Broadway Pizzeria

Broadway Pizzeria is a short drive from my office, but if I'm having lunch out, I'll go just about anywhere but there.

It's not that I don't like the place. It's because if I'm lunching anywhere near the normal lunch hour, odds are better than good that Broadway will be packed. There usually are a few police officers, their presence no doubt encouraged by the wall display of police insignia from all over. There usually are more than a few medical types because of Broadway's proximity to the University Medical Center complex and surrounding medical offices. Fill in with a few assorted office workers, delivery guys, etc., and sometimes it seems like it's tough to get through the door, let alone get a table.

What's the draw? Definitely not a lack of restaurants in the area, because there are a few good ones clustered near Charleston Boulevard and Rancho Drive, fast-food places up and down Charleston, and downtown's not far away. It's probably not the service, which is pleasant enough but perfunctory; this is a counter-service place, and when it gets crowded, the servers have to fight the tide just to get to the tables. No, it comes down to two things: the prices of the lunch specials, and the food.

Consider: Among the many lunch specials Broadway features is one offering two slices of cheese pizza and an 18-ounce drink (which is refillable) for $5.20, which makes for a pretty satisfying lunch at fast-food prices. It's New York-style pizza, as the restaurant's name would imply, with a fairly thin but nice and stretchy crust and a fairly thick layer of hot, melted cheese. Extra items are 40 cents each, and my co-worker's slices were covered with a patchwork of pepperoni, topped with a generous sprinkling of sliced fresh mushrooms.

And our analyses of the slices pretty much pointed up why there are a zillion "best" pizzas in this country. She didn't like the fact that they were lightly browned and that there wasn't a prodigious amount of the deeply flavored, long-simmered marinara. I, on the other hand, don't like my pizza overly browned, and I don't like so much sauce that it slides out from between the cheese and the crust and onto whatever I'm wearing that's white, so I was pretty well enamored of them. Next time, she'll ask for well-done and extra sauce, and if you're of like mind, you'd be advised to do so as well.

An eggplant Parmigiana sub ($6.95) -- or "hero," as Broadway calls them -- was picture-perfect, which always gets things off to a good start. The torpedo-shaped bun was reasonably crusty and stuffed with thin slices of lightly breaded and gently sauteed eggplant and more of that good marinara sauce, the whole thing gilded with a couple of slices of melted provolone. It was a delicious, classic sandwich.

Equally classic but much more difficult to find these days was a pepper-and-egg sub ($6.75), the nice crusty bun filled with lots of sauteed green peppers mixed up in scrambled eggs and mounded on.

And, of course, I understand the effect that this review probably will have, which will be to make Broadway even more crowded than it already was. Fortunately, there's now a second location, on West Sahara Avenue, to share the load.

If you're like me and aren't too crazy about crowds, I do have a few tips: Get delivery, which you can do with a $10 minimum. Avoid peak hours, going before 11:30 a.m. or after 1 p.m. Consider ordering for pickup, which means you don't have to worry about finding a seat.

Or, as I do, you can rely on a co-worker to bring back her extra garlic knots. They're a great way to get through the afternoon.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com.