Chico's is back
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Juan Servin has made dough from scratch for Chico’s for nearly three years.
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald A pair of Hochstatter Specials bake in Chico’s new pizza oven.
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Happy customers walk into Chicago right after the doors open for the first time in nearly a year on Monday.
MOSES LAKE — It took nearly a year, and a little last minute nail biting, but it finally happened.
Chico’s is open again.
Doors opened at 4 p.m. on Monday, but people began lining up at 3 p.m., and by the time Chico’s started taking orders, the line stretched to the end of the Vista Village shopping center.
“It tastes exactly the same!” one happy customer said.
The restaurant is new — the insides are clean, the kitchen sparkles white, and the giant oven cooks hotter and faster. But some things haven’t changed, like the heaps of olives, the mounds of bacon and oceans of shrimp.
And the wait for what many call “the best pizza in Moses Lake.”
The landmark eatery burned down on Jan. 20, 2018, after debris behind the oven caught fire and quickly spread.
Third-generation owner Mitch Zornes promised to rebuild as soon as possible, and even continued to pay his staff.
“It’s awesome,” said Chico’s manager Shelbie Milner as the kitchen crew waited for the doors to open. “I’ve worked here for eight years, my boss is cool, we all knew we would come back.”
“To me, it tasted better,” said assistant manager Mariah Kohn. “I think it was because I didn’t have it for so long, so then I had it, and I’m like oh my gosh, it’s even better than before!”
Kohn, too, is a longtime Chico’s employee, and knew she was going to come back as well.
“He’s always taken care of his employees, always treated us well. That’s why we stuck around,” Kohn said.
Zornes himself was nervous as he watched his employees make pizzas, including the house special — the Hochstatter, with its mountains of bacon, pepperoni and olives.
He said the pizza gets its name from Cliff Hochstatter of Hochstatter Electric, who would come in and order pizzas with bacon added “on top” and extra ham “underneath.”
One day, someone asked for that special pizza Hochstatter ordered, Zornes said.
“And then Dad put it on the menu,” he added.
That and the Hawaiian are Chico’s most popular pizzas, Zornes said.
“Make a bunch of those at the beginning and we’ll sell them by the end of the night,” he said.
In the back, Juan Servin, who has worked for Chico’s for nearly three years, makes the dough, pouring flour from giant 50-pound sacks.
“To be fresh, everything is from scratch,” he said. “It has to rise for 48 hours at just the right temperature or it’s no good.”
Hopefully, all the people who waited in line, who waited nearly a year to come back to work, will find that while a lot has changed, nothing has really changed.
“Everyone said it tastes the same. It’s the same old Chico’s,” Kohn added.