Aaron Landry

Apollo Pizza at West Branch Bar & Grill, originally uploaded by Aaron Landry.

Finland, Minnesota is small town between the north shore of Lake Superior and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Along the Baptism River, it’s an old logging town that’s now home to few people, a co-op and a few watering holes including the West Branch Bar & Grill.

Upon a strong recommendation, I trekked out to visit and was pleasantly greeted by the bartender in an extra-large purple Minnesota Vikings shirt. The interior was lit with hanging Michelob fixtures flanked by mounted deer on the walls. An inflated NASCAR scale replica sat above a refrigerator. While the bartender was personable, when asked how he was doing he responded with the low bar of assuring us he was still breathing and upright. He told us the pizza was the best part of the menu and what they’re “known for,” correctly assuming we were not from the area and haven’t previously visited.

With some delay, our waitress took our order and to pass the time we borrowed a deck of cards from the bar. After a number of rounds of Rummy, we cleared the cards to receive our “Apollo Pizza,” as it was named in the mid-1960’s (and still referred to as on some of the outdoor signage). I was mildly surprised considering the recommendations: the Apollo Pizza at West Branch Bar & Grill was an exaggeration of every bad stereotype of pizza in the Midwest.

There was no visible edge to the crust as the cheese and sauce bled off the edges to a burnt crisp. A spotted pool of bright orange grease covered the entire tavern-cut pie and the cheese was overly thick but broke apart easily. Biting in, this cheese was the opposite of stringy: a seemingly synthetic block of tasteless mass. The sauce was generic and it was all held together with a crust a bit thicker than a sheet of construction paper soaked in grease. There was pepperoni too. It felt that the ingredients were the least expensive in North America — most frozen pizza I’ve tried is better.

Even though we arrived extremely hungry, we couldn’t see ourselves finishing the two-person pizza and left a third of it behind. After waiting a significantly long time for our bill and then again to pay our waitress, we went up to the bar to close up and drop off the playing cards. After humorously bouncing to different spots at the bar, it got to the point where we both had to stand at opposite sides to get the bartender’s attention even after he acknowledged I was there. He wasn’t rude and wasn’t ignoring us, he was just overwhelmed by the demands of the regulars, the four Jägermeister and Red Bull shots he had to prepare and the takeout order a neighbor was trying to pay for. The classic hits were cranked up at this point, the locals were swapping their stories over cheap beer and the party was just seeming to start. We were on the way out, never to return.

West Branch Bar & Grill
6701 Highway 1
Finland, MN 55603
218-353-7493