TulaneLSU's Degas inspired review of Shakey's Pizza

Dear Friends,

The Food Board’s great philosopher, Degas, recently, in response to the Chuck E Cheese thread, said, “You can never go back in time to your childhood.” Channeling Heraclitus, he was speaking of his childhood pizza joint, Shakey’s. In all my travels searching for America’s greatest pizza, I had never been to this chain pizza parlor, which has been so bold as to trademark the term “World’s Greatest Pizza.” The chain was never part of my childhood, having closed its NOLA Metro locations in the early ‘80s before I was born. While the chain today is on shaky ground, with just 50 locations remaining in the U.S., all near fault lines on the West Coast, Shakey’s was from the late ‘50s until 1971, when Pizza Hut surpassed it, the world's largest pizza chain.

As a frequenter of Shogun in Metairie, the best Japanese restaurant in the South, I have heard and read all my life that Shogun is housed in a building that was built as a Shakey’s Pizza. And so, I often, while sitting in the dining room, pondered and considered what this wonderful Japanese place must have looked like as a pizza parlor. Thanks to these voices of the past, and Degas’ powerful sentence, I decided to fly to Seattle to try one of two remaining Shakey’s in Washington, in a quaint suburb town called Renton.



Founded by Sherwood “Shakey” Johnson and his World War II friend, Ed Plummer in Sacramento in 1954. They each put up $850 and within weeks knew they had a winner. It was Johnson’s charisma and ingenuity that made it such a hit. A musician himself, he brought in jazz bands to play in his restaurants. Some locals may remember listening to the great pianist Harry Pooley while dining\at the Shakey’s in the Woolco Shopping Center in Gretna during its run from 1969 to 1982. Locally famous, he made his bones tickling the ivories at Club Kelsto in the Quarters before spending his later years at Shakey’s.

The region was home to multiple Shakey’s, including one on Airline in Baton Rouge, another on Morrison in the Kenilworth Shopping Center in New Orleans East, the one in Gretna, and the one that became home to Shogun in Metairie. Each of these parlors lives on in the memories of New Orleanians who dined on their fried chicken, steak fried potatoes, now called Mojo potatoes, and hand tossed pizzas.



The Shakey’s setup influenced many restaurants and malls in the coming decades. Arcades played a big role, introducing many to video games. Some may also recall jumping on the restaurant’s trampoline, an idea completely unheard of in today’s litigious world. Most had large bench seating, facilitating parties, especially for youth sporting teams, something Godfather’s Pizza tapped into later. Many locations also had young pizzaiolos throwing dough in the air, separated from the adorning diners through large glass windows, an architectural design adopted by Tower of Pizza directly across the street from the Metairie location.

Shakey’s reached its economic peak under the ownership of Hunt International Resources around 1980 when there were over 500 locations spread throughout the land, with a definite West Coast predominance. The Hunt brothers, though were riding a wave of momentum from the previous decade. The Hunts neglected the pizza chain, while focusing on other endeavors, like cornering the silver market. In 1984, Gary Brown and Jay Halverson, two franchisees, bought the declining chain and five years later they sold the chain to a Chinese multinational. It has, unsurprisingly, continued its decline, with its last eastern location, in the little known pizza Mecca, Auburn, AL, closing four years ago.











Entering Shakey’s today is like grabbing a relic. At once you know it is old and carries nostalgia for many. I entered at 11 in the morning and already there was a bumping party in one of the rooms with pizza flying out the lovely Vulcan Hustler natural gas stone deck ovens. There were broken video games to the left, being worked on by a repairman. Although I wanted to start a conversation with the repairman, he seemed quite busy. I could hear Mother’s voice in my head saying, “Do not bother the busy man with your questions,” so I did not. It did make me think of how the arcade game repair profession must be dying in this day of home video game systems.



On the walls were many framed movie posters, including in the bathroom those of Ferris Bueller, Star Wars, and Rocky IV in the bathroom. This location’s owner seems to know his base: children of the 70s and 80s who grew up going to Shakey’s.