Pizza Ranch

Perham, MN

We were up at my parents' place for Memorial Day weekend, which isn't in Perham. There is a little knitting store in Perham that my wife likes and they were having a sale that weekend, so she really wanted to go. We decided to go Saturday afternoon. It wasn't going to be a problem because my dad and brothers were going to be in the field all day and mom was busy making cakes and going to graduation parties.

I just have to show off this cake she made.





Anyway, we were off to the yarn store, but first thing's first. We needed to get some lunch. We had been planning on going to this barbeque place we had heard about in Hawley, but we weren't sure if it was open or even still there. I consulted with the Google but it didn't have much information. We went anyway and, sure enough, it had moved to Fargo. That's another 40 minutes in the opposite direction of the yarn store. Instead, we headed towards Perham knowing we had other options. We also searched the Garmin to see if there were other options we didn't know about. It had a listing for Dee's Ribs in Detroit Lakes and we were both skeptical about whether that was there either. We juggled 3 options; try Dee's, go to Zorbaz in DL (which is pretty good and the DL one has a pretty good draught beer selection), or Pizza Ranch in Perham. After much hemming and hawing the decision was made to see if Dee's existed then go on to Pizza Ranch if it didn't. Well... unless there was a rib joint inside the clinic, then it wasn't there. Pizza Ranch it was.

Pizza Ranch is an upper midwest chain with restaurants in mostly smaller cities and towns in 9 states. Eating at Pizza Ranch brings back memories of college. There's a Pizza Ranch in Morris, where we went to school, so I have some previous experience with the place. Some of that experience is selling a lot of it at the concession stand as a fundraiser for the baseball team when UMM hosted high school basketball tournaments. The free slices here and there were always nice.

We got to the one in Perham for the lunch buffet. You gotta love a pizza buffet. I know I do. I had some of the cheesy Ranch stix as well as pepperoni, sausage, buffalo chicken, chicken broccoli alfredo, bronco pizzas, and cactus bread. It was all very delicious. The buffalo chicken pizza is particularly good with a little bit of ranch dressing to dip in or drizzle over. It's got some kick but certainly isn't too hot (well it might be too hot for the typical Minnesota taste buds).

Alfredo pizzas can often be not very exciting, but the chicken broccoli alfredo was very tasty. This was the only thin crust pizza on the buffet and I think the thin crust goes well with this particular pizza. Their thin crust is very thin and very crispy. It's rather cracker like, but in a good way. Their original crust keeps the same crispiness on the outer crust and is soft and not too chewy on the inside. The rest of the crust holds up very well. They also have a "skillet crust", but I don't think I've ever had that.

The Bronco pizza is their "all meat" pizza with beef, Italian sausage, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, and bacon pieces. It's hard to make something like that not taste good. The cheesy Ranch stix are basically like a breadstick pizza topped with lots of cheese and then cut into sticks. Again, very tasty.

Finally, the cactus bread. Cactus bread is a can't miss item. It's their version of a streusely dessert pizza. I was somehow able to limit myself to only two pieces of cactus bread. Yum.