Quad Cities

Harris Pizza

Location: 3903 14th Ave, Rock Island, IL

Cost: Around $15 per person

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Roots Pizza in Chicago. I still haven't been, but I read online that they consider themselves to be "Quad Cities" style pizza. I don't know about you, but I had no idea what that meant. Luckily, my roommate Jeremy's dad is from Rock Island, the home of Harris Pizza. When people say Quad Cities style, I think they really just mean the way Harris Pizza makes it. That is with plenty of malt in the dough and rectangular pieces cut with scissors.

Now Jeremy's dad happens to be a pilot. When he found out how interested we all were in the pizza, he offered to fly us out there for the day to try it out. So Ricky, Jeremy, his dad, and I got into this small 6-seater plane and flew over there last weekend. We were also joined by Jeremy's grandmother who picked us up from the airport.

  

Logistics
Harris Pizza has multiple locations, but we went to #1. They give you a nice view of the guys in the back tossing the dough. The second you step in you can smell the malt, almost like you're walking into a brewery. There's a bar in the front and plenty of seating behind that. Midday Sunday didn't
have much of a crowd, but I'm under the impression that you could easily wait all night on a Friday or Saturday. The staff was really friendly, and the cost was very reasonable. For a large pie, you'll spend just over $20.
 

The Food
We went with two large pies, one with sausage, and the other half spinach and mushroom, half pepperoni and mushroom. The sausage is the specialty more or less. It's almost like ground beef since they crumble the sausage into little pieces. There's good overall coverage and lingering spiciness. The crust had a good crunch at first but was plenty chewy, and despite the lengthy rectangular pieces, it held up nicely to the weight of the toppings. The other pizza was pretty good, but the mushrooms were clearly out of a can. The pepperoni was extra greasy and left that delicious, spicy, red, oily film on top of the cheese.

The Pepperoni and Mushroom

The Sausage Pizza

Overall
I haven't been to Roots yet, but I hope it stands up to Harris. The crust has a unique flavor that was totally worth the flight out west. The sausage crumbles also threw a welcome curveball our way. If you ever find yourself in the Quad Cities, this is a must visit.

Whitey's
Location: 2520 18th Ave., Rock Island, IL
Cost: Around $5 per person

After a rather filling meal of pizza, the group was all ready to pack it up and head home, but Jeremy's grandmother said we couldn't leave town without going to Whitey's.

Logistics
Whitey's is a very clean looking ice cream joint with a long counter in front of plenty of stations for making milk shakes. In fact, they claim to have invented the Milk Shake (along with the ice cream flavor chocolate chip cookie dough). It was quick, cheap, and they had some benches out front for us to enjoy our shakes on.

The Food
We all got shakes. I went with chocolate and got to try some of Ricky's strawberry too. As they promised, you can hold the shake upside down without it falling on the ground. It was so thick that the straw was more pointless than when Wendy's gives you one with a frosty. I liked the strawberry more than the chocolate but both were great.

The Chocolate Shake

Overall
Inventors of the shake or not, they do things right. If you don't like thick shakes then don't even bother. Watch out for the brain freeze too. Finally, I would advise against anyone with a sensitive stomach to eat as much as we did and then fly back to Chicago (although Mr. Spector provided a very smooth flight home).