Scornovacca’s (Scorno’s)

Scornos 

“You’ve tried the rest, now try the best!” 

Friday night pizza and beers. Does it get any better? Scornos is a southside staple, so much so that I am sure I must’ve eaten there at some point in my life. “You’ve tried the rest, now try the best!” 

You can’t beat the service in a place like this. Iowa Nice to the nth degree - a friendly and chatty welcome, seating, and conversation throughout your meal.

Friday nights is half off onion rings with an order of a speciality pizza. The onion rings were thinly sliced with a thick coating of batter so they ate like a big ring. Yum.

We ordered the Deluxe pizza - fiery red peppers, spicy sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, and cappacola. My heartburned heart was warm to break my red meat streak for this zza. 

They make the dough, sauce, and sausage all in-house! YUM. 

The crust style is a go-to for the classic Italian places around Des Moines and also seems to be favored for a lot of pub pizzas. Ryan affectionately has referred to it as “tavern style” but upon some research has learned it’s actually called St. Louis style! Ryan doesn’t prefer this crust style (too thin for him), and wants to give a disclaimer that’s the main thing that impacted his rating. 

The crust was crispy and buttery, the red sauce almost had a roasted flavor. The zza was a bit too spicy for my little guy, but our lovely server brought him some crackers to keep occupied. 

Happy Hour Tues-Sat 3-6 PM includes $1 off beers. Of course I had two. The options were limited to bottles - I had two Busch Lights like a good Iowa girl and Ryan had two Peronis. 

Overall, I’m giving it a 4/5 and Ryan a 3.5/5. Average rating from us 3.75/5. 

7 Stone Pizzeria

1st Stop: 7 Stone Pizzeria 

The address says West Des Moines, but it's practically Waukee.  For you west-side haters, you are missing out.  This place was a magnifico way to start the pizza tour of Zza Moines! 

Very first early impression: they are accommodating to kiddos!  We went on a Wednesday night after daycare pickup and running a few other errands and headed straight to the bathroom for a diaper change.  Was pleased to find a changing table in the bathroom and then easily located the high chairs and booster seats for littles. 

This is a spacious yet quaint spot in a strip mall.  You choose between two crust types: thick (deep dish but not Chicago style deep dish), or thin (wood-fire crispy).  We'd already decided on the thin when Ryan went up to the counter to place our order.  After seeing a deep dish behind the counter and an almost convincing declaration from a very enthusiastic patron waiting for her take-out deep-dish, we almost switched it up but decided to stick to our original plan. 

Since January I have almost entirely eliminated pork and beef from my diet, so our toppings choices are a little restrictive.  (Note: this dietary change may fluctuate a bit for the pizza tour).  We ordered a large with chicken, spinach, and feta. 

We loved this place!  The chicken was cooked very well, super tender.  The red sauce was so rich and flavorful, and they put it all over the top of the pizza too.  

The "thin" crust was crispy and tasty (and even better cold the next day!) 

On Wednesdays they have 1/2 price beers, so of course I had two. With eight beers on tap, including a good mix of domestic and micro-brews, I enjoyed the Pompeii's alongside my zza. They appeared to have a good selection of wine too.

The atmosphere is very cute (I forgot to grab a pic of the sign that basically describes my life: "Money can't buy happiness but it can buy pizza and that's pretty much the same thing.") Ben Schuh art covers the walls making it feel very "Des Moines-y".

Jack thoroughly enjoyed and ate an entire slice to himself!  If we weren't embarking on a pizza tour, this place would become one of our go-to's.  Super friendly staff who were eager to hear about our new pizz-adventure. 

We both rated it ☆☆☆☆☆

Zza Moines Master Data can be viewed here at any time. 

Slice to Meet You!

(photo credit: the amazing Sophie Rae). 

We are the Legner family and we love pizza.

Chelsea - The Matriarch

• Des Moines native and life-long lover of zza
• Overseeing the Des Moines Pizza Tour (logistics and project management)
• Crust preference: agnostic. An equal opportunity pizza lover
• Toppings preferences: anything but olives.  Avoids meat-lovers because heartburn. 
• Currently taking suggestions for further pizza puns

Ryan - The Faaaaather

• Des Moines transplant (originally from NW Indiana and former Indianapolis resident).
• Enthusiastically participating in the Des Moines Pizza Tour
• Crust preference: Neopolitan, Traditional Pan
• Toppings preference: anything but olives.  General rule of thumb is "the less the merrier".  Prefers three or less toppings on his pie. 
• Dabbling in specializing in homemade pizza

Jack - The Next Gen 

• Youngest pizza lover in our family
• Featured here for cuteness 
• Has yet to express specific pizza preferences 

How it All Began

In February 2020, the Des Moines Register updated and re-circulated its 2018 comprehensive guide to The Essential Pizza Restaurants of Des Moines.  Upon review, it occurred to me that I had only indulged in about 30% or less of these restaurants.

Something had to change.  

We eat pizza about once a week, but here are all these pizza places that I've never even tried?  Unacceptable!

We have some staples in our house (like Gusto, Marco's, Cosi Cucina, Eatery A -- to name a few).  And those staples will forever hold a pizza my heart (see what I did there?), but this seemed like a great opportunity to branch out and really get a slice (I have to run out of these soon, right?) of what all these hard-working restaurants in Des Moines have to offer.

Right now is a great time to start, because I'm on a brief hiatus from grad school.  After two months of too-much-free time since the hiatus started, I'm ready to take on a new project. And I'm pretty excited to share it with you all.

The Plan

Using the Register list as a baseline, I pulled together a list of all the area pizza places we haven't tried.  I am going to organize the list by neighborhood/part of town, type of pizza, and eventually add ratings to the list too.  The most challenging part is probably just going to be getting out of our bubble and into other areas in Dough Des Moines.  

Once we've made our way through all 38 pizza joints on this list, we'll probably circle back to the rest of the spots on the list that we'd had before and get them ranked and filed here as well.  But we had to start somewhere. 

View the list here at any time. 

The Ratings 

We'll keep this on a simple 5-star rating scale.  Knowing that our preferences vary a bit, the ratings are bound to get biased, but that's why I started this blog so we can share in more detail about the crust, the toppings, the atmosphere, and other offerings.  

We got started right away.  Literally the same day we decided to do this.  Can't wait to share this with you all.

Saluti!

PS -- I'll finish grad school eventually, so don't give me any grief.