The Blind Onion, Sparks, Nevada

 The Blind Onion

824 Victorian Ave.

Sparks, NV

Yes, I know, the site is called "Rick's Ventura," and my mission is to talk about things in Ventura, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm not in Ventura today. I'm in Sparks at a conference, and I was tired of eating hotel food. Strolling through Victoria Square brought me to the Blind Onion. Someone was sitting in the window, eating their pizza, and I thought it looked pretty good.

It's a tiny space with a handful of tables and a bar. A wide variety of beer were available, as well as other cocktails. The friendly girl at the counter asked if I needed a menu, which I took and quickly scanned.

Since I'm not kissing anyone on this trip, I saw something called the "Breath Buster," a pizza that featured both onions and garlic, along with pepperoni, mozzarella, linguica and red sauce, and knew that was the order. A small with a soda set me back $9, pretty reasonable for the size pizza I got.

I filled my fountain drink with Dr. Pepper and sat down at one of the tables. Interestingly, there was a large bottle of honey at each table. The Blind Onion serves neither hot tea nor biscuits, so I was left to wonder.

The counter girl brought my pizza over in about ten minutes, but left before I asked about the honey. Still, being the smart guy that I am, I tried just a touch on my pizza. The contrast between that  and the pepperoni, garlic and onion was really quite good.  When the girl came back to check on me, I asked, and she said that many people like to use it on their braided crust. She continued that the crust is made with a touch of brown sugar, and the honey brought that out.

What I discovered through experimentation was that too much honey overpowered the pizza, but just a touch really brought out the flavor. The braided crust was really good, with or without the honey, too, and on the whole is was a good pie.

The Blind Onion has a handful of shops around this part of Nevada, as well one store in Oregon and two in Washington. If in the area, certainly worth a visit.