Fargo’s pizza, games, Old West theme fun at any age

I’ve been avoiding Fargo’s Pizza Co. for more than a decade.

Not because I don’t like it. Like almost every kid who grew up in Colorado Springs after this East Platte Avenue pizza palace was built in 1973, I was a regular at Fargo’s. Many birthday's were marked with a hot pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza demolished to the old-timey jingles of Fargo’s player piano, and fists full of quarters wasted on Zaxxon and Ms. Pac-Man in the game room. It was one place the whole family agreed on.

But the past is a tricky thing. Looking back from the present, the past tends to grow smoother, sweeter and smarter, until it floats over the hurried tackiness of the present on angel wings. And when you try to recapture it, it crashes back to Earth in dull shards of disappointment. Like Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again.”

You shouldn’t even try.

And yet on a recent evening, I found myself at the Fargo’s counter, ordering a hot pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza with quarters clinking in my pocket. And I’m glad to say, I was wrong.

Turns out you can go home again. And you can have a good, well-priced dinner, put the smack down in the game room and leave with leftovers.

I invited two budding reviewers — Emma, 12, and Abigail, 8. After all, Fargo’s is a family place. One of it’s main attractions is that kids can be kids without the atmosphere slipping into Chuck E. Cheese’s tot-pandering creepiness.

Abigail started by saying she would eat only cheese pizza. Just plain cheese. “I hate everything else,” she said. A tough critic.

Emma said she would eat anything, she didn’t care. Apparently, she didn’t even care about basic conventions of nutrition. When I asked her to reconnoiter the salad bar ($5.25, all you can eat) she returned with a mound of croutons, bacon bits and shredded cheese pinning what appeared to be a single leaf of lettuce. She also had somewhere found a bowl of chocolate pudding.

“You can’t have pudding before your dinner,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said.

Times haven’t changed that much.

A little back story: Fargo’s was one of a few lavish theme restaurants erected during some warped sense of optimism in the early 1970s. Only months separate the opening of it and massive Mexican cousin to the north, Casa Bonita. The legend behind Fargo’s, dreamed up by its Missouri owners, involved a “hard drinking, straight shooting, free thinking gambler” from the Wild West named Fargo, who falls in love with a genteel, young Italian girl and opens a dance hall-type restaurant that seats 500.

Think of Fargo like Al Swearengen at the Gem Saloon, except with pepperoni instead of prostitutes.

Like thousands of theme restaurants that followed, Fargo’s tacked all kinds of crazy stuff to the walls. And since Fargo’s got in on the game early, it seems to have scored some of the best stuff. Bison and elk heads compete for wall space with antique six-shooters, Victorian whale bone hair combs and old sepia photographs.

Female employees flounce around in long skirts and frilly lace blouses. You order at the counter and (to the endless delight of young kids) your number magically appears on one of several mirrors ranged around the restaurant when it’s time to pick up your pizza.

The vast, two-story dining room has enough nooks to make it feel cozy.

The junior reviewers staked out a big, round booth in a corner. While we waited for our number to appear, Abigail said “Let’s go see the creepy lady.”

Sure enough, likenesses of Fargo and his young bride, cast in wax with decidedly 1970s hairdos, sat gazing into each other’s eyes at their own table along the balcony, as they have since Fargo’s opened.

The two aged pretty well. They were a little dusty, and I couldn’t help but notice their drinks were empty (a shame), but otherwise, I, like Abigail, thought they looked as creepy as ever.

Other aspects of Fargo’s have aged well, too, including the food. The pizza ($10.85-$15.55 for a 13-inch) is thin crust, light and crispy with the delicious character of dough that hasn’t been hurried and a coarse underside caked with cornmeal.

There’s nothing fancy going on with the toppings — no goat cheese, no truffle oil, no local organic heirloom turkey sausage. The menu hasn’t changed much in decades, but the ingredients are fresh and the pizzas are remarkably hot. For something new, try the Big Red, covered in Canadian Bacon and fresh slices of tomato.

It’s best to stick with the pizza. Fargo’s spaghetti with marinara or Alfredo sauce ($3.80-$6) has a toned-down seasoning most fitting for young, picky eaters. But the young, picky eaters I had with me pushed it aside for more pizza. The few doughy hoagies here, too, are really beside the point.

But don’t write off dessert. Fargo’s strikes gold with its classic and not-corrected-for-inflation Karat Cake ($1.25, yes, $1.25 per slice, $5.75 for a whole cake!), baked on location with moist shreds of carrot and a rich, but not sugary, cream cheese frosting.

Kids can opt for tall hot fudge sundaes ($2.50).

The junior reviewers both gave the place two thumbs up.

Bring quarters to feed the piano (actually, a nickelodeon, since it includes a half-dozen other instruments) and quiet pleas for arcade coins.

Time has added more raunch, blood and bytes to the arcade but has taken away none of the fun. After whipping the young reviewers in a race car game, we hit the old photo booth and the creaky, antique fortune teller in her glass booth. I put in my quarter, the fortune teller waved her hand over a glass ball and my fortune spit out on a card.

“Beware of Friday the 13th,” it said.

I was pretty sure she gave me the same fortune about 20 years ago. But that’s fitting in a place where the future looks so much like the past.

details

FARGO’SPIZZA CO.

3 stars (age defying) Out of five (descriptions of ratings at gazettedine.blogspot.com)

Address: 2910 E. Platte Ave.

Phone: 473-5540

Entrees: $3.75-$18.85

Hours: 11 a.m-9 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays.

Vegetarian: yes

Liquor service: beer and wine

Plastic: yes