Some of my most memorable college days in Iowa City started with a piece of pizza for breakfast before tailgating on a Saturday morning. And it wasn’t cold, leftover pizza ordered the night before. The pizza I speak of is formulated for breakfast and doesn’t come from a pizza joint you’ll find anywhere on this list of the best pizza spots in Kansas City. It came from a gas station.
In the Hawkeye State, the breakfast pizza from Casey’s is legendary—so much so that Cedar Rapids native Ashton Kutcher and wife Mila Kunis have declared their love for it publicly. The pizza, offered by the slice in a rotating heated glass case or as a whole pie if you order ahead, is topped with scrambled eggs, mozzarella cheese and bacon bits or sausage crumbles.
No place loves breakfast pizza like Iowa—there’s a spot in Des Moines that tops pies with Froot Loops—but Casey’s is king. Around KC, the gas stations are harder to find (7875 Quivira Road, Lenexa, is the only one inside the 435 loop), so my guess is that most drive around the corner to QuikTrip for their fix of breakfast ’za. But I’ve found a few highlights beyond institutions that also sell gas and lottery tickets: You Say Tomato (2801 Holmes St., KCMO) has a heavenly breakfast flatbread topped with usual suspects eggs and bacon alongside roasted potatoes and a smattering of gravy. Then there’s Clock Tower Bakery (7911 Santa Fe Drive, Overland Park) in downtown OP, where the pizza’s eggs are baked in a sheet over the pizza crust instead of scrambled up. Here, you get a few choices of toppings, and I found that adding tomatoes was the perfect acidic cut to the eggs and Swiss cheese. Caffetteria (25 On The Mall, Prairie Village) also has a solid breakfast pie. Their version of breakfast pizza is oven-fired and equipped with bacon and mozzarella, fontina and parmesan. But two cracked eggs on top are what make it the most important meal of the day.
