By Mirandah Davis-Powell and Henry Houston
Seize the Slice (2445 Hilyard Street) is tucked away in Eugene’s Amazon neighborhood — a dedicated pizza joint from the same folks who brought us Seize the Café. Owner and chef Chad Fuhreck had been slinging the occasional pizza since first adding a wood-fired oven to the space adjacent to The Café in 2022, but The Slice has since become its own dedicated project.
“It’s pretty affordable food for what it is — we care a lot about our quality and what we put out,” says Scott H., a pizza chef at Seize. A popular pie is Sweet Heat — donned with Italian sausage, sweet peppers, hot peppers and red onion. Scott’s favorite is The Lovely Rita, Seize’s standard margarita pizza. Can’t go wrong with a classic. In addition to its rotating pizza menu, Seize offers salad, beer, wine and house-made ice cream. Checking back in often is warranted. “We have a lot of creative liberty here, and we use it,” Scott says.
Since opening in 1978, the slices at Sy’s New York Pizza (1211 Alder Street) have only gotten bigger. The pizza joint adjacent to the University of Oregon and 13th Avenue is open until 3 am, claiming the hearts of out-too-late 20-somethings on the weekends and neighborhood regulars the rest of the week. In addition to its made-to-order slices, Sy’s claims additional charm with its homemade ranch and a long-standing pebble ice machine that brings people in asking for “the good ice.”
For Connor Reis, Sy’s general manager, the best part of working the neighborhood shop is the community surrounding it. “Folks will come by and talk about how they’ve been coming here for 45 years, or college students, especially people who have lived in Eugene their whole life, they’ll talk about how they’ve been coming here since they were little kids,” Reis says. “It’s had a long time to really build up a reputation and a known presence that I think is really special. I’ve worked in other pizza shops before, and none of them have had that kind of presence.”
For decades, Track Town Pizza has been the gateway pizza in Eugene for visitors and new arrivals. And if it’s not the first slice of pizza you ever have, it won’t take too long for a box of Track Town Pizza to find you. For those living in the Thurston area of Springfield, Track Town just tracked you down. The pizzeria opened its second location at 5809 A Street in Springfield Feb. 10. In addition to a menu of the classic pizza house options, Track Town has salads, garlic bread (or as they call it, “Track Sticks”) and wings. You can always depend on Track Town to deliver a pizza for those Eugene transplants to remind them of the good ol’ days when they first arrived.
Last year, Eugene Weekly spoke with Charred Apizza owners and chef Dave Lucht and baker Terry McKay when they were starting a partnership with Washburne Café on Main Street in Springfield. A year later, Charred Apizza is moving into its own brick and mortar at 553 Main Street in Springfield with a planned open date in mid-March, taking over the former Noodle N Thai.
Lucht says thanks to their time at Washburne Café, they were able to cement their kitchen staff, have everyone get the Detroit-style pizza recipe down and build a fanbase. Now just a few blocks away from Washburne Café, Lucht and McKay are currently overhauling the insides of their new restaurant space, and they’ve got big plans, including a salad bar that highlights harvest from local growers, a 1950s-style soda jerk bar designed by a mixologist, and, of course, pizza.
When Charred Apizza was at Washburne, they kept the menu to several different topping variations of the Detroit-style pizza. But with a full kitchen and a brand new oven imported from Italy, Lucht says they’ll add artisan round style pizzas to the menu and maybe even think beyond the pizza.
“Maybe we have some classes where you can come in and learn how to make sauces,” Lucht says, adding that McKay is planning to sell fresh baked bread, too. “I used to work at Same Same, so I might get bored of pizza, and so I’ll do, hey, we’re gonna have a pho night.”
March Madness meets pizza in The Register-Guard’s “pizza bracket.” The first round of voting closed Feb. 15 with Westfir’s The Herbin’ Crust edging out Slice Pizzeria & Bar, The Wheel Apizza Pub beating Pleasant Hill’s Gatehouse Pizza and Osteria DOP ahead of Oakridge’s Big Mountain Pizza Joint. We love that the RG got rural Lane County’s slices into the brackets! Vote at RegisterGuard.com.