The secrets of a Tahoe pizza that keeps ranking top 10 in the nation

When I saw South Lake Tahoe’s Base Camp Pizza Co. on Yelp’s list of the 100 best pizza places in the country, I was surprised — OK, skeptical. Of all the pizza restaurants in the United States — from New York City pizzerias to Chicago’s deep dish joints to the renaissance of pizza places in Los Angeles — the No. 5 spot went to a restaurant in South Lake Tahoe? 

Don’t get me wrong — sharing a pizza with your friends and family after a day exploring the outdoors in Tahoe is delightful. On a snowy afternoon, when you feel the cold down to your bones and your cheeks are numb from the wind, going to a cozy, warm, lively restaurant for pizza and beer is as good as it gets. And Base Camp serves a very good pizza, often delivered by an employee who moved to Tahoe to ski and likely was on the mountain for a couple of hours first thing in the morning.

Base Camp Pizza Co. and its sister restaurants — Fireside Pizza Company at Palisades Tahoe and Rubicon Pizza Company at Northstar, which serve near-identical menus with the same ingredients — are second to none for pizza in the Lake Tahoe region. But the entire country? I wasn’t so sure. 

How does one rank pizza on that scale, anyway? Yelp based its 2024 list on its “elite” users, which the company describes as its “most passionate and trusted reviewers and influencers.” Somewhat predictably, Manhattan lays claim to the most restaurants in the ranking, but other entries hail from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas. Seven pizza restaurants in Las Vegas made the list.

On Yelp, Base Camp Pizza Co. has 4.4 stars from a whopping 6,700 reviews. In 2019, USA Today also included Base Camp in its list of the top 25 best pizza places. Yelp called Base Camp a “Lake Tahoe hotspot” that would resonate with “fans of global flavors” with its famous Thai curry pie, which features a curry sauce, roasted chicken, yellow bell peppers, tomatoes, red onion and mascarpone cheese, topped with limes, basil and cilantro.

Base Camp has “the BEST pizza in South Lake! You can tell by the smell of the pies wafting thru the air,” wrote elite Yelp reviewer Cindy W. Base Camp “never disappoints,” wrote another named Karen D.

I take pizza personally. It’s my favorite food — in my house, pizza Fridays are the best meal of the week. Sometimes we’re in the mood for a New York-style pizza with a large, thin crust and housemade ingredients at a restaurant nearby, but lately, we’ve been frequenting another eatery in Reno, Cosmo’s Snack Bar, that serves wood-fired pizzas and Negronis on tap. Other weeks, when time aligns with motivation, we’ll make pizza at home from scratch, heating our regular, not-wood-fired oven as hot as it will go.

I didn’t need much convincing to go to Base Camp to see how it keeps punching above its small-town stature.

I went on a Thursday afternoon in November. I found a quiet restaurant with no wait and settled into a booth near the window. But that’s not the norm. You’ll probably have to wait for a table unless you also come in for a midweek lunch in the offseason. 

Winter or summer, the place on 1001 Heavenly Village Way is usually a packed house with an hourslong wait for a table. The restaurant seats 200 people, with a turn time of 45 minutes to an hour. On holidays, it’s not unusual for the host to quote guests a two-hour wait or longer, owner Ray Villaman told SFGATE. 

“It’s a scene, it’s a vibe, it’s an energy, it’s the whole package,” Villaman said.

Base Camp Pizza is centrally located in Heavenly Village, which is a scene in its own right, on the California side of the Nevada state line, steps from the casinos in Stateline. In the winter, the Heavenly ski resort’s gondola deposits skiers and snowboarders right in the village, a two-minute walk from Base Camp. 

Heavenly Village is a faux town. It’s one of many such “villages” built in American ski resorts to provide tourists with the illusion that they’re in a quaint European village. But instead of markets and homes, Heavenly Village has T-shirt shops hawking souvenirs to tourists and hotel rooms.

