It’s 2 a.m. and you open your fridge and find just two pieces of pizza from two weeks ago and a half-drunk can of Natural Ice that has lost its carbonation. You are hungry and more than anything, you want cheese, bread, meat and lots of ranch.
Lucky for you, Eugene is home to The Dough Company, which delivers fresh-baked calzones, cookies and ice cream until 3 a.m., although the dining room closes at midnight.
Dough Co. sits at 1337 Hilyard St. between East 13th and 14th avenues, right next to the Dairy Queen.
It’s a tiny building filled with red picnic tables with a large, drunk-friendly menu plastered on the room’s left wall advertising about 30 different varieties of Calzone, four types of cookies and four flavors of ice cream.
Around 10:30 p.m. last Friday, the kitchen smelled like melting cheese and baking bread. Laurel Willi and Michael Goettsch worked efficiently making the hungry happy, measuring out ingredients and putting them into the risen dough pockets. Ryan Kramer managed the oven and Alex Strandlien, Eliseo Loschiavo, Luke Todd and Todd Mikels took orders, answered phones and delivered.
“There’s the dinner rush that ends at 7 and the first drunk rush that starts around 11,” said Strandlien, who likes “variety in his ‘zones’ but if put on the spot says that BBQ chicken is his favorite.
At first business was slow.
The drivers were antsy to start earning their tips, and while waiting, they folded boxes, bragged about who had the biggest bong, and shared stories.
“One guy showed me his nut,” said Mikels.
The guy, Mikels explained, had “elephantitis” and his testicle had swollen to about the size of a baseball.
At 11 p.m., a drunken University student named Jeff walked in with a couple buddies and asked Mikels if he could “pop open a beer.”
Jeff walked with a limp that he said resulted from kicking a wall in his house several hours before his calzone excursion and when his calzone came up he ate it passionately.
“Do you guys smoke before work, because if I worked here I would smoke every time,” said drunken Jeff.
“Smoke?” said Mikels.
Pause.
“Marijuana,” said Jeff.
“That’s an illegal drug,” Mikels said, swiveling on his toes to return to his work. “We’re high on life.”
Once the doors shut people gathered like pre-concert groupies and fans lining up for autographs – but they just wanted a doughy pocket of sauce and cheese. Boys dropped to their knees and assumed the prayer position. They tried to sneak in the back door and girls offered to flash the cooking crew. When that didn’t work they called and tried to order to Dough Co.’s front door.
“You can not order to the door of Dough Co.,” said the restaurant’s 36-year-old owner, Bernie Kitching.
But at least the people who ordered to the door knew where they were. Only about one in five people who call after midnight have any idea of the address they’re calling from, Kitching said.
Dough Co. used to be open until 3 a.m. but now closes at midnight as a result of fights, stolen plates and calzones, three cases of people “fooling around in the bathrooms,” and general drunken mayhem, Kitching said.
“The people we would let in would not get into any bar in town,” he said. “I was just naive.”
He said he used to complain that nothing was open late in Eugene, but now he understands some of the challenges in the market.
But, Kitching said, “Dough Co. will be open until 3 forever.”