Za’s Pizza like no other in the city
By Robyn Booth

Reprinted with permission by Columbia Metropolitan Magazine (November/December 2000)

When was the last time you had a pizza? Was it the last time your teenager had a bunch of friends over on a Friday night or you had a busy day and just didn’t feel like cooking?

If so, then you probably had one of those "call now, and if you don’t get it in 30 minutes, it’s free" types with rubbery cheese and questionable toppings that never arrives in less than an hour.

But if the last time you ordered a pizza was while you were dining at or carrying out from Za’s, you probably had an experience you’ll never forget.

Tommy Price and James Bigby, the brains behind the business, knew when they first started talking about opening a restaurant that it definitely would be a pizza place. And they knew what they were going to call it too, after they heard a guy at a bar one night use the term: Za’s, which is California slang for "pizza."

But Tommy and James wanted to make sure that theirs wouldn’t be a typical pizza restaurant. They wanted theirs to be different from anything else in Columbia. "We came up with the idea to use a wood-burning brick oven, similar to the ones used in Chicago’s best pizza restaurants, to make our crusts crispier and less greasy," Tommy says. "And we also decided that we were going to offer a wider range of toppings, so our customers can put anything and everything on their pizzas, instead of just pepperoni and cheese."

Enter Za’s extensive assortment of gourmet toppings: Creole sauce; southwest pesto; barbecue chicken; smoked oysters; salsa; goat cheese; eggplant; keilbasa; red potatoes; sauerkraut; mandarin oranges; capers; carrots; gouda; and Cajun chicken, just to name a few. And while Za’s also offers a wide selection of salads, calzones, sandwiches, soups and pastas, the pizzas are definitely the crowd pleaser.

July 1 marked Za’s second anniversary in business, and patrons are flocking in to enjoy lunch and dinner in the Southwestern themed restaurant on Devine Street, often causing long waits (and lots of stress for the servers.) Tommy’s first foray into the restaurant business is going well, and thanks to his and his partner’s knowledge of what it takes to make a restaurant work, it’s poised to get even better.

First, the restaurant is growing physically. Tommy and James have torn down the wall connecting the current restaurant and the former travel agency next door. In this area, they’ve added about 50 new seats, a few private dining rooms and a six-sided bar in the middle of which sits a wrought iron wine tree (created by North Carolina artist Bill Crowell) whose arms grow up to the ceiling then spread across it.
Second, the restaurant is adding even more toppings to the list, as well as more sandwiches and subs, and Tommy has even mentioned offering a sushi menu. And third, Za’s is offering entertainment while you eat, from live jazz and Carribean music during the week to more acoustic flavorings on the weekends.

All this aside, however, it’s clear that the draw, the reason why people are coming to this restaurant in droves, is the pizza. When dining at Za’s at lunch, try the lunch special: a 6 inch pizza with two toppings, a salad and a drink. Or if you’re there at dinner, consider sharing a huge pizza with your friends. Just make sure they’re all feeling adventurous enough to try it with something like artichoke hearts, black olives and feta cheese. You won’t be disappointed. The crust is crispy and light, the toppings are fresh and plentiful, and the sauce (of which you have an astounding eleven choices) is applied with an artist’s touch, neither too heavily nor too lightly. And the food is consistently good too, due in no small part to the fact that employee turnover is almost nonexistent. "Customer satisfaction is important to us," Tommy says. "We keep our employees happy, and they in turn keep our patrons happy."

And if Tommy and James keep doing exactly what they’re doing at Za’s, offering pizzas like no other in the city, they’re bound to be making their customers happy for quite some time.