About as good as pizza gets in California. Â Yummy crust, good ingredients, and Nor Cal favorite Sierra Nevada on tap. Â Minus one star for the overall look of the place (sign outside, decorations, etc.), but this is definitely the best tasting pizza you're going to get on I-5 in the North Valley. Â Oh, and a good selection of arcade games for the kiddies.
Review Source:I had a yen for something vaguely Italian and this place was within a stone's throw of my motel, so I strolled over. The combos all looked pretty good, and I ordered the "Ragin' Cajun". I was warned that it was "Hot. Like REALLY hot" and asked if I wanted to order something different for one side of the pizza. Me and hot are friends, but variety sounded good, so I got the alfredo/chicken/garlic combo (forgot the name) for the other half. The cashier had a good sense of humor, and gave the cook a hard time about my Ragin' - I guess his eyes water whenever he has so make one, so they're not his favorite, but they were funny about it and I enjoyed the interaction.
After ordering, I went back to my motel for a quick shower and the pizza was in the warmer for me when I returned in a mere 15 minutes. Both sides were GOOD. Large, succulent chunks of chicken, tasty sauces, flavorful topping, and good crust - yum!! I'd recommend this to any pizza lover within an hour drive in a heartbeat.
Oh and not every reviewer would do this, but I have it 5 stars in spite of the cheap n' cheezy interior decor (classic lowbrow pizza joint look), faded sign out front, and questionable-looking apartments attached to the back of the same building. It Doesn't look like the kind of place you'd go get great pizza, so I thought that was a cool surprise. No, you're not going to want to chill out in here for hours, but that's probably not the point.
Corning, California, is one of my regular stops on I-5 in California, it's about 2 hours north of Sacto, and the reason I always stop there is to buy olives.
The Olive Pit has a zillion varieties, and I always buy a few giant jugs of them to tide me over until the next time I zip through there.
The store is open long hours, but once I arrived in town ten seconds too late, and was so determined to get some olives, I spent the night in a motel there, to wait for them to open.
Having stopped there on my southbound leg this trip, I didn't need to stop there going home, but coincidentally, it was time to stop for the night, and Corning was as good a place as any to get a cheap motel. Â
I found it, and it was packed full of coyotes and illegals, coming and going all night in vans, but perusing the restaurant literature in the room (which was astonishingly clean), I saw a flyer for Marco's Pizza, and figured I would get a pie to go, enjoy it in the room, have something to write about.
I took the flyer to the car, to get the address into the Tom Tom, started the car, looked up to back out, and saw the Marco's sign right next door to the motel. Duh. Â That was easy.
I ordered an All Meat pie, which at Marco's includes more than your average pic-i-nic basked pizza, with salami, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, Italian sausage, ground beef and linguica. Â For those of you not familiar with the last ingredient, it's also known as "Portuguese Sausage" and is a northern Cali topping of choice, many places.
After the requisite 12 minutes, I paid for the pie ($18.15 for a 14) - Marco's also offers a 16 and 18, and hobbled back to the room.
The pie was a medium thickness on the crust side, crispy at the rim, and chewy towards the middle. Â "Hang" was substantial, and toppings did plop in the box, and you know how much I hate that!
It's a good slice to do a Manhattan style chew tho, if you're into rolling your slices. Â
I liked the toppings, should have ordered double cheese, but all of the pork products had great flavor and texture.
I'll go back, on my journeys. Â I just tried to see if they had a website, and most links lead to a small chain of the same name, but I don't think they are affiliated.