Published in November 2009 in the Post Register.
There are a lot of papas in eastern Idaho and a lot of Toms, but there’s only one Papa Tom’s.

The popular pizza restaurant has a complicated business genealogy, but its owners have a simple approach – make good pizza and sell it for a reasonable price.

It’s a family business, originally started by Tom Mueller (he’s “Papa) and now run by son Tim, Tim’s brother, Mike, and other members of the extended family. Tom Mueller’s business roots in Idaho Falls go back to 1964 and his restaurants extend back nearly as far. Papa Tom’s opened in 1983, a remnant of a couple of places old-timers will remember well – the Gaslamp and the Gay 90s.

Those were part of a pizza chain out of Moscow that eventually disappeared, but Tom Mueller took the sauce recipe – it has just a little kick to it – and opened Papa Tom’s.

“We’re pretty old school still,” says Tim Mueller. That includes the old slate-lined pizza ovens that date back to the 1970s. “A lot of people use conveyors now.”

Pizza is still a good business, even though profit margins have tightened some. Cheese prices are all over the place and have been known to spike by 50 cents a pound in just a few months. It may not seem like much, but when you go through 1,300 pounds of cheese a week, that’s a lot of, um, dough.

There’s a pool table in the corner that gets some play, but Papa Tom’s is mostly a family joint where the grandkids of the restaurant’s longtime customers are beginning a third generation of tradition. A lot of competitors have come and gone in the meantime.

“We just want people to be comfortable when they come in,” Mueller says.

The menu includes sandwiches and a wide pizza variety, but you’re not going to get exotic California-style wimpy pizzas at Papa Tom’s, or Chicago-style deep dish for that matter. This is straight-ahead, thin crust pizza that bubbles when they bake it and crunches on the cutting board. It’s been that way for more than a quarter-century now.

Published in the Post Register in November, 2009.
SHELLEY – It’s Halloween afternoon, and in the banquet room at Lazy D’s Dracula is holding court on the literature of Bram Stoker.

In the kitchen, the former owner of a gun holster manufacturer is slicing beef while a nice lady who does community theater runs the fryer. It’s just another Saturday afternoon in downtown Shelley.

Dracula is Deneb Pulsipher. Dressed in full vampire regalia, he’s talking to a small group gathered to learn more about the high art of vampire novels. The former holster maker is Devon Kerbs, who moved from Phoenix to open Lazy D’s last year. Ronnie Jaynes is involved with live theater at the Virginia playhouse next door when she’s not preparing fresh-cut fries and hamburgers.

Kerbs learned his cooking craft on a dude ranch in Monument Valley and as co-owner of a barbecue place in Phoenix. Tired of the big city and with family in eastern Idaho, he bought a restaurant on Shelley’s main drag last year and opened Lazy D’s. Things were going along just fine until the health inspector told him he’d need to replace the floor and kitchen before opening.

He’s particularly proud of his Philly steak sandwich, but the big draw is his fresh-cut fries, including the four-pound “family fries” special. Kerbs has a secret, but he’s willing to share – he hand cuts and pre-fries the potatoes them every morning, chills, them,then gives them another quick bath in extra-hot oil before serving. Nothing served in the restaurant has ever been frozen, he says, and everything is cooked to order. He goes through 100 pounds of potatoes a day.

“I don’t even own a heat lamp,” he says.

Waitress Carrie Darrington tells us about the “woosh” – a concoction of whipping cream, Italian flavoring and soda that was invented by a customer. Lazy D’s has gone from serving a handful of flavored Italian sodas to 20 flavors.

It’s not just a burger joint – there are pastas and salads on the menu, too, featuring Kerbs’ own sauce recipes. But when in doubt, get the fries.