Crust Pizzeria & Ristorante

Came here for family night out and was blown away. We ordered the garlic knots and I loved that they weren’t too doughy and had a nice light crunch. My son got the meatball sliders and said we should come back every Friday for these alone. As great as those were I was even more impressed with the manicotti. The ricotta with the sauce and fresh mozzarella makes this a dish and a place we will definitely come back to. Special shoutout for our server Justin for taking care of us! 5 stars!

Crust is a weekly go to for us! Traditional New York style pizza and Italian cuisine! Monday night all bottles of wine are half off and their chef’s specials are amazing! Crust has a neighborhood feel and fantastic service… We are there wayyyy to much! :)

The stars are for the ambiance this place has, otherwise the food leaves something to be desired… we went here on 1÷23÷16 and the food was surprisingly very average… I was surprised because I read the reviews and everyone seems so in love with this place. The Husband and I were really disappointed. We ordered the garlic knots as an appetizer and talk about overkill. My husband said, bread must be cheap here… because they give you like 10 knots that are the size of an apple. Who eats that much bread as an appetizer? They should have size options. Outside of the quantity, the taste was bland bland bland… yes there was TONS of fresh garlic lumped on top, but the bread was just bland, the flavor wasn’t quite there. we had two each and then there were about 6 huge knots left staring us in the face… for the pizza we ordered half East Coast Grandma and half Uncle Louie… the East Coast Gma was below average and in my opinion tasted just like the garlic knots… the Louie was just OK… we wanted to like this place since we live right down the street, but this will not be our go to spot for pizza and wine… :(

DISCLAIMER
I know I’m going to struggle with this review. Certain experiences defy the use of words and so the writer claws his way through them, often applying far too *many* words in his attempts.
I’ve been searching for «the perfect New York style pizza» for over a decade. Having grown up on the east coast, «authentic» NY style pizza holds a special place in my memory.
THE EXPERIENCE
Upon entering Crust Pizzeria, I was immediately and warmly greeted and told that I could feel free to choose my own seating. I settled in at a large booth.
I decided to order the Garlic Knots for an appetizer and paired that to a nice glass of Malbec. I then ordered «The NY» pizza — aptly named to my sentiments.
The wine was delicious, the garlic knots, too. The service was also outstanding. My server was sweet and attentive — very smiley and genuine. I appreciated this very much.
Knowing I’d eat the leftovers, I ordered the 20″ round. When it arrived, it was delivered in half. The server informed me that this was to keep the other half warm. (A really great idea!)
The slices were large, as they should be for that east coast experience. Something about the smell of the pizza in particular triggered a distinct sense of familiarity.
TIME TRAVEL
I helped myself to a slice, folded it, then took my first bite. Immediately, I was overwhelmed with a wave of nostalgia. All the sudden, I was back on Maple Ave. in South Plainfield, NJ.
Forgive the mawkish description, but I had just bitten into a taste of my childhood! It floored me. I had to put the pizza down on the plate and catch my breath.
This was the pizza I had been searching for all this time! THIS was a New York style pizza! After composing myself, I got back to work on THE BEST PIZZA I had ever eaten.
CONCLUSION
I was very excited to learn that Crust runs a special on Sunday and Monday nights: just $ 10 for a takeout order of the 20″ pizza I had sitting in front of me.
Do I intend to go back to Crust Pizzeria? Absolutely. Would I recommend it? Wholeheartedly! Crust has earned its spot as King of the Hill in my book. It is the #1 Best Pizza in the Valley, hands down.
If you haven’t been, you need to find your way there for a visit. Dine in for a wonderful service experience or order takeout and enjoy a sweet deal on the food! You will NOT be disappointed. I know I wasn’t.

Yummy place! Very inexpensive, great food & awesome service! The garlic knots are so so so good (and free on your first visit)! So glad this place is near our house! Will definitely be back when we are in the mood for Italian food. PS They have a dog friendly patio!

They’ve remained at the top of my pizza and casual Italian choices around. Still usually do their great Sunday/​Monday take out deal. Quality and responsiveness, always.

We LOVE this place! Rustica Pizzas are amazing! Crispy, crunchy, fresh ingredients, yummm. The Godmother Rustica is on our crave list! The service is great and attentive. They are very welcoming!

