Louie’s Pizza serves old-school nostalgia in Layton
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- Kim and Don Wixom, owners of Louie’s Pizzeria in Layton.
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- Cheese bread is stuffed with garlic butter and mozzarella at Louie’s Pizzeria.
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- The Piggy Pie at Louie’s Pizzeria in Layton gets its sweet-smoky flavor from pineapple and brown-sugar glazed bacon.
Walking into Louie’s Pizzeria in Layton is like stepping back 40 years, when patrons sat at red-checked tablecloths or played arcade games while waiting for their pizza. Over the years, most of those old-school pizza parlors have given way to takeout and home delivery. But Louie’s is still a place where you can sit down with a friend for lunch or take the family out for dinner.
In fact, it was a family’s weekly “pizza night” that led them to become the owners of Louie’s.
Don and Kim Wixom had a Thursday “family pizza night” tradition.
“We decided to try all the local top pizzerias in the area, and this soon became our number one,” Don Wixom said. “We didn’t want to go anywhere else. Not long after that, we found out it was for sale.”
The Wixoms bought it in 2021, despite having very little restaurant experience. They spent a few months training with former owner, Spencer Whipple, who opened Louie’s in 2018. They kept the name, “Louie’s,” which has a tie-in to Whipple’s middle name and the Western novelist, Louis L’Amour. Wixom said Whipple’s middle name is L’Amour.
“We wanted to keep things as much the same as we could,” Kim Wixom said. “Louie’s already had a good customer base, and we didn’t want people to think we were changing things up.”
“And we kept the previous owner’s recipes, because that’s what brought us here in the first place,” Don Wixom said.
They did, however, add the Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote pizzas, which both have green chiles.
Alongside the old reliable pepperoni, you’ll find more creative toppings, such as Cajun Chicken, Buffalo Blue, Mama Mia (spicy sriracha and sausage) and Chick-A-Wafe (pepper jack cheese, breaded chicken and tomatoes, with pickles added after baking).
Many of these combos are also stuffed into calzones.
The Piggy Pie is one of the most popular pizzas. It’s spread with white garlic sauce and topped with mozzarella, pineapple and brown-sugar-glazed bacon. Each bite is a taste of sweet, salt and smoke.
Don Wixom loves the calzones, but his favorite pizza is the Feta-Roni, where the dough is spread with garlic white sauce and topped with pepperoni, feta cheese and basil.
Kim’s current favorite is the BBQ chicken pizza.
Some staffers have created pizzas that are offered as short-term specials. This past summer, the special was birria pizza, described by Kim Wixom as “a street taco on a pizza.”
The nostalgic ambiance isn’t the only thing that sets Louie’s apart, according to Kim Wixom.
“We make our own dough (except for the gluten-free dough), our own marinara, our own garlic butter and ranch dressing,” she said. “We chop our mushrooms at the time the pizza’s ordered to make everything as fresh as possible.”
Kim Wixom mixes the dough at night and lets it cold-rise overnight or longer to give the dough texture. The prepared pizzas are cooked in a gas-fired conveyor oven, which takes about eight minutes.
Make-your-own pizzas are sold by the size, not the number of toppings. Customers can choose as many toppings as they want at no extra charge, Don Wixom said.
There’s a lunch special of $7.49 for a large slice of pizza, two breadsticks and a drink.
When the space next door became available, the Wixoms took it over and it became the Main Street Arcade. There’s a doorway between the arcade and the pizza parlor.
“It’s popular with dates, families, sports teams and older gentlemen who want to reminisce about arcades and their childhood,” Don Wixom said. “It’s really helped our business.”
Even so, the duo said that sit-down dining makes up only about 25% to 30% of their pizza sales. The rest comes from takeout (they have a drive-thru window) and delivery through DoorDash and Grub Hub.
Location: 1095 N. Main Street
Contact: https://www.ilovelouies.com or 801-784-8781
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Pizza prices: $10.99 for small to $26.99 for X-large (18-inch)
