It’s rare for The Pizza Snob to travel south of his Tennessee home in Franklin to Spring Hill. To me, it’s just a town that came together too fast with little history and nothing exciting that you can’t find elsewhere. However, the COVID-created convergence of my barber leaving Nashville to start clipping from home and a co-worker working remotely from his Spring Hill home brought me there one weekday morning. The plan was simple: haircut followed by lunch with my fellow accountant at the Viking Pizza Co.

This adventure would be a pizza journey without high hopes. I’d heard nothing about Viking, internet intel about it was uninspiring, and my worker buddy said he heard it was just OK. Why even try you ask? Well, pizza is pizza, and I also lacked anything else to write about.

I found Viking in a small fairly new strip center in a somewhat off-the-beaten track and isolated area that was unfamiliar to me. It was a large joint with plenty of room to sit both inside and out. I was pleased to see that there was a decent crowd for the workday lunch. Viking did have a really cool looking pizza oven to wood fire their pizza. There was also a smaller oven to its side, and I’m not quite sure what its purpose was.

It was order at the counter and Viking’s menu was specialty pizza centric. This made it a little tricky to discover how to order a PC (plain cheese) since it was not the focus of what they offered. (I love seeing the PC standard at the top of the menu.) My pie would be about 14-inches and came with a drink for the pre-inflation price $10.99. (They even took a dollar off when I passed on the flavored sugar-water.)

Me and my associate sat on the bar and watched them cook our pies which by normal standards didn’t take long. My mate’s pizza, on which he ordered some toppings, came first and I was impressed by how thin and crisp it looked and how much char it carried on its edges. But then, for some reason, mine was also thin, but very soft and not crisp at all. I surmised that they undercooked it and that this condition was not by design. At least it was lean and thin and wound up tasting pretty darn good. But dang, there was no crunch or crispness to it whatsoever.

For a place that shows no sign of pizza-making tradition and design, the Viking pie was surprisingly quite tasty. I’d say though the cheese was average, not as bad as some nor as good as others. The tomato sauce was fine although it could have been livened up with some oregano and garlic. (Why is that such a common failure amongst pizza places?)  The dough was fine other than being soft.

Viking is not a place for a pizza fanatic, but it makes a decent tasting pie that’s not hard to enjoy. While I don’t make special requests when I’m critiquing a new place, I would tell them next time though to make mine well-done!

PIZZA SNOB RATING ***½ Working on a Good Thing
Viking Pizza Co.
3525 Kendron Road
Spring Hill, TN 37174
931-674-2718
http://vikingpizzaco.com/