In the early 90s, when I was 13 years old or so, a friend's dad treated us to an OU football game in Norman— a boring, sad, and very basic Oklahoma coming-of-age experience, especially when you don't care about sports.
My memory from the game is cloudy – I don't remember who played or the score – but afterward, my friend's dad treated us to pizza at a place that would stick in my mind forever – Pinocchio’s.
At the time, my pizza boundaries were primarily defined by Totino’s and Jeno's, so this trip to a real-life pizzeria was a life-changing experience, opening up a whole new culinary world that I only heard about in legend, TV commercials, and Ninja Turtle comics.
At Pinocchio's, I remember taking bite after bite of the delicious sliced pie, getting food drunk on the intoxicating mixture of lightly sweetened pizza sauce and gooey cheese, along with their decadent and buttery sesame-based breadsticks.
I'd stop by Pinocchio’s a few more times in my troubled life, trying other items on the menu but when I moved to Fort Collins in the early 2000s, it – along with my memory of it – was demolished for a new parking structure, and tossed into the "Remember When?" pile.
Until now.