Pinky's Dilemma: Waiting For A Pizza

Famed philosopher Yogi Berra once said of a popular St. Louis restaurant, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

This might be the dilemma of recently re-opened Pinky's Pizza of Walnut Creek.

Walnut Creek blogger Martha Ross had an extraordinarily long wait for a pizza at Pinky's, which reopened Nov. 11 on North Broadway. In her blog, Crazy in Suburbia, Ross chided Pinky's head chef, Tom Beisheim for being too hands-on: "But maybe if he's getting crowds like this, he might want to find someone who can prep the pizzas with him, so that more pizzas are getting into the oven to be baked and fewer customers are getting impatient."

I had a long wait for a pizza, too, in a visit last week with Concord Patch editor Adalto Nascimento. To Pinky's credit, they gave us the pizza for free because of the delay. And it was good.

Here's how popular Pinky's is: Its open Facebook group has 1,238 members at last count. It has maintained that kind of popularity with a gap of three years and three months between closing on South California Boulevard and opening on North Broadway.

One of the Facebook posters defended his favorite joint: "The pizza is as great as ever! For all those complaining about wait times or commenting that Pinky's has some kinks to work out, I disagree. I was there for opening night and waited over an hour (as quoted) for my pizza. The time flew by — my wife and I sitting at a table, chatting with others who we didn't know by name and finding out most of us were Las Lomas grads from various years and reminiscing about old times while we enjoyed our salads and beverages."