We’d been driving for hours through the middle of no where Montana without passing through any normal sized towns. I needed to eat. We had stuff for sandwiches in the back, but Erisa and Anxhela were pretty adamantly against sandwiches on this particular day. The closest thing my Around Me app could find was nearly an hour’s drive away. So we all agreed to stop in the nearest town we could find. We found one about 10 miles away,  an extra 5 miles from the highway…

I can’t even remember the name. But when I typed ‘restaurants in H—‘ it gave me one restaurant.

We drove into the downtown area (aka a main street with like 5 buildings total), parked next to the only other car in sight, and walked up to our suggested restaurant to find it locked. It was a Saturday in a super small town, so I wasn’t too surprised.

Across the street, we saw the only lit up building we could find. Some kind of bar. They had a sign about breakfast, so we decided that surely they had SOME kind of food that could be served.

Not knowing at all what to expect, we walked in.

5 old guys in cowboy hats sitting at the bar with ‘ma’ behind the bar givin out beers to the guys. The youngest was probably 45. And everyone else went up from there.

Everyone got silent when we walked in. I felt somewhat at ease since ‘ma’ was there behind the counter.

I politely asked if they served any kind of food. Ma said they had pizza, burgers, and corn dogs. She told us the pizzas are some of the best she’s ever had — made all the way in North Dakota.

We decided to take a pizza. You can’t go wrong with pizza, right?

At this point, ma’s son, the youngest, came up holding a pizza to show us.

He was very clearly drunk, along with all the other guys, but trying oh so hard to respectfully hold it together and be a gentlemen to these
fine young ladies. It was funny, but I really appreciated the effort as we had already had several not-so-polite encounters with very drunk not-gentlemen.

He walked over with the pizza to show us proudly. I asked what kinds they had and he motioned for me to follow him to the freezer. As we approached, another drunk guy trying to hold himself together hopped off the top of the pizza freezer where he’d been sitting.

The young guy opened it up, pulled out a few pizzas, put them back, and said something like, “well, ya know, you can just pick out whatever you want”.

I was glad. But then I realized all the pizzas I was digging through were all the same. It was some bizarre flavor that I can’t even name. It looked awful, but it was our only choice. And I mean, how bad could a pizza be?…

While waiting, the guys asked us about our trip, gave us some recommendations, most of them mentioning a casino at least once, and told us stories about their children. The young guy told us an amusing story about how he took his son to this casino town to teach him that gambling’s a bust and he shouldn’t do it, but every time he pulled a lever to show that the machines just eat your money, he actually won some money.

Finally they left us to our dr. Peppers in peace for a while, and they went back to watching a local rodeo on the small bar television. Periodically, the guy on the freezer would hop down, walk over to our table and say through slurred words, “Ladies, I just wanna apologize for my potty mouth. I’m an old man, I say crazy stuff, just excuse my language.” He came 3 or 4 times to tell us that. We Hadnt even been listening to him.

So a few minutes later, the young guy comes up and asks, “so how do you ladies want your pizza cooked?”

I thought it was a joke, so I laughed and said, “uhhh, the normal amount?”

He said quite seriously, “well do you like it a little frozen or a little burnt? I’m not sure I can cook it in the middle.” I just laughed and said, “just cook it the normal amount”

A few minutes later, he took a not fully cooked pizza out of the toaster oven and brought it to our table for us to look at…

We sent him back to cook the half frozen pizza a little more.

He came back a second time with a still not fully cooked pizza, so we sent him back again.

Third time’s a charm. So we took it the third time.

Without a doubt, the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten. I wanted to throw up like the entire time I was eating it.

Needless to say, we survived the hopefully once in a lifetime experience, and Erisa and Anxhela never complained about eating sandwiches again.