Shannon Litz/Nevada Appeal
About an hour before opening the Pizza King in Mound House on Wednesday, owner Robert Mancilla is rushing around the kitchen as he prepares the day's dough, toppings and sauce.
It's a similar scene that has played out throughout the pizzeria's history.
Mancilla, 38, and his wife Isabela have owned the restaurant for eight months ever since its previous owners, George and Maria Metropoulas, sold the long-time pizza joint, retired and moved to Greece to be with family.
"People told me when I did this, even though it's a good product, be careful, we're in a bad time, now is not a good time to do it," Mancilla said. "It's never a good time to open up a restaurant.
"I said to myself, Pizza King will not miss."
He may have a point.
The restaurant opened as Nick's Pizza more than 20 years ago in Carson City. Eventually the Metropoulases took over the business, moving it to Mound House 10 years ago.
"George provided the dinner, Maria provided the show," Mancilla said, adding the couple would often speak in Greek to each other, which customers may have interpreted as yelling. "But they were just communicating."
And while George and Maria no longer run the restaurant, Mancilla said the food is exactly the same with some added menu items such as pastas and tacos.
"We get people as far away as Reno, Tahoe, Fernley," he said. "We get this one gentleman who comes all the way from Folsom Lake, Calif.," near Sacramento.
A Pizza King pie is thicker than a New York-style slice, loaded with toppings and homemade sauce on dough that's made daily.
"It's almost like table bread," he said of the pizza crust. "You can turn it into focaccia, you can turn it into garlic bread. It's like a multi-task, all-around bread (the previous owners) probably used and they just decided that's what they had, throw some stuff on it and you have pizza."
All of the original menu items still exist too, including the Roma, topped with artichokes, linguica, garlic, olives and tomatoes, and the Athens, topped with red onions, linguica, feta cheese, garlic and tomatoes.
"In Carson, everybody knew the Roma as the Italian and the Athens, everybody knew it as the Grecian," Mancilla said. "You can tell who are the old school customers and the new school customers because the old school ones, they call it by the old stuff."
Mancilla said he wants to expand the brand by opening a Pizza King in Santa Cruz, Calif., near his childhood home of Watsonville. Perhaps more importantly, he wants to move the restaurant back to Carson City from Mound House.
"I would like to go back to Carson, I think its home is in Carson," he said.
Mancilla grew up around cooking, something he said came naturally to him when he was younger.
"I've been in the restaurant business for over 18 years, it's something that I've always enjoyed doing," he said.
His parents both worked in the culinary industry, his father for a hospital kitchen and his mother a caterer for events like quinceaneras.
After moving to Dayton eight years ago, Mancilla found work at restaurants in local casinos.
"When I moved over here I wanted to open up a restaurant, that was my goal. I had one in California and sold it to come out here; back then houses were affordable," Mancilla said.
The plan was after five years he and his wife would be able to open up their own restaurant.
"It took eight, but it's a blessing," he said.