Pizza Around Illinois: Old School Pizza

Malta 10/8/23

Old School Pizza

Malta (DeKalb County)

October 8, 2023

30 years ago, our high school boys soccer team went on the road on a Saturday to play at Malta High School. As they reached the end of the 45 minute bus ride, they found to their surprise a surprisingly large crowd, and even more surprisingly, floats. It turned out that this was Malta’s homecoming game - and not just the soccer game that coincided with homecoming week, but the actual homecoming game, because Malta was so small they didn’t have a football team. In turn, because they didn’t have a football team, any kid who might have played football, they played soccer instead, and so all of the best athletes in the school played soccer. Malta won by a score like 11-0.

If not for that anecdote, I myself - someone who knows far too much about far too many tiny places across the state - might have had no idea Malta, Illinois even existed.

As is the case with many small towns in Illinois and elsewhere, the demographics finally reached the point where it was no longer viable to maintain a separate district. Malta was absorbed into the much larger DeKalb district in 2000. There’s still a Malta Elementary School, just east of town on Illinois Route 38, but the original school in the middle of the town proper just became a large empty building, a testament to the experience of so many other small towns.

In 2019, though, the old school was reborn.

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It would a strange enough tale to write about a pizza place inside of a shuttered school building. But that might not make the place that interesting to actually visit, especially when it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Old School Pizza doubles down on the promise of its name though: not only is it literally inside an old school, the restaurant is packed to the gills with old school pop culture paraphernalia. Much of it from right out of the ‘80s, it’s a Gen X menagerie, but with a fringe lean, including a lot of elements of punk rock, skateboarding, and an entire display dedicated to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Here’s just one corner of the place:

In this photo alone, you’ve got: Elvis; James Dean; Archie and Edith Bunker; Alf and ET; Laverne and Shirley; Leonardo the Ninja Turtle; and, yes, that’s the lamp from A Christmas Story.

Then there’s the stuff hanging from the ceiling:

And then there’s the wrestling / punk corner:

That guitar on the left is autographed by Joe Queer of the Queers.

I tried to avoid getting any actual people in any photos, so you’re only getting a small piece of the overall vibe here. And the entryway, because of course a place like this wouldn’t be complete without them, has a handful of classic ‘80s video games, like this one:

I was smart enough not to subject my family to standing around and watching me play Galaga for a half hour.

The night we were there, the place was apparently a lot busier than usual, because our server told us as much, and apologized multiple times for it. But the service was totally fine! The kitchen was just a little backed up, but we didn’t have to wait to get seated or anything like that, and it’s not like there wasn’t all kinds of stuff to distract us.

Recognizing though the pizza might take a while, we did get an appetizer:

It was good garlic bread and worked exactly as intended, tiding us over until the main course arrived:

As has been the case at other places, we went half cheese, half veg, this time with onions / mushrooms / green peppers / garlic. The dough, you might be able to see from the picture, is hand pinched around the edge, and was a little chewy, especially on the vegetable half. It was a hit overall though. It didn’t need to be a better than average pizza at this point to make for a better than average experience, but it was legitimately a very good pie, especially the cheese half.

We have no idea who the regular clientele is supposed to be. Malta happens to be very close to the Northern Illinois campus, only about 10 minutes from any of the dorms, but they don’t do delivery (unless Doordash or something fills that gap), so I’m not sure if college kids are even the main audience. Also, would any 19 year old today even know who Elvira is? The night we were there, we seemed to actually be a prime demographic: families with kids. But if there are so few kids in Malta that they literally shut down the school district, where are all these kids coming from?

This, I believe, is a mystery which should remain mysterious. Sometimes it’s best not to ask too many questions about the old school.

So if you ever find yourself wandering out west of DeKalb, which, of course, you eventually will, and you’re thinking, gosh, I’d really like to have pizza, but I’d really like to have it while sitting next to recovered McDonald’s Play Land artifacts and NOFX posters, let me tell you, you will be in luck. Maybe you too will be able to celebrate with Freddie Mercury: