Pizza Lucé

I went to pizza Luce a few days ago and I’m just amazed at how accommodating they are. I’m deathly allergic to tomatoes but I enjoy eating out. I rarely try a new restaurant because of my allergy.
There was no wait to be seated even tho it was busy, which is amazing.
We ordered two pops and they refilled them very quickly every time.
I told the waiter about my allergy but ordered Alfredo pizza. It was delicious and my favorite part was his attitude toward me. Restaurants frequently discount how severe my allergy and occasionally I’ve heard them talk badly like ‘ugh not her again’
But this waiter was awesome. The menu has vegan and gluten free items which reassured me that they’d take care of me.
I had no reaction from their food and it was so yummy. I highly recommend this fabulous restaurant especially if you’re higher Maintainance for allergy reasons. They are so accommodating. This is the best place to go!

Delicious food with a large variety of food regardless of your dietary restrictions. One of the few places in the area that I have found that has vegan and dairy free cheese options for their food. I highly recommend the Rustler pizza.

Epic fail.
Went for brunch this morning and ordered the Huevos Luceros — «Corn tostadas served on a bed of fresh spinach with black beans and salsa, Spanish quinoa and over-​easy eggs.
Topped with fresh cilantro, avocado, our Quito sauce and a sprinkle of feta cheese.» But when my ordered arrived, I noticed the avocado was missing. I alerted the server to this and as he walked away I took a closer look and noticed not only was the avocado missing, but the black beans. And salsa. And feta cheese. FOUR ingredients were missing! HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN? Does anyone in the kitchen know how to make the dishes?
The server arrived back to say that the kitchen staff just now informed him (after making my order, why wouldn’t they tell him BEFORE making my order?) that they were out of avocados. I started to reply, «this is also missing the black beans…» and the server said he’d grab me a menu so I could order something else.
Ok, fine. I ordered the vegetarian version of the Baja Burrito Verde. But now my boyfriend’s food is sitting in front of him getting cold because he has manners and isn’t going to eat before my food arrives.
The rest of the meal was fine, but this isn’t the first time I’ve ordered from the St. Paul Luce only to find ingredients missing from items. One time I ordered a butternut squash pizza that was supposed to include cilantro, but it arrived with no cilantro. Another time I ordered the Ruby Rae and it arrived with NO red sauce! The bruschetta tomatoes were there, but zero sauce.
Do yourself a favor and skip the St. Paul location. It is seriously lacking in quality control.

This is a common tale: Four picky people seek pizza. We decided on two large pizzas: The always enjoyable «Luce» with Italian sausage, fresh garlic, onion and extra mozzarella & red sauce; and «Wild Mushroom and Arugula» with olive oil, fresh basil, arugula, caramelized onion, garlic, wild mushroom blend (crimini, oyster, portabella and shiitake), provolone, parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
Both pizzas were a hit, but the «Luce» led Wild Mushroom 2-​to-​1 on slice selection.
The Pizza Crust at Luce is among the best. It’s always crispy and never soggy the way some wood-​fired or coal-​fired pizzas in the area always seem to be. It’s got a thick outer crust too, which makes it the perfect compromise for families that battle over thick/​thin crust decisions.
Pizza Luce is never a disappointment — although I wish their happy hour prices applied to all of their tap beers and a wide selection of appetizers. This is the first time I visited the St Paul location, which is closer to me than locations in Minneapolis.

I ordered the gluten free crust on the Luce specialty pizza and it was one of the best gluten free crusts I’ve had! I would recommend this place to anyone looking for good, specialty pizzas. We also ordered the tangy BBQ wings; also excellent. The service was also great and our waitress was very friendly and fast.

Came here last night after being disappointed in another restaurant we attempted. Such a great relief!!!
Pizza Luce host was prompt and friendly… Our server (although he seemed a little tired) was also friendly, kind, and helpful. We also noted how clean the restaurant was and the ambiance overall was very welcoming and nice!
We order wings, mostaccioli with meatballs, and a baked potato pizza. Everything was delish!!! So happy we ended up eating here and we look forward to going again!

St. Paul location:
Please go back to your previous toppings for the thin and crispy crust pizza formulas because toppings are very skimpy (one tablespoon) sprinkled on the oily, over baked, thin and crispy small Athena pizza. (A full bodied pizza should be loaded with lots of toppings; it is not a flat, over baked crust with sprayed on flavors pretending to be pizza toppings.)
I had the Athena for this visit and the Ruby Rae for my previous visit.
I did not say anything two visits ago because I thought the skimpy toppings and very dark, crunchy and oily Ruby Rae was a one time mistake. I left hungry because the serving was so small. A five year old child could eat a small thin crust pizza by him or herself.
This new pizza experiment is not up to Pizza Lucé’s well-​known high standards. ‘If something isn’t broken, don’t fix it.’ Go back to your fully loaded and crispy-​chewy thin crust pizzas you had in the past.
During 2014, I had thin crust pizzas (Athena or Ruby Rae) that were light, crispy-​chewy with lots of toppings on them. They were yummy. Perfect pizzas.
Great service and atmosphere.
I hope to see a fully loaded Athena thin crust pizza on my next visit. I have not given up hope, Pizza Lucé, maybe the third time shall be my lucky visit.

