Pizza Supreme

For Slate, Luke Winkie visits a rare sit-down Pizza Hut located in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, to learn more about why the restaurant is receiving visitors from as far away as Florida and Canada. Are people going far out of their way just for a mediocre-at-best food and decor experience that seems to harken back to a simpler time? With more and more Americans ordering their food to go, to the point that many restaurant storefront experiences have been streamlined into a space for a cash register and a take-out counter, it seems people are showing up for more than just a hot slice of nostalgia.

It was weekday lunchtime when I arrived on a chilly January day, and a real live waitress guided me to one of the waxy booths lining the tinted windows—a checkerboard linen flaring off the corners of the table in front of me. I hadn’t been to a Pizza Hut in years, but relics of mid-’90s pizza parties immediately consumed my periphery. Above me hung a Tiffany-style lamp with the restaurant’s name embossed in creamy frosted glass. The waitress dropped off a menu—a menu!—and a pebbled red plastic cup fizzing with Diet Coke. There was a fully stocked salad bar where anyone could drench their shredded carrots, canned olives, and iceberg lettuce with ladlefuls of ranch. A woman at the table next to me ordered a cup of coffee, an indulgence that would be literally inconceivable at any other Pizza Hut.