The Story
There’s a placeon 400 South.
It’s been there longer than most things in this city. Salt Lake has gotten taller and busier around it. The pizza hasn’t changed.
The Place
You know itwhen you walk in.
Squat brick building with a sign out front that's become a recognized landmark. A small parking lot shared with Hires drive-in. Inside: plush booths, a waitress who knows the menu and the name of every regular by heart, a kitchen that hums along, and a dining room that is surrounded by the sounds of life. Birthday celebrations, regular weekly lunches out, kids seeing how long they can stretch the cheese on their slice of pizza. We're here to create the moments you'll remember. Take a seat, you'll fit right in.
It’s the place you went after the game. The place your parents took you for a family night out. The place where the same song’s been on the speakers since the Johnson administration. Salt Lake is full of pizza now. Some of it very good. None of it has been here for sixty years.
The Pizza
The dough still hasto earn the day.
The dough rests overnight and gets hand-rolled the next morning. The sauce is the sauce — tomato, the right amount of spice, the right amount of restraint. It hasn’t changed since 1965, because it was right the first time.
The cheese is 100% real mozzarella — never a blend, never a substitute. Cubed instead of shredded, for that perfect pull, the way real cheese is supposed to when you lift a slice.
The ground beef is made in our in-house butcher shop. The produce is chopped and prepped fresh daily. Everything else comes from producers the family has bought from for the better part of sixty-five years, and when you’ve known your suppliers that long, quality stops being a decision and becomes a habit. The pies come out of the oven hot, the cut is done by hand, and the box says Fresh Hot Pizza on the side in gold lettering. It’s not filler. It’s the instructions.
A note on Don Hale
The guy whostarted it.
Litzas exists because Don Hale couldn’t find pizza he liked in Utah in the early sixties. He already ran Hires Big H, the hamburger drive-in next door (since 1959, and still going strong). He didn’t need another restaurant. He just wanted a real slice in his home town. So he took his family on a series of road trips, tasting every pie he could find along the way, and came home with notebooks full of recipes and ideas, and built the pie that would stand the text of the next four generations.
Don has since passed on. The recipes haven’t. Don and his son Mark wrote a book about it called Opportunity Knocks Twice, if you want to read the full story. Otherwise that’s it. The rest is the pizza.
Today
Same family.Same crew.Same pizza.
The Hale family still runs both places. Some employees have been here nearly 35 years — that's older than the average person in Utah. Many of them remember Don himself working the lunch rush, then bussing tables all night. You'll feel the culture when you walk in: a love for pizza, and a genuine love for the customers who become part of the experience.
You can get a Litzas pizza and a Hires burger from the same corner. Many people do.
From the kitchen
Sixty years,one pizza at a time.
Dough in the morning, sauce by the ladle, real mozzarella by the handful, into the oven and onto your table. A look behind the counter.
Customer Love · Google
Sixty years of regulars.A thousand-plus reviews.
We've been on 400 South since 1965, and more than a thousand Google reviews later, the regulars keep saying the same things. Here's a little of what they say.
Amazing restaurant — the best. Excellent service, and they make everything fresh: dressings, sauces, garlic butter, pizza dough. Great variety of pizzas, spaghetti, lasagne and delicious green salads. Love this restaurant.
Liz·Salt Lake CityThis is one of our family favorites and we have loved coming here over the years! Comforting atmosphere, that comfort-food pizza, delicious salad, and their amazing cheese bread. The whole family requests we come here several times a month.
Tricia·Salt Lake CityMe and my family have been coming to this restaurant for years — it's a family favorite. The staff is always so friendly and the food is phenomenal. Nothing beats the garlic bread here!
Elizabeth·Salt Lake CityAmazing pizza and root beer — get the cheesy garlic bread, it's so good! Friendly staff, quick service, beautiful dining area. Litza's is one of our family's favorite restaurants. I've been going since I was a kid, and now I take my own children.
Kelsey·Salt Lake CityI have been going there for at least 30 years — my favorite pizza of all time! The downtown location has a server, Maria, who is the absolute best.
Mindy·Salt Lake CityWent on a date at this location — amazing pizza, amazing waitress, and such a good atmosphere that after our short wait we stayed comfortably for two hours.
Richard·Salt Lake City
