Who remembers Straw Hat Pizza?
The Concord restaurant was located where Mountain Mike’s Pizza is currently located on Clayton Rd., near Ygnacio Valley Rd. The Pleasant Hill location on Contra Costa Blvd. is now a Korean BBQ, and the one in Lafayette is now Round Table Pizza.
Years later they opened other locations on Monument Blvd. in Concord, and on Oak Rd. in Walnut Creek (near Park Regency Apartments next to Pleasant Hill BART).
The pizza chain was founded in San Leandro in 1959, and is currently headquartered in Contra Costa County. They still have about 30 restaurants. The closest one to us is on Lone Tree Way in Brentwood.
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If I”m not mistaken, the “original” Straw Hat Pizza was located in El Monte Shopping Center on Clayton Road near where the Goodwill store is now located. It was the popular hangout after Clayton Valley High School football and basketball games and was always crowded on Friday and Saturday nights. It was the place to see and be seen after CVHS opened in 1958, splitting the alumni between CVHS and MDHS. The rivalry between the two schools was legendary was the stuff of legends.
Did they make the pizza in a straw hat, or use it as a topping?
Many, many good times at the Lafayette Straw Hat in the early 70’s!! Watched a guy from Orinda pour his pitcher of beer into his cowboy boot and drank it from there! Great pizzas as well.
Daniel Ricciardo pours the champagne into his driving shoe when he’s on the podium when he wins a Formula 1 race and then drinks it. They call it a shoey.
When I was a small tike, I thought the San Pablo Straw Hat was the only one. Kinda like Tigger.
The first pizza I ever had in America was at Straw Hat in Lafayette.
The topping tended to slide off the crust, but it was a good, filling pizza!
Better than the one I had at a truck-stop in Rieti, Italy, that’s for sure – that was the worst pizza I ever had.