Call it Balboa. It's easier that way.
Whether called by any of its abundant names—Balboa, Balboa Pizza or the longer Balboa Pizza Company, the name referred to on the clever but truncated menu—this breezy, 24/7 bar and pizza joint has discovered a winning formula. I'm just crazy for the thin-crusted pizzas and chicken wings in various incarnations that the kitchen turns out in impressively quick fashion. Furthermore, the décor is quite nice and prices are more than reasonable. It's a question of when, not whether, to come.
The District at Green Valley Ranch has become Henderson's most dynamic urban center and the mall tends to be jammed with the young and restless during peak weekend-evening hours. That's when the cool bar at Balboa gets four, even five deep with the under-30 crowd and make a quiet pizza and conversation a challenge.
You could, of course, show up at 4 a.m. any day or 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, at which time you can sit on the outdoor patio or have the pastel, tropically themed dining room mostly to yourself. This interior reminds me of a Jamaican plantation somehow, or a Tommy Bahama store if you removed all of the clothes racks.
Walls are a cool green, most of them plastered with surfing memorabilia, and there are wooden booths with cushioned backs and hard benches, plus twirling overhead fans to reinforce the Caribbean effect. Enter from the District and you pass a podium and walk down a long hall to your table. Come in from the parking-lot side and the first thing you spot are chefs plying their trade in the kitchen.
Balboa is named for Newport Beach's Balboa Peninsula, which has long been a surfing Mecca, so it seems fitting that one of the signature items here is the Wedge, a folded and baked pizza shaped a bit like a calzone. You pick the filling and the topping: a choice of spicy tomato, fresh pesto or garlic cream. All three, it happens, are delicious.
I'd come back again and again for the garlic-cream Wedge, which comes with a nicely crusted, bubbly top. Inside, there is nothing more than cheese and sauce but for 75 cents extra per item, you can customize them. There are dozens of options but try one with the restaurant's excellent sausage and fresh mushrooms.
The handmade, thin-crusted pizzas are fine as well, though for the hungry they're not quite big enough for two mouths to share. These aren't the traditional round pies but square and as flat as a Passover matzo. I've tried several and among them the pepperoni and three cheeses stands out, as does the chicken and roasted garlic.
One pizza that needs work is topped with smoked salmon, red onions, cream cheese and capers. Don't keep that cream cheese in the fridge, guys. It cools down the crust way too fast and the pizza is tepid before it is at the table.
The rest of the menu is devoted to creative salads, sandwiches served warm on pizza bread, nine types of chicken wings and terrific, homemade potato chips, which the menu refers to as Balboa Island Chips. The chips, served hot and crunchy in a metal tub, are sliced potatoes cooked in canola oil and then sprinkled with Romano cheese and cayenne pepper. For a dollar extra, you can have them with a dipping sauce such as garlic ranch with bacon or chili con queso—and they're a dream with beer.
For a lighter meal, try one of the entrée salads but don't even think about ordering the full-size for one; the regular size is already too large. Warm, garlic-roasted shrimp salad is one possibility, with chopped greens tossed with Roma tomatoes, pine nuts, roasted peanuts, fresh avocado and fat shrimp, plus an unctuous Louis dressing.
There is a fairly workmanlike Caesar with a dressing that could use a little more punch, and a nice lemon-chicken Greek salad shot though with feta cheese and Kalamata olives. The Chinese chicken salad is OK if you like Napa cabbage—its main component—and aren't so big on the sesame oil because you can hardly taste it in the dressing. The crispy Buffalo wing chicken salad might be good, but why bother when you can get the wings themselves?
Choose one of the gourmet flavors of wings, three of the best being Thai peanut, Jamaican jerk and chipotle barbecue. The only down side is that the gourmet wings only come 10 at a time, whereas you can have a small order of Buffalo wings at five to an order.
For dessert, there is a large, doughy apple fritter that is cooled too quickly by a topping of vanilla-bean ice cream, and a delicious, coconut-crusted banana split, which makes a lot more sense after having your flour fix with pizza. Whatever you want to call it, Balboa is alive, fun and appealing. Franchise, anyone?