Luncheon Buffet Sports Nifty Spaghetti Sauce at Shakey’s


MAY 2, 1990


Shakey’s was the gathering place when a bunch of us got together for lunch Thursday. We found plenty of food left on the luncheon buffet, even though it was after 1 o’clock and there had been a couple of buses of schoolchildren there.

What we found at Shakey’s was a salad bar, pizza, spaghetti and meat sauce, fried chicken, garlic bread, mojo potatoes, soup and dessert pizza. All of this for $3.95. And that includes a beverage.

So, we staked out a table for seven. Then we found our way to the cashier, where you pay first to eat later. We looked over the customary salad bar fare of iceberg lettuce, macaroni and potato salad, grated cheese, sunflower seeds, sliced peaches. Well, you know, the usual.

Beyond that, though, we found an assortment of fresh, hot wedges of thin-crust pizza. I took three.

In the next section, I fiddled around trying to get some wiggly spaghetti onto my plate. Just a little, I thought. Enough so I can try the sauce. Then, I saw the mojo potatoes, which are slices of Red River red potatoes breaded and deep-fried. So, I took one. And a half.

It was interesting to see what everyone selected from the buffet. Gerry Vaaler thought the spaghetti sauce was very good. Joyce Pond liked the mojo potatoes. The soup was OK, but no one turned cartwheels over it. Barb Lander thought the garlic bread was good. Donna Gillig, Donna McEnroe and I sampled the blueberry dessert pie with a pizza crust and thought it was quite tasty. The others showed no interest in it.

Along with the Grand Forks Shakey’s, Dennis Farley also owns the Shakey’s restaurant in Fargo. It is managed by his son, Brian Farley. Shakey’s restaurants got their start more than 25 years ago when Shakey Johnson and his partner, Big Ed Plummer, opened the first one in Sacramento, Calif. They wanted a plain old beer joint with something unique. So, they decided to serve pizza and beer and provide live Dixieland music. From those beginnings, Shakey’s Pizza grew into family restaurants with a varied menu.

While many pizza restaurants use imitation cheese or cheese substitutes, Shakey’s claims to use only real cheese, and lots of it. Recently, Shakey’s has added a new hand-tossed “Classic” crust to its lineup of pizza. It’s somewhere between a thin and a deep-dish crust.

Shakey’s no longer operates in Grand Forks.