Five great Hampton Roads pizzas, in five different styles, for takeout in cold January
From Sicilian to deep-dish, these local pies are perfect for carryout or delivery
This is not a list of the best five restaurants in Hampton Roads. Rather, it’s a recurring feature in which we list places we’re most excited about this month — a great new restaurant you should try, a special event at an old favorite, or a hidden gem.
It’s designed to answer a simple question: Where should you go out to eat this week? And as a surge in coronavirus cases has erupted in Hampton Roads, here’s a list dedicated to one of the world’s finest takeout foods. Here are five spots, serving five very different takes on pizza.
New York and Sicilian: Brooklyn Pizzeria
2181 Upton Drive, Suite 404, Virginia Beach, 757-7020220, brooklynpizzeriavb.com. Lunch and dinner daily. Carryout, online ordering through apps.
The thin New York slices at Charlie Cohen’s Brooklyn Pizzeria pass every challenge: the fold test. The
hang test. The taste test.
It is sweet sauce, pliable crust and a rush of familiarity. Even the generous portions of Hormel pepperoni are right, thicksliced and cupping gently above mountainous cheese. Unlike the wan cracker crusts and yeasty atrocities of many “New York” pizzerias in Hampton Roads, a slice at Brooklyn is exactly the thing it says it is.
And yet it’s the thick Sicilian slice that has my heart. The inch-thick slices at Brooklyn feel like eating crisped cloud. Just a sliver of browned crispness on the crust’s bottom gives way to a wealth of airy, diaphanous lightness, topped with a molten flow of mozzarella and a blanket of sweet-acidic tomato. It is enough to transport you, in full Proustian fashion, right back to Prince Street in Manhattan before the pandemic.
Neapolitan/New Haven: Andiamo Ristorante and Pizzeria
500 Battlefield Boulevard S., Chesapeake, 757-4101810, andiamova.com. Dinner Tuesday-Sunday. Online ordering, carryout and app delivery available.
Who knew Chesapeake would be the hotbed for Neapolitan-inspired pizza in the region? But between Pizzeria Bella Vista and Andiamo, some of the finest wood-fired pies in the region come from a 4-mile stretch of Battlefield Boulevard. Bella Vista is the more traditional of the two, crafted by a Navy veteran once stationed in Naples and wonderfully devoted to the flavors he found there.
But it’s Andiamo, for my money, that makes the crust with the most character: neither over- nor underworked, with light char and leopard spotting, and lovely structure. It’s some of my favorite crust in the region. And since a
remodel in 2019, pizzaiolo Biagio Scire Jr. invited Biagio Sr. to come cook the red-sauce Italian he’d been making for decades at now closed Frank’s II, making the place a multi-generational affair for Italian classics.
But do yourself a favor: Pick up your pizza for carryout personally. You don’t ever want to let a Neapolitan pie sit for as long as it will likely sit if
you order from a delivery app.
Chicago: Windy City Pizza
480 Kempsville Road, Chesapeake, 757-410-5550; 1630 General Booth Blvd., Virginia Beach, 757-6892270, windycityvb.com. Lunch and dinner daily. Online ordering, pickup and delivery.
Some Chicago natives have told me they prefer the thin-crust pizza to the deep dish here, at Hampton Roads’ truest home to Chi-town pies. I can’t argue, because I don’t know. Every time I go, I can’t bring myself to order anything but the deep dish.
I go here mostly to travel in time. And Windy City takes me right back to my years in Chicago eating
Lou Malnati’s and Gior
dano’s and Pequod’s. The thin, sturdy crust. The Italian sausage shipped from Chicago. The Wisco cheese. The California plum tomato sauce slathered across the top into hearty thickness. Consider this the Upside Down of Pizzas, New York City’s angry nightmare. And in winter months, it is the deepest comfort imaginable.
Detroit: Flame and Pie Mobile Pizzeria
757-269-1617. Check facebook.com/flameandpie or flameandpie.com for locations. Order pies online at toasttab.com/flameandpie/ v3.
Detroit chain Jet’s
Pizza has been slinging its eight-corner pies for seven years in Virginia Beach, and the slices are wonderful monsters: turbo-crusted gut bombs with charredcheese sides and wonderfully sweet tomato sauce. But the Peninsula may have them beat with food truck Flame and Pie, whose inchthick dough is both airy and chewy at once, draped in sweet-spicy mohawks of marinara and a half-pound of gooey cheese.
In part, it’s the wonderful thick-cut Liguria pepperoni that curls into little grease-filled cups. In part, it’s the sheer volume of wondrous mozzarella-Muenster cheese, which slips down the side of the pan and forms a beautiful charred ribbon around the sides of each pie. But really the difference is the wonderfully managed crust: Character-filled dough with visible air bubbles and blessed char beneath its skirt. In its heft and google-cheesy deliciousness, the pizza feels like something you shouldn’t be allowed to have.
“Oh my god,” said my dining companion. “This pizza is a crime against nature.” But if it’s a crime, there’s no punishment — only deliciousness.
Virginia Farm-toSlice: FTH Pizza
312 Lightfoot Road, Williamsburg, 757-8086416, fthpizza.com. Lunch or dinner Tuesday to Saturday. Takeout or patio, online or phone ordering.
Steven DeFonzo’s pies might have been inspired by the pies of Napoli, but that’s not what they are. They are instead a Virginia farm-to-table take on wood-fired pizza, devoted to the local produce from Allen’s Farm in Barhamsville, and the cured meats of Salumi di Casa near Charlottesville. In the depths of January, granted, the pie specials might get a little meatier, with house fennel sausage or nduja meat spread.
But the wonderful crust is a constant, cooked at 750 degrees on white and red oak, its dough cold-proofed for 24 hours to ensure a flavor that is complex but not sour, bubbling with character, browned and lightly scuffed with char. Order ahead, and he’ll reserve your dough ball for the time of your choosing.