesan, peppers, and spices.
Whether or not Utterback expected Shredders to be an instant hit for me isn’t really the point.
Once again, he’s taking Omaha diners on a journey. It’s just that this time, it’s a trip into his memories — and our own.
It’s a nostalgia trip worth taking, I think. One that I would wager will continue to hit the pizza sweet spot in Omaha.
The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.