Restaurants

Incredible Pizza Company fun

The first time I realized Incredible Pizza Company wasn’t just another place to let rugrats roam wild was when I read the  interactive digital billboards on U.S. 31 last month. Let’s face it: A kiddie place rarely advertises a buffet featuring steak and potatoes.

So when my curiosity over what this new chain had done to our old Kroger building hit peak level (defined as “Yep, everyone else on the southside has seen it, so I can probably walk in now.”), I corralled hubby into going over there last Friday. The chaos of color and sound hits you when you walk through the doors, but what sunk in first was the fact this place wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg, which is always a welcome welcome.

The best way to describe Incredible Pizza Company is Golden Corral meets Chuck E Cheese versus Disney World.

The buffet doesn’t offer the overwhelming variety of a Golden Corral, but it’s far more than a Pizza Hut lunch buffet, too. We’re talking 10+ types of pizza, spaghetti, fettuccine, macaroni and cheese, green beans, corn, black-eyed peas, hot dogs, baked potatoes, tacos and enchiladas, steak fingers, chicken fingers, BBQ chicken, chicken tetrazini, chopped steak in mushroom sauce, meat loaf, mashed potatoes … and the usual soup and salads I skip. Dessert had the expected cobblers and some wonderful cinnamon rolls.

And get this — the drink is included in the buffet price, and the fountains offer vanilla and cherry flavor shots. Yes, I’m easily pleased.

A shockingly good time

Selecting your seat is the next hurdle. Incredible Pizza Company divides the dining rooms into themes: the Starlite Drive-In, where diners watch movies like On the Road to Hong Kong in the dark, a Route 66 Diner, the Family Room decked out like Grandma’s dining room or the Gymnasium, where you eat on tables resembling bleachers. My husband chose to watch Bob Hope, probably because the drive-in restaurant at Hollywood Studios in Orlando has always tickled his fancy.

Afterward, it’s game time. The former dairy section is now a go-kart track, while the bakery is a bumper car ring. Back where I used to grab Pepsis and chips on sale, I can now play 9 rounds of putt-putt golf under a black light. There’s also a bowling game, what I used to call Boom Ball when we played it at King’s Island as kids, skeeball (yes, I can still rack up the 50 points) and slew of games for the toddler, elementary and middle school crowds. Playing is almost too easy — my favorites were just 30 cents a game, and you pay by swiping your prepaid card through the reader.

All told, it’s not something I’d pick to do with a group of bored adults (a real bowling alley would rank higher) and I doubt the family would accept a weekend here over a trip to Disney World. But when you’re trying to entertain a mixed group, this is a nice alternative. Or when you just want a lot of food cheap — and have an urge to make science experiments with the flavor shots.

Incredible Pizza Company

8707 Hardegan St.

Indianapolis, IN 46227

(317) 644-0153

Photography: Julie Sturgeon