Crust, beans, taco sauce, cheese, ground beef, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, perhaps some peppers, sour cream and black olives, all topped with crushed taco chips. Taco pizza, a culinary innovation that bemuses taco traditionalists and infuriates pizza purists, is much loved in Iowa. That’s fitting, since Iowa is where taco pizza was born. Probably.
It can be hard to nail down the exact origin, but we do know where and when the first commercial taco pizza, the Taco Joe, originated: Davenport, December 1974.
“I had a franchisee who wanted to add tacos to the menu to compete with a taco place that opened up nearby,” Joe Whitty, founder of Happy Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream Parlor, recalled to the Des Moines Register in 2017. “I went to our local grocery store and got all the ingredients for making the perfect tacos, then went back to the restaurant and made the first-ever taco pizza.”
Whitty, who died in 2019 at age 82, opened the original Happy Joe’s in Davenport in November 1972. It attracted attention not just for the family friendly combo of pizza and ice cream, but also for its first specialty pizza, the Happy Joe Special — a pie with sauerkraut and Canadian bacon for toppings. Whitty soon began selling Happy Joe franchises, which led to that December day when he tried to taco-up a pizza with sauce and meat.
“It tasted great, but it was missing something: it wasn’t pretty enough,” he told the Register. “So I added lettuce, tomatoes and taco chips, and that’s where it all began.”
The idea spread quickly. Pizza Inn, a Texas-based chain, began selling taco pizza and then took things further in 1979, trying to trademark the name “taco pizza.” Pizza Hut, another early adopter, sued to stop Pizza Inn taking control of the name. Pizza Hut persuaded Whitty to join the lawsuit.
“It’s funny,” Whitty told the Register in September 1979. “For Pizza Hut to win this thing, they need us, because they’ve admitted they stole the idea from us, and they’re going to say that Pizza Inn stole it from us, too.”
Pizza Inn didn’t get the trademark. Taco pizza continued to catch on, with every major pizza chain introducing a version at some point. In the mid-’90s, the massive food conglomerate Pillsbury promoted a recipe for a DIY taco pizza that involved adding toppings to its frozen “Totino Party Pizza (Sausage Flavor).” But for writer and Iowa ex-pat Ann Friedman, nothing ever took the place of the original Taco Joe, “crispy on the bottom” with toppings melting “into a gooey sameness.”
Friedman wrote about Happy Joe’s and its “crown jewel” for Bon Appétit’s 2018 series on America’s Favorite Neighborhood Restaurants.
“It is my Proustian madeleine,” she said, describing the Taco Joe, “carrying me back to the ’80s and ’90s in eastern Iowa.”
Thinking about how Iowa has changed in recent decades, Friedman wondered if taco pizza still appealed to young Iowans now that they are “likely to have eaten Mexican food made by Mexican people.”
Judging by the number of places with taco pizza on the menu, the answer is yes.
Yo Quiero Taco Pizza
Give yourself a break from corporate pizza. Here are LV readers’ favorite local takes on the taco pie. (Is your favorite missing? Let us know! editor@littlevillagemag.com)
- The Airliner, Iowa City
- The Wedge Pizzeria, Iowa City
- Scout’s Honor, Iowa City
- Monica’s, Coralville
- Iowa Athletic Club, Coralville
- Wig and Pen, Iowa City, Coralville & North Liberty
- Pizza Plus, North Liberty
- Big Grove, Solon
- Mabe’s Pizza, Decorah
- Herb n’ Lou’s Pizza, West Branch
- Zoe’s Pizzeria, Marion
- Uncle Bill’s, Davenport
- Wise Guys, Davenport
- Gunchie’s, Davenport
- Missipi Brew, Muscatine
- GeoJohnz, Muscatine
- Shot Tower Inn, Dubuque
- Dough Co. Pizza, Des Moines
- Maggie’s Rumble Room, Des Moines
- 7 Stone Pizzeria, Des Moines
- Leaning Tower of Pizza, Ankeny
- Brickhouse, Indianola
- Pagliai’s Pizza, Iowa City, Johnston & Grinnell
- Papa’s Pizzeria, Polk City
- Kula’s It’s Just Sauce, Walker
- Pizza Haus, Williamsburg
This article was originally published in Little Village’s August 2025 issue.