Big disappointment! After seeing another location of Crust with rave reviews on the morning news, we were so excited to find one close to us.
Service was good, in fact the waiter told us of a special where we would save $ 6 on a pizza if we just took it to go instead of dining in. We relaxed and had a glass of wine while waiting.
All done and we excitedly take it home, open the box to find the pizza is burnt, not just a little, but SOLID BLACK on the bottom, think like a charcoal briquette. Ugh!
Of course we take it back, they make us a new one with a complimentary dessert. We did check to make sure it wasn’t burnt.
But guess what? The edges are nice and brown, but the middle is pure raw dough!
This location has been here 5 years, the waiter told us. We are very surprised it’s lasted that long! :(

We love going to crust for an evening out. One night we had a lot of little ones with us and the waitress was so patient and helpful. The food arrived quickly and was gobbled down. It was delicious. It was a wonderful family night and I would definitely recommend crust. It is a hidden gem

Bad customer service today. Was treated like I had no business there. They have a newly hired employee as an ambassador. She seemed like a nice person, but her body language and voice was quite unordinary for a restaurant establishment. Hope she doesn’t treat or talk the same way to other future/​present customers. Best of luck Crust On Bell.
I’m willing to give this place a second chance if friends or family convince me to. If I see the same rude face who showed me no respect, I’d just start pretend I never met her before.

Food and service was excellent. We had the garlic knots, chicken Parmesan, the original personal pizza and Mac n cheese and EVERYTHING was spot on. Our waiter Justin was excellent. Great experience

This was my very first time eating here and we decided to eat here on ⁷⁄₃₁ because a friend of mine always wanted to try this place out. I would say overall the food was really good but the space was a little too tight in the dining area of the restaurant. My reasons of rating this a two-​star is because of our waitress which I believe her name was Emily (this was the name given to me by the busser). I was there with my husband and another couple, in which we all are in our mid thirties, and I ordered a glass of wine, my friend a glass of wine, and my husband and my friend’s husband both ordered a beer. For some strange reason I was the only person she carded. When I told the waitress she had to card everyone else as well in fairness she acted as if she wanted to push my buttons and only continued to ask for mine avoiding what I said without any explanation. From my understanding if anyone looks under the age of 55 then they need to be carded; however, this was not the case. I did feel that she was discriminating towards me in particular and even took everyone else’s order first when my friend interrupted her and told her to take mine.
While exiting the restaurant I did meet the owner (Michael???) because my friend actually knew him and stopped to chat with him for a little. I did want to express my concern with the owner when he asked how everything was but I didn’t feel it was the appropriate time to complain to him since he was there with his family that involved kids.

Soooooo good & this is 1 picky pizza eater. PERFECT crust not too thick not too thin, super saucy high quality ingredients, excellent staff plus so much else besides pizza LOVE this place…

Stumbled on this place. Who knew? Wanted to give five stars but do not want to you to think it is a fake review as it is a pizza place in a strip mall. Nice ambiance. Calamari was good. Personal pizza was awesome & huge. Our server was attentive and friendly. All the staff were friendly. We will go back soon.

Such wonderful touches made for a wonderful experience.
The five star elements:
***** Our server, Aaron. The perfect light touch that struck the right balance of attentiveness, cordiality, and sincere service. This fellow has a bright future in this, or any profession, that requires mastery of interpersonal communications and relations.
***** Surprise, surprise. THE CRUST. My guess is they have perfectly stoked 900 degree ovens back there, and they know exactly how to time those gorgeous rustica individual pizzas so they turn out just right. My FAVORITE PIZZA CRUST IN PHOENIX, ranking higher than Pizzeria Blanco or any other of those other so-​called elite places. This crust beats the pants off of the ordinary neighborhood pizza places as well.
***** The CHEESE.
Four star elements:
**** The local beer on tap they had… Dog Park Dark Amber. not bad. I’m quite the craft beer fan and had never heard of this beer.
**** Menu, pastas. Excellent menu diversity, intriguing specials, and an above average happy hour. VERY temptingly priced lunch specials.
**** Location. Bell/​Tatum, what’s not to like? Easy to tie a visit to Crust with your regular weekday evening errand routine to Walmart, Starbucks, Bank, whatever. That intersection is very well stocked with consumery goodness.
**** Rita’s Frozen Custard joint next door, although they were completely out of frozen custard when we went (7÷14÷2015) due to a «nationwide egg shortage» and they had a sign warning potential customers of said shortage. I’ve never been in a nationwide egg shortage before, and I admit I’m feeling the pinch since eggs suddenly do seem to be 2x their normal price across the city. It must be HARD TIMES for breakfast places like US Egg and The Eggery.
**** Bar seems well stocked. Decent low and mid shelf stuff. Drink menu not too bad in terms of specials and variety.
Three star elements:
*** Décor and ambiance. Yes, its in a strip mall. But thats no reason to «phone it in» and use the same boring tables, chairs and wallpaper used in every other strip mall «Italian-​ish» enterprise. On the good side, our booth was very comfortable, but there are only two full size family booths in the place, so I imagine Booth Reservation Wars occurs during peak hours on weekends.
*** They had like 4 beers on tap, including the god-​awful Perroni which I suppose is added to lend some additional Italian panache. Italian beers are like Yugoslavian cars. They exist, but, well, yeah.

