I can’t believe I missed it! Did you miss it too? I mean it’s a shame it was only for two days, and even then only for two hours last Tuesday and seven hours last Wednesday. And then again, maybe it wasn’t quite worth a trip to New York.
Maybe I should explain.
I’m referring, of course, to the smallest reservation-only dine-in single-person restaurant in the world. Even if you aren’t as much of a pizza a fan as I am, you may have heard about it. It was widely and wildly reported on the majority of major news outlets around the world which either goes to prove that on a slow day the press will report on just about anything or that news outlet editors really really like pizza.
It turned out to be a stellar idea by popular pizza chain Pizza Hut who got a heck of a lot of free advertising just by building, well, a hut. A hut for pizza. A hut just for you – if you happen to be in the Big Apple and were hankering for a small pizza.
That’s right, for two days only there was a cute little hut right on the sidewalk on 50th Avenue in Queens. It looked exactly like a miniature Pizza Hut building but it was the perfectly right size for a one person to go in, admire the pizza-themed decorations on the walls and sit in a little bright red personal private pizza booth and enjoy a six inch pizza pie of their choice. As you have no doubt guessed, it was all completely free, but you would have had to make a reservation. Reservations were available a week ahead of time, and yes, there was still quite the line up outside the charming little red roofed pie shed.
And then, after two days last week, the “Personal Pan Pizza Hut” up and disappeared. But not before many personal pan pizza pie patrons were interviewed on national television by breathlessly excited news reporters. I know you’ll be relieved to hear that everyone who pied-out in the one room restaurant thought the once-in-a-lifetime experience was “cool” and even “awesome” and the tiny solitary Pizza Hut itself was “very cool” and “really awesome”. Also, most of the slice-meisters gobbling the tempting triangles mentioned the real reason they queued up to the cute cabana was mainly because of those two magic words that never fails to attract a crowd: “Free Pizza!”
The little red booth had large windows on each side so the solitary pizza face-stuffer could gaze out in solitude as the world walked by, but more than one customer found that fresh feature frequently failed and basically backfired. They didn’t like it when people came up to the glass and stared and them from a foot away as they were chowing down. Not exactly a significantly serene setting, I would say. But, of course, it was in New York.
For me, solitary pizza plundering was at Eastview Plaza right here in the Deer. Back in the day, there was more than one booth at Tom’s House of Pizza but there were many times I sat solitary in the midst of crowd with a small ham and black olive personal pie and a Pepsi, extra ice, lost in trying to negotiate the trials and tribulations of teenage-hood and beyond. And even now I always drop in to the nearest Tom’s whenever I’m in Calgary, because that’s where the nearest one is.
So I don’t need a tiny single seat hut to sit and enjoy my own company and solve the world’s problems and some of my own. A ham and olive, Pepsi, extra ice at Tom’s will do just fine.
Harley Hay is a Red Deer author and filmmaker. Reach out to Harley with any thoughts or ideas at harleyhay99@gmail.com.
