Palisades Pizza

Serving Slices and Creating Art 

By MAGNOLIA LAFLEUR | Reporter

Nestled on Via de la Paz, the small Italian restaurant—now known as Palisades Pizza—has been serving up hot pasta and cheesy pizza for three decades. Teddi Bandt, who co-owns the eatery with her husband Bill Bandt, has been commuting to Pacific Palisades from Palmdale to run the quaint shop since April 30, 1986.

Originally a Domino’s Pizza, the Bandts changed the space to Palisades Pizza on July 24, 2007, with a desire to offer a greater variety of food options and better product.

“We’ve had many, many loyal customers over the many years since we opened,” Teddi shared with the Palisadian-Post. “We’ve watched their children grow up and many of them remember seeing our kids grow up. When the kids were little, we were able to work different days during the week so that one of us was home with the kids. Bill was very adept at taking phone orders and bouncing babies while I made pizzas.”

Before joining the Palisades community, Teddi was born and raised in a small farming community in Mondovi, Wisconsin. She later went on to attend the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and work at Domino’s Pizza—it would be here that she met her future husband, Bill.

“I remember him being very patient with me. It was my first time delivering and doing the grueling cleaning into the early morning hours,” Teddi said. “He was very thorough and by the book. I had always had a lot of guy friends, so certainly I could tell from the get-go that he would be one more. He could sure get me laughing.

“At first I think I was kind of oblivious that he was interested in me, a feeling that was easy to reciprocate. It wasn’t long before we started spending time together and became a couple. We met in September and were dating by mid-November.”

“She was cute, quick-witted and could barely see over her steering wheel,” Bill said to the Post.

They married in 1985 and moved to Los Angeles in 1986. Upon moving to LA and looking at a sprawling map in the Domino’s Pizza corporate store, located in Santa Monica, Bill chose the Palisades for the couple to start their own franchise. He said it reminded him of where he was born, La Jolla—where Teddi and Bill also enjoyed their honeymoon.

The Bandts said they loved that everyone they met from the Palisades—from the Chamber of Commerce, to other businesses and beyond—“appeared to care so deeply about this community.”

While the couple currently resides in Palmdale, they shared that they did live in the Palisades for some time in the 90s, renting a guest house to avoid the long commute while they raised a family back home.

“The commute is what it is. I’m not fond of losing that time to the freeway each day, but the volume of traffic I travel with is proof that it’s a way of life here in Southern California,” Teddi said. “Driving from the high desert to the coast almost daily does lead me through quite the change in elevation and scenery. The Palisades is beautiful. I love how green it is and how in many areas the houses are cleverly tucked in between lots of trees and hedges.

“Palmdale presents us with an open landscape, surrounded by mountains, under massive skies. We have stunning sunsets and fresh air.”

Mother of three, Teddi has one daughter and two sons, all of which have worked at the pizzeria.

“Between our kids being with us a good deal of time when they were little, then working for us before heading off on their own journeys, they are remembered by many. Our customers like that we are a family business,” Teddi shared.

Jon Wilkur, a Palisades resident since 1975 who has been ordering pizzas from Palisades Pizza for the past 15 years, shared his fondness of Teddi and the eatery with the Post, saying: “It’s not your average chain pizza. It’s well made, ingredients are great and they have their own style. And she’s great, she’s terrific. She’s very charming and delightful.

“When I think of the Palisades, I think of something that’s been here for 40 years, and Palisades Pizza is one of the things that makes living in the Palisades great. If they weren’t here, I’d miss them.”

Along with enjoying their pizza and pasta offerings, many of her customers are newly discovering Teddi’s side-talent, as what she calls herself: “a hobby artist.”

“I just found out a few months ago that she’s a wonderful artist,” Wilkur said. “She did a drawing of a dog reading a book on a pizza box. It was really beautiful and very kind of her to do that. I have it in my study, leaning up against the bookshelf. I was surprised because she said she was an artist but a lot of people say they are artists … I was pleasantly surprised. She’s so talented.”

Teddi said she has been drawing since she was 5 years old, growing up in the Midwest on a hobby farm. Having an affinity for art since she was young, her realistic style of drawings and paintings reflects her Midwestern roots mixed with a reminiscent feeling of memories or dreams, intended to make the viewer feel at-home in her art.

“[It] exposed me to all the sights and sounds needed to feed my desire to tell my stories and create my journeys with pencil and paper,” Teddi explained. “I loved to draw and loved to read and write. My favorite subjects in school were art and language arts. It’s been my passion for as long as I can remember. I understood the basic elements of proportion, foreshortening and angles at a very young age. It was instinctual. When other kids were drawing square houses with a triangle for a roof, I was rendering buildings at a three-quarter angle.”

Any second she gets between her busy schedule, long commute and 12-hour work day, you can find Teddi can be found penciling away life-like figures whose shadows seem to animate each figure to the naked eye.

After a 20-year hiatus to raise her three kids, Teddi said she is finally getting back in the groove of drawing and painting with the goal of eventually working beyond the title of “hobby artist,” as she feels that her work not only drives her, but defines her.

“I love everything about art. Every piece is a journey,” Teddi said. “I’m telling my story or depicting a memory, an idea, or enjoying a view, which the viewer can then interrupt in their own way. Although my style is realistic, everyone who sees it will have their own experience.

“I create with multiple mediums on various surfaces. Experimenting with new materials, tools and techniques is exhilarating. I love sharing ideas and techniques with other artists, and get incredibly excited when I see art blossoming in young people.”

Teddi will be premiering a new exhibition of her work at her second solo gallery show to-date titled “Stolen Moments in Time” at the Legacy Commons in Palmdale on May 2.