Andy Reid feasted on this KC pizza after Chiefs won the Super Bowl. I had to try it

Editor’s note: Welcome back to our series Let’s Dish, Kansas City, showcasing some of our favorite restaurant meals. Click here to sign up for our new newsletter. And scroll down to learn how you can participate.

This wasn’t my first visit to Pizza 51.

My usual dish there is a slice with pepperoni and red onion (yum yum), and no salad.

But on this day, I understood my assignment:

After the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LVII, head coach Andy Reid celebrated with Pizza 51’s sausage and mushroom pizza and a garden salad. My job was to try it for myself for The Star’s Let’s Dish series.

I jumped at the chance to write about food, a rarity for this opinion writer. Who could resist pizza and a salad, anyway?

At Pizza 51, 5060 Oak St., one slice is as big as your face and can be cut into seven or eight bite-size pieces, depending on who is doing the cutting. One slice will satisfy any pizza craving for days.

But to authentically replicate this favorite meal of Big Red, a food lover and self-described forkturian, I ordered a full 14-inch pizza cut into eight slices ($13.99, plus $1.49 for each topping).

“I went to Pizza 51,” Reid told reporters after the Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 in Glendale, Arizona. “That’s what I did. I got a mushroom-and-sausage pizza, how about that? And a salad just to make my chubbiness feel good.”

So I ordered a salad too ($4.99), with a side of ranch dressing. I like my lettuce drenched in ranch, so I grabbed another dressing to go.

My order was the restaurant’s first of the day. Jason Pryor, who co-owns the place with his wife, Shannon, began by rolling out pizza dough and adding olive oil and seasoning. Next came rich, thick red pizza sauce — just how I prefer. Pryor layered the pie with mozzarella cheese (yes!), mushrooms and Italian sausage and placed it in the restaurant’s stainless steel oven for less than 10 minutes.

“It just has to cook,” Pryor said, “and you’ll be good to go.”

I love the smell of semi-charred pizza crust that filled the restaurant. I sat at my table affixed with black-and-white checkerboard tablecloth. Then the pie arrived: hot bubbling cheese, meat and mushrooms.

The slices are thin, but the first two filled me up. The sausage-mushroom combo was tasty. Still, I prefer the saltiness and flavor of my usual pepperoni and the snap of a red onion.

The salad, a mix of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, black olives and mozzarella cheese (yes, again!) was cool and crisp. The ranch dressing added a nice contrast to the piping hot pie. Although Pizza 51 offers soft drinks and other beverages, I chose water to complement the meal.

Before the restaurant opened at 11 a.m. this day, the proprietors and staff expected foot traffic from nearby University of Missouri-Kansas City students and professionals working in the area to keep them busy.

During the first hour of business, I counted more than a dozen customers. By noon, the lunch crowd had swarmed the place.

Most ordered pizza by the slice (yum yum). Some were simple constructions of meat and cheese, and others were piled high with veggies. One customer ordered a meat-lovers-style slice. I wanted to ask him if his heart was as full as his stomach, but decided against it. The empty plates he and his guest left behind spoke for them both.

I left Pizza 51 with leftover pizza and salad. My two middle-school aged children love pizza. Dinner ideas that night came easy.

Thanks, Big Red.