It was D.Rough’s birthday weekend, so I was determined to do whatever it took to make her happy. She had heard about Fong’s Pizza from an odd turn of events, and she knew she wanted to check it out. You see, Fong’s Pizza makes pizza with Chinese food toppings on them. Is that even possible, you ask? Yes, it is. And the added bonus is Fong’s serves tiki drinks!!!! (That’s basically a requirement of out-of-town roller derby trips.)
This restaurant in downtown Des Moines is sort of a first-come-first-serve kind of place. We were a group of six, so we had to stake our claim on one of the larger tables in the back room and wait for a group to leave. There also happened to be a Santa Pub Crawl downtown this night, so we had to deal with some drunk Santas. But no worries. Once we got the table, our server, Alex, made sure we were all set up.
We started with some tiki drinks, of course. I needed to check out the Smilin’ Samoan – Cruzan dark, Smirnoff, Malibu, Amaretto, and pineapple juice. And it was delicious – obviously.
While we were waiting for the table, we got some recommendations from fellow diners. They suggested we order the Thai Styx. Since A-Wow, D.Rough and I were sharing, we also decided to get a large Crab Rangoon pizza and a Mu Shu Pork pizza. But it was a tough sell with all the other tasty pizza flavors – Happy Family, buffalo chicken, Polynesian, Fongolian Beef, a couple Italian flavors, Mexican flavors, etc. So good.
The Thai Styx were our appetizer for the table, so we divied them up. It’s a thin wheat crust pizza with Thai peanut sauce and bacon, then drizzled with honey. It tasted like peanut butter toast in the morning with a little heat to it. Sooooo darn good. Really, I’m not joking about this. We would get this again without questioning it.
The pizzas came out next. The Crab Rangoon pizza was even better than I expected (and I expected it to be fantastic, for the record). It had a super thin crust and little fried won ton skins, along with asiago and mozzarella cheese bits. It has also been drizzled with sweet chili sauce, which pushes it from being good to great. This was really quite good (and amazingly held up to being microwaved the following morning in the hotel) and I’m going to rave about this for a long time.
Then I needed another tiki drink – this time, an Angry Pirate. Cruzan light, peach schnapps, Malibu, blue curacao, midori, pineapple juice, and Sprite. While not as good as the Smilin’ Samoan, it was still wonderful.
The Mu Shu Pork pizza was also super good. We got a hand tossed crust and they covered it with house and hoisin bbq pork, mirepoix, cabbage, and mozzarella. Then a couple of green onions and drizzled with Mu Shu sauce. The flavor of the pork was what I noticed first – even better than most Chinese restaurants I’ve had it in. Extremely good stuff. The ingredients on the top just added more flavor to the whole thing. I was really surprised how much I liked this stuff.
Before we left, the bouncer had to come back and scoop a drunken passed out Santa off the bathroom floor. THAT’s gonna ruin Christmas, for sure! But hilarious.
I know the others at the table were equally impressed (with the pizza, not the Santa incident) and, though skeptical at first, came to love this place. I’m going to make a point to get here more often, especially since it’s open late. I usually go to Zombie Burger when I’m in Des Moines, but this place might have jumped in front of Zombie Burger on my favorites list.
1. Crab Rangoon pizza
2. Thai Styx
3. Mu Shu Pork pizza
4. Smilin’ Samoan
5. Angry Pirate
Bottom 5 things
1. Drunken Santas (hopefully, a once-a-year situation)
2. No reservations
3. I don’t think there’s a parking lot anywhere nearby, so you may have to park in a ramp
4. Weird policy on holding credit cards for tiki drink deposits (I suppose it makes sense with damage/theft and all)
5. The menu has an incredible number of unusual things on it – don’t be an idiot and get something conservative like a pepperoni pizza. COME ON!
www.fongspizza.com