Las Vegas pizza sensation finally has home of its own

After a pizza journey that took him from playing with dough at home to giving away free pies through social media, from a tiny kitchen in a downtown dive bar to a break from Las Vegas to consult on pizza back home in Michigan, from returning to Vegas and resuming pizza making in a bakery after-hours to signing a deal and a lease with business partners — after six years, pizza pasha Robby Cunningham finally has a pizzeria of his own.

Guerrilla Pizza opened Wednesday on the ground floor of the Soho Lofts building on Las Vegas Boulevard South downtown, the first permanent home for the Detroit-style pies that this Detroit native introduced in April 2019 using @freepizzadtlv on Instagram, the handle now defunct.

The pizzas went viral, leading to a 2½-year bake as resident pizzaiolo at Hard Hat Lounge, cooking from a kitchen that was 200 square feet, at most. Since Cunningham departed the dive bar in spring 2023, fans haven’t had a regular spot to tuck into his Detroit pies — until the debut of Guerrilla Pizza.

“This place is a huge opportunity for us,” Cunningham told Neon. “We were very congested at Hard Hat. It was hard to match the demand. Here, we have a 750-square-foot kitchen, a 700-square-foot dining area. We can grow here without sacrificing quality.”

Much of that potential is down to the pizza oven with upper and lower conveyor belts whose temperatures and cooking times can be adjusted to prepare single- or multiple-topping pizzas, bread knots, wings and other dishes.

“The cool thing about the conveyor belt oven is we can calibrate the pizza and the oven together, making sure the pizza comes out exactly right,” Cunningham said.

Which means, as his many fans know, Detroit pies that incarnate the breed standards: oiled crisp bottom, crisp-chewy cornice, cheese spread to the edges, two wide stripes of sauce, all baked in a glazed metal pan.

On the menu

Guerrilla Pizza (@guerrillapizzco) occupies the space, 900 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Suite 120, that housed Far Side Pizza for about four months this year. Steve Madirossian, a Vegas real estate guy who is also a Detroit native and a Guerrilla Pizza investor, met Cunningham during the pizza poobah’s Hard Hat days.

“He was in there with a tiny oven pumping out pizza. I couldn’t believe how good it was,” Madirossian said.

That goodness, at the new spot, anchors a menu that reflects the old diktat (from fashion to pizza): Find your style and stick with it. The build-your-own Detroit pizzas — rectangles ideally 1 to 1½ inches thick, Cunningham said, yielding four slices — can be assembled from a dozen toppings: banana peppers (a Midwest thing), curled cups of pepperoni, hot Hungarian sausage and more. Vegan cheese and vegan sausage open the menu to, well, vegans.

At Hard Hat, Cunningham drew acclaim for his specialty pizzas, and they’ll be emerging from the conveyor belt from time to time at Guerrilla Pizza, he said. Pierogi pizza, say, or a smash burger version, all with a vegan counterpart.

Pizzas keeps company, in the oven, with wings variously flavored (including mango habanero), tots variously rendered (including poutine), and cheesy wild bread and wild knots with sidecars of pizza sauce for dredging and dunking.

Other Detroit standards are coming along for the ride, too: Faygo sodas, born in Detroit with more than 50 flavors, and tri-flavor Superman ice cream that is a mainstay in Michigan and other Midwest states.

Going into wide release

Guerrilla Pizza occupies an industrial loft-ish space downtown. A Guerrilla Pizza mural, in the vintage postcard style, mantles one wall. Even as he attends to his first bricks-and-mortar space, Cunningham looks ahead. He said wants to take Guerrilla Pizza, once viral for his homemade pies, on another viral journey, writ large.

The pizzeria, he said, could be scaled up, taking Detroit into wide release.

“This pizza does not have to change at all for 100 locations. The dummy-proof has been dialed in. Our goal is to grow as many locations as we can. I want to prove this concept.”

In other words, Cunningham believes his Detroit pizzas will pan out.

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.