Taboo Pizza Elevates the Experience at Its New Ogden Riverwalk Location

Taboo Pizza’s new location at 1877 Washington Boulevard is elevating the typical pizza parlor experience. Owners Jeremy and Jennifer Holmes offer the same fan-favorites from their carryout pizza shop at 3017 Harrison Boulevard, such as the IDK Pepperoni, The Cluck ‘n Oinker, the O-Town Philly, and the Sassy Chick.

  But they wanted to raise their game when they opened a full-service restaurant in the former home of Slackwater Pizzeria. The Holmeses spent months remodeling the space next to the Ogden River. They had a “soft” opening in May to give the staff time to “get their legs underneath them,” as Jeremy described it. “When you go from 13 to 90 staff members, there’s a training period.”

  Some of the “elevated” factors you’ll find in the dine-in experience include:

– A spacious, open dining room surrounded by large windows, and a patio where you can watch the Ogden River drifting by. It’s easy to forget that you’re a stone’s throw from the busy Washington Boulevard traffic.

“This is the best location in Ogden,” said Jennifer.

 – All the pizzas are personal size (10-inch).

  “When we were looking at the sizes of tables, we thought, where would we fit everything if people ordered large pizzas?” said Jennifer. “We wanted an elevated dining experience, rather than people fighting over a big pizza in the middle of the table.”

  But, adds Jeremy Holmes, if you want a family-size pizza to take home, you can order one from the restaurant’s separate carryout entrance. (And, for the record, I found that a 10-inch pizza was plenty for a full meal, with leftovers to take home.)

– Non-pizza options — wraps, pastas, sandwiches and salads.  “Our Harrison location doesn’t have sandwiches or salads, but being a full-service restaurant, we wanted to offer something for everybody who doesn’t want a pizza,” Jennifer said.

  Jeremy said currently, about 68 percent of the orders are pizza.

– Classy carafes of chilled water, embossed with the Taboo logo, are served at each table.

  “One thing I hate in a restaurant is when the server has to reach across you to pour the water in your glass, and then come back and reach across to refill it. It’s an interruption,” said Jeremy.

Instead, the servers set out a carafe of chilled, super-purified water — one for every two people. Customers can pour their own water, and if it runs low, the server can drop off another carafe on the table, without interrupting anything.

-All pizzas are made to order. “It’s all about fresh, and the quality of ingredients,” said Jennifer. “The kitchen doesn’t start tossing the dough until the order comes in.”

  This means you can expect a leisurely dinner of 45-75 minutes — kick back and enjoy drinks, dinner and conversation. For lunch, the target time is 25-35 minutes; a bit longer if it’s a larger group. (In addition to the regular menu, Taboo also offers several lunch specials featuring specific wraps and personal pizzas.)

  “Some people expect it to be fast, but you’re not going to come and get your food five minutes later,” Jeremy said. So far, most customer experiences have been good — but as with any new restaurant, “Sometimes we’ve had major fails,” he admits.

  The Riverwalk location has six conveyor ovens, heated to 465-485 degrees, and each take about 7.5 minutes to cook a pizza. (Their signature dough — developed through making over 1,500 batches — contains sugars that would burn in the high temperature of a wood-fire oven.)

 ABOUT THE CRUST: “We call it O-Town style,” said Jeremy. “It’s not thick, but not thin. There isn’t another pizza company that has an eight-day proofing process, to allow the yeast to grow. That’s the sweet spot. And it’s a six-day window to use that dough, so we get a good flavor out of it.”

ABOUT THE SAUCE: “Instead of sauce made with tomato paste, we puree our tomatoes and render our sauce down,” said Jennifer. “We can taste the difference.”

These extra details take extra work. But, she said, “We figured if it was going to fail, it would be doing something we would want to eat, every single day of the year.”

And it turned out to be true, since they’ve been eating pizza seven days a week, every single day of the year since they opened the first Taboo Pizza in 2019. “We’re still not sick of it.”

ABOUT THE PIZZAS: The top-seller is pepperoni — as with just about any pizzeria in America. At Taboo, it’s called The IDK, because when someone doesn’t know what they want, usually end up getting pepperoni.

The Sinatra is a fairly simple pie — margherita sauce, heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil.

Vegetarians can go for The Edgy Veggie: Mozzarella, artichoke hearts, green peppers, red onions, mushrooms, minced garlic, green olives, spinach and slivered almonds. “Plants with a mean streak,” is the menu descriptor.

The Totally Taboo has pepperoni, ham, bratwurst style hot sausage, mushrooms, red onion, green pepper and black olives. “All the trouble in one slice,” is the menu tagline.

The Holmes’ personal favorite is The Unholy  — bacon, pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushrooms, green pepper and green olives. “We’ve made it for ourselves and we keep going back to it,” said Jennifer Holmes.

