Certified Pies lives up to fitness trainer’s praise
When your fitness trainer (!) hawks a pizza place, you know it must be good. When my friend and trainer sang the praises of Certified Pies on social media, my husband and I decided we needed to check it out.
On a recent Thursday, we Google-mapped our way to a late lunch at the place, which holds court in a compact strip mall several blocks west of Burlington Coat Factory on Markham.
The restaurant opened in the fall; its popularity was attested to by the fact that the lone person at the counter was tied up for quite some time taking an apparently large phone order before she was able to get to us.
Certified Pies’ menu (flashing on a big screen in its cozy space and available in print at the counter) is an entertaining read. Its large pizzas, $15.60-$26.88, bear such intriguing titles and ingredient combos as the Boss Hog (pepperoni, sausage, bacon, Petit Jean Canadian bacon and beef), the Al Green (Alfredo base, grilled chicken, tomatoes and spinach); the Flyinn’ Hawaiian (Petit Jean Canadian bacon, grilled chicken, pineapple, banana peppers and “truth swirl”); the Smooth Operator (Ranch base [!], chicken, bacon and ranch swirl) and the Vegan Bae (veggies, vegan cheese and a choice of Beyond Beef or vegan pepperoni).
We opted to share two of the three $10.40 lunch specials: a sixpiece wings-and-fries meal and 10-inch single-topping personal pan pizza. (The third lunch choice is a Garden Salad, bearing options of grilled chicken, crispy chicken, crab — for a few extra bucks — or ham.)
The wings, bone-in or boneless, come in a healthy number of flavor choices, from Honey Gold to Hot Damn. We went with the Honey BBQ. The pizza topping choices are numerous but we decided on a simple cheese pizza.
Accompanied by standard wavy fries and a sweet bun, the well-coated, multi-napkin-necessitating wings were impressive; we tasted the honey barbecue flavor in, not just on, the pieces. The generous-size cheese pizza was a pleasant, perfectly baked
combination of texture and taste, the latter complete with a mildly hot seasoning.
We passed up the standard soft drinks and bottled water, choosing to wash our food down with plastic bottles of Johnny Free & Paw-Paw’s Arkansas Unlimited beverages, Peach Lemon Tea and Lemon Ice Tea ($4.16, two of seven listed flavors). I hated that they were out of the Strawberry Basil, but what we had did not disappoint. The servers brought the beverages first; after we tasted them, we had to keep ourselves from inhaling them before getting our food.
Certified Pies comes with a plethora of non-pizza treats. Loaded Fries ($15.72) bear the same flavors as some of the large pizzas. Wing count choices go all the way up to 50 pieces ($65). Also offered: other garden salads, cheese bread, fried pickles, Sunday specials, including catfish and pasta dishes, … and yes, desserts from which we had to avert our greedy eyes. Caramel, Turtle or Honey Bun Cream Cheese Pound Cake?? Pecan Pound Cake?? Really??!!
We made a note to return soon to Certified Pies, suspecting that this place will get us certifiably hooked on it.