There’s only one restaurant in the LSU area that serves barbecue-chicken pizza, homemade potato chips, an ostrich burger and salmon caviar.
The place is T.K. Pizza, and this is not the run-of-the-mill local pizza joint. It is an eatery that soon will feature daiquiris, a cigar bar and wine by the glass. But don’t fret, the restaurant maintains reasonable prices while preserving a student-friendly atmosphere.
Tommy Hendrix and Kevin Buker, co-owners of T.K. Pizza, bought the old Calendar’s restaurant on Highland Road in November and began remodeling the interior dramatically by replacing the carpet, painting the walls and adding new furniture and a big screen television.
“We just designed it as a place where we would want to come hang out ourselves,” Hendrix said.
Every decision about the restaurant’s appearance was made spontaneously, Hendrix said. Even the theme of developing a pizza place was unexpected.
“We were going up and down the Gulf coast looking for a hotel to buy, and we walked into this pawn shop and there was this $18,000 Hobart pizza oven sitting there,” Hendrix said. “We didn’t buy it that day, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that damn pizza oven. So, a few weeks later we went back and bought it for $1,400.”
The oven was from a recently closed Delchamps supermarket and was barely used — now the oven is the center of T.K. Pizza’s kitchen, Hendrix said.
For a pizza establishment, T.K. Pizza has an eclectic and chic food selection including a salmon caviar spread appetizer, an herb goat cheese sandwich and an ostrich burger flown in from Wisconsin, just for the restaurateurs.
Hendrix and Buker said you can’t order an ostrich burger anywhere else in Baton Rouge.
      “They are out of this world,” Hendrix said. “It’s like eating a filet mignon burger. The only difference is that they are better for you because it’s leaner meat. We wanted food on the menu that we liked and we love ostrich, so it was an easy choice for the menu.”
Two other items on the menu people can’t get anywhere else in Baton Rouge are the homemade potato chips with Maytag blue cheese melted on top and the barbecue-chicken pizza, Hendrix said.
Since pizza costs less money to make than other dishes at specialty restaurants, the owners decided to take the extra money and put it toward better ingredients to produce a better and wider array of food, Hendrix said.
The owners operated 18 restaurants across the United States, but until now they were all white tablecloth, low turn-over establishments.
To aide them in their new endeavor, Hendrix and Buker turned to the other big pizza place in town, The Mellow Mushroom.
According to the owners, The Mellow Mushroom assisted them with arms wide open, helping T.K. Pizza with initial operating procedures, and doesn’t regard them as competition.
“We don’t have any competition,” Hendrix said. “I welcome it. In our employee handbook, we thank [The Mellow Mushroom] for all the help they have given us. I mean nobody wants to eat at the same restaurant every night. I don’t want to eat at T.K. Pizza every night, so when someone asks me where they can get a good meal, I’ll tell them to go to The Mellow Mushroom or even The Chimes.”
In about a month, T.K. Pizza will begin a delivery service, but the owners insist the in- house customer always will be first priority.
The owners also are expecting their state liquor license to arrive any day, making them a fully functional bar, Hendrix said.
“We have fun doing what we do and the people that work with us have fun doing what they do,” Hendrix said. “And if that happens, then everyone who comes in here will hopefully have fun and enjoy a great meal.”
T.K. Pizza is located at 4350 Highland Road and is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to midnight. The phone number is 766-2468.