Came here for dinner and got:
Meatball sliders with mozzarella: these were very good. The only complaint that I had that it was pretty pricey for an appetizer with 3 meatballs ($ 12)…
Macaroni and cheese rustica pizza: this isn’t on the menu but another Unilocaler wrote about it and we had to try it… and we weren’t disappointed. It was awesome. It’s a «personal» pizza but plenty for 2 and it is absolutely perfect.
The service was great, the atmosphere was great (there is a misted patio outside that’s nice), and the food was excellent. We would definitely go back…(although all the pizzas are shaped like penises and we don’t know why…)

This place is a favorite of mine, my kids and now some of our friends. I am confused by some reviews. To say the pizza has no flavor? Idk. We order it every Monday night. It is a huge pizza and delicious. I love the garlic knots and the Mac n cheese is the bomb. I am eating it right now as I type. I have been a fan of crust for 4 years. I use to go to the Scottsdale location frequently and was thrilled to see it open up in my neck of the woods. The servers are great. The place is clean. And I definitely still think it is the best pie around. It’s the closest I have found to the NY pizza I miss. I guess to each is own!

What a disappointment! My family and I decided to celebrate my birthday at a pizza place and wanted to try this place. We like to try new places. We looked on Unilocal and saw good reviews, so we gave it a try!
We ordered 2 pizzas, and waited more than 40minutes! Mind you, it was a Wednesday night and the place was nearly empty. One of the pizzas had salami, which was the worst I ever had, the pizza was cold and no flavor. After one bite I looked at my wife in disgust and she agreed!
The waitress was really nice, service was okay. She changed our pizza to a plain cheese pizza. But by then our kids had fallen asleep and we were just annoyed. I won’t be back that’s for sure! What was supposed to be a special night, it was ruined.
I don’t recommend this place at all!

Service was good. The stars do not reflect the quality of service. The food on the other hand was not that great. It did not posses the flavor of what you would expect of a sit down type of pizza place. I am surpirsed since I have been to MyPie (their sister restaurant) and it is better pizza and food overall.
My qualms: Garlic knots, lack of garlic taste, the oil or butter was slopped all over this. It really was an excessive amount of oil/​butter. The marinara sauce that came with it was bland, it didn’t seem to be seasoned by much. The pizza was extremely greasy as well. The topings couldn’t stay on the pizza when you picked it up because of the grease. The crust at the end was good, but underneath the pizza was soggy. Sad :(
The sauce used for the pizza was similar to the garlic knots sauce and left a lot to be desired.
The pictures of the pizza on Unilocal look amazing and completely different than my experience. Maybe it was an off night for them, but it definitely did not leave me saying, oh this is a place i want to come back to.
The mac and cheese was good. I could have done without bacon on it (but others at my table wanted it on). Maybe their other foods aside from pizza are good. You would assume, if a place is called crust their pizza would be good.
Its not that I don’t like this place, I enjoy going to their sister shop, and would recommend that over coming here.

This restaurant is off to the side of the main shopping strip plaza, and has a fun café feel with both indoor and outdoor (patio) seating. We headed in and took a table up front by the window. We hit them for the tail-​end of happy hour and ordered some garlic knots from the food menu for just $ 3. There were a ton of knots on the plate, and the smell was amazing.
Spaghetti and Meatballs on a pizza?! Intrigued by the very idea of combining two foods I love, I had to go with this menu option. My pizza came out exactly as outlined on the menu — spaghetti atop pizza! The pasta was cooked perfectly and the meatballs were plentiful. The crust on the pizza was cooked to be a good texture for picking up and eating, but not overwhelmingly crunchy or cardboard-​like.
The portions here are definitely shareable. We both ordered our own plates, but could easily have just shared one, since we both only ate half our plates and boxed the remainder.
Since we were both really full we opted to just get two small canolis at the end of the meal, and they were the perfect amount of dessert to satisfy the sweet-​tooth without making life regretable.
Overall: A
Would definitely head back here when craving some Italian goodness.