Most of the menu names have some sass, including the Red Headed Stepchild, a sweet-and-spicy twist on BBQ chicken — mozzarella, chicken, bacon, red onions, pineapple and jalapeno.

The breadsticks (called Dough Bois) also get some attitude.  The Hot Boi is calzone style, stuffed with cream cheese, mozzarella and jalapenos.  

The Dusk ‘Till Dawn garlic cheese bread has a garlic ranch base, mozzarella, shaved parmesan, brushed with butter and finished with garlic parmesan salt. For a kick of heat, you can ask for added jalapenos as in the photo above.

  THE HISTORY: Jeremy and Jennifer Holmes opened their first Taboo Pizza, at 3017 Harrison Boulevard, after the long-time Pizza Runner went out of business in 2018. They had no restaurant or chef experience, beyond extensive home cooking. They had worked in real estate, health care, and other businesses.

“We are project people — call it crazy project people,” said Jeremy.

 At the time, they were training to go on a trek to the Mount Everest base camp. They were working out and eating healthy all week; but Sunday was their “cheat day” when they would order from Pizza Runner.

When Pizza Runner closed, opening their own pizzeria in the shuttered building “sounds like something crazy we would do — so we did,” Jeremy said.

They got the keys to the Harrison Blvd. building in November 2018, and opened in March 2019. It was an intense turnaround time, considering they remodeled the building while developing their own sauces, dough and menu from scratch.

 “We had a deck with a pizza oven, and we did 1,500 batches of dough to get the right consistency and moisture level,” Jennifer said. “We have traveled a lot and we tried pizza everywhere we go.”

ABOUT THE NAME TABOO: “When Pizza Runner went out of business, there was a lot of negativity because it was a beloved part of the community,” Jeremy said. Although they had nothing to do with Pizza Runner’s closing, “We would get a lot of hate.”

While considering different names, a comment was made, “’That’s so taboo,’ and we decided it fits us as individuals. We like being edgy and pushing the envelope,” said Jeremy.

“Also, pizza is a guilty pleasure, a bit of a taboo,” Jennifer said. “It’s so good, it’s taboo” became our tagline.”

For awhile, they were working 22 hours a day, seven days a week to get the first Taboo Pizza up and running. At first, they had a dine-in section, but when Covid hit, they went to carryout only.  

The opportunity to open up a second location came, once again, when another beloved pizza institution moved out. Slackwater Pizzeria left for a new location on 24th Street and in December 2021. The Holmeses spent months remodeling the Riverwalk location to give it a more spacious, open ambiance.

“We didn’t want to open a restaurant where we wouldn’t want to eat,” said Jennifer.

Meanwhile, an acquaintance, Steve Armstrong, opened Steve’s Black Sabbath BBQ on the west side of the same building. The Holmeses became friends with Armstrong while he was operating his food truck at events. When the building’s owner was seeking someone to lease part of the building, they recommended Armstrong. Steve’s Black Sabbath BBQ is a completely separate restaurant and company from Taboo. A space on the north part of the building is being renovated for Wasatch Roasters.

One downside of the Riverwalk location: the parking lot fills up quickly, especially around dinner time when there’s competition with other Riverwalk restaurants like Black Sabbath BBQ and Ogden Beer Company. When we visited one Saturday night, I managed to find a spot on the street, about a block away. But our server also pointed out that you can park along Washington Boulevard, in front of the restaurant.

Also, you may find yourself wandering a bit to find the restaurant’s entrance. Keep in mind that Taboo’s entrance faces Washington Boulevard (and Black Sabbath’s entrance is on the west side of the building).

Jeremy noted that Ogden has a variety of pizzerias with styles to suit a variety of tastes — Slackwater, The Pie, Ogden Pizzeria, Lucky Slice, Tony’s, and so on. Thick crusts, thin crusts, artisan crusts, traditional or unusual toppings, and everything in between. Taboo is just one more option for pizza lovers, whether it’s takeout or dine-in.

OGDEN’S PIZZA HISTORY: One of Ogden’s early pizza restaurants was opened in 1954 by Rigo Del Carlo. He was an Italian war prisoner during World War II, who immigrated to the USA after the war ended. He opened Rigo’s at 2788 Washington Blvd., with pizza and spaghetti touted as signature items in newspaper ads. Rigo’s is long gone, but a few other pizza pioneers remain. Circle Inn Pizzeria in Sunset first opened in 1957, and was destroyed by a fire in 2022. The Schroeder family, generational owners since the beginning, re-opened Circle Inn a few miles away in Clearfield in 2023. Tony’s Pizza was opened in 1963 by Tony Toscano, and is still in business today. Not sure exactly when Ogden Pizzeria was founded, but in 1974 owner Jay Packham sold it to one of his employees, Jean Alder and husband Doug Alder. So it’s at least 50 years old. They ran it for many years before selling it to their daughter, Valerie Simonich and her husband Pat Simonich. It’s another long-time pizzeria that’s still in business today.