Once I settled into the window-side booth, I felt relieved of the touristy cheesiness. The restaurant was busier than the rest of the village, with a steady lunch rush. Several families or couples shared pies at neighboring tables. It has a warm interior with an open kitchen, exposed ducts on the ceiling, wood beams and red camping lanterns hanging over the table. But it’s the staff that makes the vibe feel much more grounded and authentic to Tahoe. 

Villaman told me the recipe for the pizza dough isn’t the only secret to Base Camp’s success. He gives credit to his employees and the company culture for the restaurant’s success. The host was young and looked mildly bored on a slow day but smiled when I walked in and led me to the table. Shortly after, the server walked up and placed a tall glass of water in front of me, guiding me through the menu. They all fit the narrative you hear so often in Lake Tahoe, of people who come here for one winter to ski and end up staying for the rest of their lives. 

“I believe that pizza at its core is about sharing, and about family and about experiences together,” Villaman said. 

Pizza is also about the flavor. Base Camp is known for pizzas that are a little bit beyond the norm, and the menu is quite long. I asked the server for a rundown. 

The signature Base Camp is the restaurant’s most popular, she said, with pepperoni and Italian sausage, caramelized bell peppers and onions, portobello mushrooms, and a blend of mozzarella, provolone, fontina and parmesan. 

The staff favorite, however, is the Smokey BBQ Chicken with Bacon pizza. That one pairs a sweet hickory barbecue sauce with creamy gouda cheese and the four-cheese blend, with red onions and cilantro for flavor.

Meat lovers tend to go for the Big Mountain pizza, with Italian sausage, bacon, pepperoni and Canadian bacon. Vegetarians, on the other hand, opt for the Mediterranean, loaded with tomatoes, artichoke hearts, Kalamata olives, arugula, feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, on top of the four-cheese blend and a red sauce.

And then there’s the Thai Chicken Curry pizza, the menu’s biggest novelty. The server described it to me as “different” and told me to go for it if it calls to me. Villaman said a former chef developed the recipe for the sweet and spicy curry sauce when they came home from a trip to Thailand and a stint staging with a chef there. 

I’m a red-sauce pizza person, so I opted for the Base Camp, but wanting to try something a little out-of-the-box, I also ordered the BBQ Chicken, going half-and-half on a large, the only size the restaurant accommodates split orders on. 

The server asked if I wanted a side of ranch, which I appreciated — no one judges you for eating pizza with ranch here. So of course I said yes.

The pizza arrived a short while later: a thin-crust pie loaded with protein, veggies and melted cheese. I noticed the large slices of portobello mushrooms with charred edges on the half that was the signature Base Camp pizza, and the vibrant green of the cilantro that gave the BBQ Chicken pizza so much color.

All of the pizzas are made with a thin crust, but it’s more chewy than crunchy, and it’s light. The dough is made fresh daily by Truckee Sourdough Company. I didn’t try it, but the gluten-free dough also gets high praise from Yelp reviewers. 

I don’t have any formula or equation to rate one pizza against another. To do so would miss the entire purpose of pizza, I think. If it’s good, it’s good. There is so much pizza in this world that I think most people can tell in a bite or two if a pizza is worthy of praise. It’s the sum of its ingredients. It’s the place you’re eating it in — whether you’re eating off a plate at a table in a busy, fun restaurant or out of a box on your couch in pajamas. All these parts can add up to deliver a pizza in front of you, but what makes it good is subjective. 

With a Yelp rating of 4.4 stars after thousands of reviews, I’d say the consensus is clear that Base Camp offers a good pizza. And I agree. I wasn’t wanting for anything more.

I ate a couple of slices, and the server boxed up the rest for me to take home. As I was paying my check, I realized that most of the tables around me had filled up with more parties, and more people were coming into the restaurant with ski boots and snowboard boots on. Ski jackets hung from the hooks on the wood pillars. I looked at the time — it was almost 3 p.m., just about the hour for après ski, when people are coming down from the lifts, meeting up at Base Camp and celebrating another well-spent day in Lake Tahoe over a delicious slice.

Base Camp Pizza Co., 1001 Heavenly Village Way #25a, South Lake Tahoe. Open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.