Saucy Brew Works wows with its pizzas

The beers are tasty at brewpub in Ohio City, but the pies? Oh, my! SAUCY BREW WORKS

I was prepared for the beer. Not for the pizza. Weeks removed from a December visit to the Saucy Brew Works in the Hingetown neighborhood of Cleveland’s Ohio City area — and with a reasonable facsimile of a diet under way for the new decade — I still can conjure memories of the maddenly delicious Bees Knees, a red-sauce pie with capicola and a significant wallop of honey. Just so good. When I say I was prepared for the beer, that was the main draw for me and my craft brew-loving pal Steve when we arranged to meet on that chilly Friday.

I’d already sampled a few beers from Saucy Brew Works — opened in mid 2017 in the old Steelman Building by partners Brent Zimmerman and Eric Anderson — available for purchase in cans at area stores, and I was eager to try more.

Plenty of people like what the operation has to offer, as Saucy has been working on a Columbus location. More recently, Anderson has announced plans for brewpub in the Pinecrest development in Orange Village, along with a brewery and taproom in Independence.

The Ohio City Saucy isn’t a full-service restaurant. Instead, you order everything — beer and food at the bar — and pick it up at a counter when it’s ready. Your choices for seating essentially are the relatively small bar, by which hang flatscreen TVs and a colorful listing of the brews on tap, or long picnic-style tables you share with other groups unless yours is large enough to fill the whole thing. If you’ve been to Masthead Brewing Co. in downtown Cleveland, the setup will seem very familiar to you.

Knowing we’d each likely be ordering pizzas — Saucy does have a handful of ordinary-sounding sandwiches and salads — we bypassed carbier appetizers such as the Mac & Cheese ($9, slightly more with up to two toppings) and fantastic-sounding They’re Chips Not Nachos ($9), which are topped with braised chicken, spicy cheese sauce, avocado crema and more. (Note to self: Order that on future visit.)

Instead, we put in two half-pound orders of the stone oven-baked wings ($8 half pound, $14 pound): one Nashville Hot, one Honey I Dry Rubbed the Wings.

The sauce selection is above-average interesting. Steve chose the honey variety and I the Nashville Hot, allowing me to cross the Nashville Hot Chicken pizza from my list of candidates. (Even still, it’s hard to believe I chose that over Kung Pao wings. Man, that sounds good.)

Now, to the beer. Instead of offering traditional flights, Saucy has you build your own with as many samples (generally $2 to $3 each, with some expensive exceptions), serving up to six of them in a muffin pan. (Hey, it ain’t fancy, but it works.)

Between the two of us, we tried too many to mention, but, as you’d expect, we each liked some more than others. (I will note

I couldn’t pass up a beer called What’s His Nuts, and the vanilla stout brewed with peanut butter and Honduran coffee did not disappoint.) In all, though, with 15 or so alcoholic creations on draft, a craft beer lover should have little trouble finding a few beers very much to his or her tastes.

Before long, the wings were ready, with a halfpound turning out to be a half-dozen. The flavors were as advertised, but somehow I expected more from at least the Nashville Hot wings. Nonetheless, they certainly had the flavor profile of the chicken sandwiches that are all the rage.

Eventually, it was time for pizza, which comes in three sizes and in choices as varied as with the wing sauces.

I would never touch the Funghi ($12, $18, $22), but I’m sure the red-sauced pie with assorted mushrooms, goat cheese, ricotta, tarragon and truffle Parmesan would appeal to many. The inclusion of mushrooms also was enough to deter me from the Cleveland ($13, $17 and $24), which boasts “saucy white bbq” along with mozzarella, kielbasa, onion and bell pepper and allows for the meat-averse to substitute cauliflower for the kielbasa.

As Steve was keen for the Porky Porker ($14, $19 and $26) — a red-sauce pie with salami, pork shoulder, Italian sausage, caramelized onions and mozzarella — I was able skip that one while knowing I could trade for a slice of it.

Other pies sounded perfectly delicious, but the remaining choice that jumped off the menu was the Bees Knees. The red-sauce pizza is topped with honey, spicy capicola, mozzarella and red pepper flakes. I put the Bees Knees in the high-riskhigh-reward category; it may not work, but if it did, it could be spectacular.

Guys, seriously, this pizza.

From the first bite to the last, I couldn’t believe how the flavors sung together in perfect pizza harmony. I seriously did not expect this.

Location: Southwest corner of Detroit and West 29th Street.

Type of restaurant: Brewpub.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday; 11 a.m. to midnight Thursday through Saturday.

Prices: Sandwiches and appetizers about $10; pizzas about $10 to $25, depending on size and variety.

Value: Good.

Ratings (of five): Food: ★★★★

Atmosphere: ★★★

Service: ★★★

And trade a piece of the Bees Knees to Steve I did — almost reluctantly at that point — and found the throw-health-consciousness-out-the-window Porky Porker almost as amazing. Gone was the sweetness of the Bees Knees and in its place fantastic savoriness.

I should note Sauce’s pizzas have very thin crusts, which is my preference — especially when you’re mixing heavy beers into the equation. The combo of beer and pizza can be food coma-inducing. Because my pizza wasn’t all that heavy, in fact, I had to fight my gluttonous instincts so I could take enough home for another killer dinner the next day.

When I’m not counting calories, I plan to make a brunch visit to Saucy, when among the offerings are the Chick’n Waffles pizza and staples that include Monkey Bread. (Second note to self: order a Bees Knees to go.)

PHOTOS BY MARK MESZOROS — THE NEWS-HERALD Saucy Brew Works’ Bees Knees is a pizza that makes magic largely from honey and capicola.

You can construct a flight of beer samples at Saucy Brew Works that is then served to you in a cupcake tin and arranged with the beers in the order of the slip of paper on which you’d written them down.