Some
things were just meant to go together. Peanut butter and jelly.
Movies and popcorn. Macaroni and cheese.
Or there’s cookies
and milk – the adult version. It’s the combination Mike
Salviola has devoted the last 30 years of his life to serving: pizza
and beer.
“Beer just tastes
really good with pizza,” Salviola says. Buffalo Alice, his
Sioux City bar and pizza joint, has been cranking both out since
1976. Located in the Historic 4th Street area of downtown Sioux
City, Buffalo Alice has perfected the classic combination with variety
and freshness.
The building is divided
into two halves by a wall of 28 beer taps. Each side has a refrigerator
stocked with 125 more beer selections in bottles. From Budweiser
to Bitburger, from Red Dog to Red Hook to Red Stripe, Buffalo Alice
offers a worldly beer selection that hales from St. Louis, Missouri
to Tokyo, Japan.
The pizza, however,
is totally homemade. Buffalo Alice offers 35 ingredients –
all fresh. The vegetables are hand-cut. The meat is never frozen
or pre-cooked. Salviola got his sauce recipe from his grandma who
emigrated from Italy at age 15. Now the sauce – a slight variation
of grandma’s original – is made fresh in the kitchen.
In pursuit of beer,
pizza, or – better yet – both, herds of customers keep
Buffalo Alice bustling daily from lunch to close.
“We have a good
lunch crowd, happy hour crowd, dinner crowd and late-night crowd,”
Salviola says. That’s odd. Normally, he says, you have to
pick just one. “You’re either perceived as a restaurant
or a late-night bar,” Salviola says. “The late-night
crowd doesn’t want to go to a restaurant and the restaurant
crowd doesn’t want to go out to eat at a bar.”
That’s why Buffalo
Alice accommodates both. A center wall lined with beer taps separates
the baby boomers listening to the Beatles and conversing over a
pizza and a round of imports from the 20-somethings listening to
Pearl Jam and drinking whatever is on special.
But the wall that divides
age generations and music genres doesn’t divide the overall
atmosphere of Buffalo Alice. The walls that surround (and divide)
the establishment are decked out with old signage, posters and record
album covers. Some are antique – like the neon Eddy’s
Lounge sign that used to mark the entrance to a popular Sioux City
bar back in the 1940s. Some are commemorative – like the old
Wonder Bread advertisement featuring hall-of-fame ballplayers Stan
Musial and Micky Mantle. Salviola’s old rock and roll album
covers tile the top third of the entire west wall.
“It gives people
a lot of different things to look at. It’s comfortable. It’s
retro,” Salviola says. “Instead of having a whole bunch
of beer signs on the walls, it’s almost more like a museum.
It’s very comfortable.”
As is the Historic 4th
street area where Buffalo Alice resides. Salviola moved his business
there in 1995 before the city restored it and gave it the classic
nostalgia it has today. The customers followed the pizza and beer,
proving to the city that the area was worthy of a makeover.
“This area was
all old abandoned buildings,” Salviola says. “I came
down here because the people that owned this property had vision
and wanted to get something going. The city came and restored the
area and made it a real friendly environment to start a business.”
Location, however, is
only part of the equation for running a successful establishment,
he says. Hard work and long hours are absolute requirements. Commitment
is key.
“If it’s
your business and it’s your life, you better be there,”
Salviola says. “If it’s your dream and something you
want, you better be there.”
That’s why Salviola
has been at Buffalo Alice 60 hours a week for 30 years. The man
and his bar go together like peas and carrots. Or better yet –
pizza and beer.
Buffalo Alice: The Story
Behind the Name
The day before launching
his bar and pizza restaurant in 1976, Mike Salviola had one decision
left to make: what was he going to call it?
“You pick a name
and you’re stuck with it,” Salviola said. “I made
a decision to not make a decision.”
So he opened a Rand
McNally road atlas, closed his eyes, extended his index finger and
stuck it on the map. It landed between two small towns in North
Dakota—one called Buffalo and one called Alice. Hence the
name Buffalo Alice.
“The place could
have just as easily been called Des Moines,” he said. “Wherever
my finger landed, that was going to be it.”
Lucky for Salviola,
the name has worked out quite well.
“As people were
driving by, they noticed a place with a strange name that looked
interesting, Salviola said. “They came in to check it out,
they liked it, and they told their friends. It’s just a weird
enough name that people remember it. It’s great advertising.”
Ironically, the name
that helped put Buffalo Alice on the map came from a map that gave
Buffalo Alice its name.
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