Slice of college: How pizza shaped the Redbird experience
The first bite
John and Fred Baldini, children of immigrant parents from Lucca, Italy, brought pizza, a little-known novelty in America at the time, to town in 1936 when they opened Lucca Grill in Downtown Bloomington. A 1953 Vidette ad touted Lucca’s “choice steaks, Italian pizza, and spaghetti.”
Takeout options, such as Casella’s Pizza Palace, opened near campus in the mid-1950s. A 1955 Vidette article introducing Homecoming court nominee Mary Broomfield ’56 contained the paper’s first account of a college student enjoying pizza under the headline “Mary Likes Pizza.” Another Vidette story in 1957 described “a pizza party and dancing” at Smith Hall.
Newspaper feature
Vidette extras
Normal twist on Chicago flavor
“My check register was: Micheleo’s, Micheleo’s, Micheleo’s, Kroger,” said Mick Hall ’89. “Those were priorities in the ’80s.”
As the food manager and treasurer for his fraternity, John Narish ’93 took full advantage of a Micheleo’s Sunday evening deal. “I looked at what the regular meal was going to cost versus taking the house to the pizza place,” Narish said. His favorite was cheese, sausage, and extra sauce. “Micheleo’s was far cheaper than the cost of feeding the guys through our service. Everyone loved it, and I was a hero.”
By the late-1980s, more than 25 pizza places served Bloomington-Normal. The list included Chicago Dough Company and Papa John’s, which was unrelated to the national franchise and located in a “small shack at the corner of Willow and Normal,” according to the Vidette.
Pizza World, which originated in Normal in 1970 and became a small franchise, was another student favorite. In 1979, the company paraded its fleet of 34 red and white AMC Spirit delivery cars through campus, and across Central Illinois, to mark its rise in the world of pizza.
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