- Travel
- Food And Drink
Sometimes hungry customers even arrive by dogsled.
By
Oliver Lee Bateman
Nestled in the “golden heart” of Alaska’s frigid interior, about 30 miles outside of Fairbanks and 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle, lies a pizza-eater’s hidden treasure. Surrounded by towering spruce trees and obscured much of the year by snow, the scenic route to this nigh-mythical spot isn’t for the faint of heart. Journeying along the wide-open Steese Highway and then driving another 20 miles on the solitary Chena Hot Springs Road, travelers will eventually find a converted 1985 Ford school bus parked in a welcome clearing.
This isn’t just any bus, mind you. It’s a fully-contained food truck that boasts more styles of regional pizza than any other pizzeria in North America. Located just at the end of Anders Avenue, visitors arrive by all means of transport—bicycles, motorcycles with sidecars, snowmobiles, and even sled-dog teams braving the area’s intense winter storms.
Wagner’s Pizza Bus, which has been operated by Mike and Diana Wagner since 2013, serves more than 30 varieties of regional pizza, creating a veritable map of America’s favorite pies right in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. From the cold-cheese “Ohio Valley” pizza of my hometown of Pittsburgh to Connecticut’s charred-crispy “apizza,” Wagner’s has it all. For pizza aficionados like me, who can distinguish between the sweet, basil-spiced simplicity of a red sauce-topped Trenton tomato pie and the tangy, thicker crust of its related but nevertheless distinct cousin, the South Philly pizzazz, on mouthfeel alone, its menu is both bewildering and a dream come true.
Other offerings include the rectangular Detroit style; the deep, cheese-laden Chicago deep dish as well as the thin Chicago tavern style; and the chewy, square Sicilian. And if those pies aren’t your thing, you can savor the creamy, provel-topped St. Louis cracker crust, or enjoy the nostalgic taste of a pan-baked, square-cut Old Forge pizza from Pennsylvania. Then there’s the hearty, pan-fried Buffalo, New York variety, D.C.’s jumbo slices and the finest pies Denver has to offer, pizza traditionally sold by the pound and served with a side of honey that was invented in Idaho Springs, Colorado.
The list only keeps going from there. Each pizza has its own story, its own distinct flavor, and its own legion of fans.
As for how all these pizzas got here—a place not far from where parents tell their kiddos Santa Claus lives—Mike Wagner spotted a school bus parked along the side of the road with a sign that read “Pizza Bus for Sale” while on a fishing trip to Delta Junction, Alaska, a city of about 950 people roughly 100 miles south of Fairbanks. Intrigued, he took his wife to see it the following weekend. “There was no phone number to contact, so we left our number on the bus,” he tells me. “A few weeks later, they called us back and we bought it. It was already set up with a pizza oven.”
The bus, originally called “Snarling Grizzly Pizza,” had been selling pizza in Delta Junction since the early 1980s. After purchasing it, though, the Wagners made some modifications. “We moved some equipment around to make it more user-friendly and updated the gear,” Mike explains. “We also painted it red with a white roof for heat reflection in the summer.”
Originally, Mike and Diana, Pennsylvania kids who emigrated to the near-Arctic 20 years ago to experience all that Alaska had to offer by way of outdoor activities and an improved quality of life, weren’t planning on offering such a diverse menu, which has now ballooned to include regional sandwiches such as Philly cheesesteaks and Southern-style chili dogs, as well as original signatures like their breakfast pizza (scrambled eggs, two cheeses, and ham, bacon, or sausage) and their pickle pizza (pickles, dill, and mozzarella over a white garlic sauce).
“We started with our white pizza and Sicilian because they were my go-tos when I got slices while hanging out at the malls back home,” explains Mike. “Then, in 2017, we added Chicago and Detroit style pizzas because they were popping up all over Facebook. Until then, they only had round pies up here. Coming from a place like Pennsylvania, hoagies and different kinds of pizza were basically in our blood, so it was fitting that all the rest started to come as we began digging into the food blogs and studying how to make these other varieties.”
These new offerings sold well—Diana can stretch 100-plus pie crusts by hand on a busy day when the bus, which has just one pizza oven, is servicing a big event in town, with each pie netting a small profit—and allowed them to extend their customer base beyond local firefighters fighting forest fires. “During the fires, we started doing burgers for the firefighters,” says Mike. “Our regulars asked us to keep them, so we did. Then we added hot dogs to go with the burgers, and we wanted them to match some of the regional pizzas. We even brought in Italian beef from Chicago.”
“We realized people need to eat no matter what, and our bus is equipped with a generator, so they can come here when there are storms and the power goes out [temperatures can drop to 50 below in the surrounding area] and know that we’re going to be open,” Mike continues. “Our pizza has even fed dog mushers on the Iditarod and Yukon Quest dog-sled races.”
In terms of how their Alaskan wilderness pizzas compare to the real thing, Ryan Christie, a longtime patron who shares my love of Ohio Valley style pizza, which features cold cheese and other toppings added after the fact to a thick crust that’s cooked in a deep sheet tray, places Wagner’s Ohio Valley above that of Pittsburgh’s Beto’s and Osso’s of Washington, Pennsylvania—very high praise given where he and I come from. “They’re absolute obsessives when it comes to food quality,” he tells me. “Everything is researched, and they’ll tell you about all of it if you ask—and each region’s crust is very distinct.”
Of course, not all regional pizza stans are as open-minded as Christie. Some, in fact, openly scorn other styles, such as mocking the American cheese used on Altoona pizza. Wagner, who loves learning about new pizza styles and has expanded his own repertoire by trading recipes with food bloggers, understands that people have preferences, but doesn’t see the point in labeling one style as bad, off-limits, or inedible.
“With something like the Altoona Hotel pizza, I’ll see people say that it’s not a pizza because it has yellow cheese on it,” he argues. “I tell them you can’t judge it in comparison to other pizza. You have to try it as a whole new food, no different than our pickle pizza or the pizza we make with mustard sauce, which is an awesome variation on the Trenton tomato pie that starts with a drizzle of mustard, then cheese, and finally the pizza sauce on top. True Italian pizza didn’t even have cheese on it, but all these immigrants bringing it to America started putting their own spin on it.”
That’s hard-won wisdom, particularly in a never-ending regional pizza battle where taking it personal—and then making it personal—seems to be part of the fun. But then again, Mike is also acutely aware of just how special his operation is: “I read a story a few weeks ago about a guy claiming to do a lot of regional pizzas, but when I went through it, it was mostly just different toppings on a handful of styles. Even Tony Gemignani, with all his award-winning pizzerias, doesn’t match what we do. There are styles not on our menu that we can still make, like California style or Turkish pide pizza, which is shaped a bit like a canoe. We make more regional pizzas than any other place in the world, and we do it all from a bus in Alaska.”
Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work
