UPDATE: CRUST Pizza is now CLOSED
DAY #26:Â Crust Pizza Bar
Neighborhood: Allentown
242 Allen Street, Buffalo, New York 14201 / 716-551-0781
Pizza Journal:Â Crust Pizza Bar is one of the newest pizza places in WNY. It’s conceptually different from your average grab and go joint. Although you can still grab and go. It’s probably a quicker option and definitely more personal – in size and customization. While you can call in an order for delivery, if you show up to the location, they walk you through a toppings counter where you can choose what you wish. We’ll leave all that for our full review on CRUST as a restaurant next week. (Stay tuned!) Â This time, we stuck to the trusty red sauce, cheese and pepperoni pizza pie. Not exactly the norm to get at a place like this, but we’re comparing here so we had to stick to the plan. (We know that many pizza places are known for their specialty pizzas – does anyone even order plain cheese and pep these days? We’re going with yes, yes they do.) The crust is par baked and considered “Roman” style, which makes it unique in comparison to the traditional WNY pizzas we’ve tried thus far. The crust was DELICIOUS. It really took the whole pizza to another level, allowing it to compete with the big dogs. The rest of the ingredients were pretty standard. The sauce tomatoey with no seasoning and a smooth texture, the cheese fresh and the pepperoni sliced thin. Besides the heavenly crust, the thing that makes this pizza different from the others is the fact that the flavors don’t exactly have the chance to meld into each other like they do when the pie is cooked for 20 min. Therefore the ingredients maintain their fresh independent flavors – not a bad thing at all. Just different, interesting. I recommend you take a trip to Allentown try this pie.
Tester Observations:
CRUST:Â perfect – star of the pizza, flavorful, crisp on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, hint of char
SAUCE:Â tomatoey, smooth, distinct flavor
CHEESE:Â fresh, melty, perfect amount
PEPPERONI:Â thinly sliced, large, not very spicy
See where this pizza’s crust, sauce, cheese and pep fall on our observation meters. More importantly – what rating does it get on our LIKE-O-METER:
DO YOU AGREE? DISAGREE? COMMENTS WELCOME BELOW! WE KNOW THIS IS A TOUCHY SUBJECT…