Lots of pizza variations. Very good beer selection. Good for vegetarians. Pizza seemed a little on dry side. Still an enjoyable meal though.

OMG! If it’s possible to have a love affair with a restaurant, then I’m in one with Pizza Luce!
I’m new to the area and found Pizza Luce by accident when trying to find a vegetarian restaurant that delivered. I discovered Pizza Luce and never ordered delivery from anyone else. The food is generally always delicious (two or three times they’ve been off their game) and the delivery staff is always awesome!
Recently, I visited the Selby location for the first time and what a cool spot! The location is spacious and fun and the staff — awesome there too! Not sure how it’s possible to find such amazing staff focused on great service but Pizza Luce does not disappoint. On top of that, the selection of vegetarian options is sufficient and tasty!!! Love, love, love Luce!

Don’t order for delivery!!!
We live 1 ½ miles from the Saint Paul location.
It’s now been an hour and 15 minutes since initial order. We were told «40 minutes».
After waiting an hour, we were told, «our driver left 15 minutes ago…»
Not worth the wait. Who wants cold pizza?
Overpriced and incredibly late. Goodbye Pizza Luce.

I love that Pizza Luce delivers and late too! They offer a diverse menu with appetizers, sandwiches etc. Its good, local food that is good in a pinch. A little pricey, especially since the food doesn’t blow me away with how amazing it is, but like I said, it’s good.

Thank you Lucé for including cruelty-​free pizzas on your menu. The Pizza Athena, and for that matter any pizza, from Lucé is the bomb. The rinotta used instead of cow cheese is so much better in terms of taste and nutrition. I can devour an entire vegan medium Lucé pizza by myself and still not feel stuffed like I used to when I ate cow cheese pizzas.
The prices are on the higher end but it’s because of the quality of ingredients unlike the ones from non-​cookie cutter pizzas offered at national chains.

Finally stopped in sober a couple of times and ordered something different from the normal «Hey I’m drunk let’s get pizza Luce.» selection. And boy let me tell you am I happy I did, with being a vegetarian this place has tins if opinions that have me changing my mind on what to order. I Finally decided on this tasty Roasted Vegetable Lasagna and it was to die for.

I love this place, particularity this location on Selby in St Paul. The pizza is top notch, and one slice can be a meal. The beer selection on tap is wonderfully varied from ales, stouts, porter, lager to fruit beers and ciders. For dessert, the ‘Lil Lemon is soooo good. Ginger snap crust with lemon bar filling topped with blueberry compost and fresh made whipped cream… it doesn’t get better.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would intentionally CHOOSE to eat at this, or any other, Pizza Lucé. This is Pizza Hut with a hipster vibe. We went with friends who actually like the place. They ordered some sort of mega-​ingredient monstrosity that included BBQ sauce and mock duck. Yum! (Not.) We ordered a Margherita. Did I mention that we ordered a Margherita? What we got instead was a ridiculous garlic bomb that in no way resembled, or even hinted at, a Margherita. A Margherita is fresh and light and shows off the quality of its few and very excellent ingredients. When all you can taste is garlic, it’s a garlic pizza – not a Margherita.
We also ordered a Caesar salad. It completely, utterly and 100% sucked. How hard is it to make a Caesar salad? Hint: not at all hard. Our «Caesar» salad was more like a chopped dinner salad with a teaspoonful or so of commercial dressing, a grate or two of cheese, and a huge handful of croutons, which included all the crumbs from the bottom of the box they dumped the croutons from. Flavorless, wilted and awful.
Beer list was fine (no prices listed anywhere, however, which is totally annoying), but they DO list the alcohol content of each beer, which is TOTALLY annoying. Not Pizza Lucé’s fault, I know – everyone does it these days – but is that what we’re doing now? Drinking beer to get hammered as efficiently as possible? When I see the alcohol content listed on a beer menu, I always feel like I’m at a frat party.
Pizza Lucé claims to be «Minnesota’s Best Pizza». While I understand why they qualified their claim by limiting it to Minnesota, they’re not, by any stretch, Minnesota’s, or anywhere’s, best pizza. Try Punch, Black Sheep, Mesa, or Pizzeria Lola. Even Dominos is better by a mile.
Service was excellent. Vibe was medium-​noisy, obligatory piercing, purple hair, tattoos and Brooklynesque trend-​follower beardy.

Scaling my review back by a star — maybe even 2. Haven’t decided. 3 ½ seems fair.
I think they lack consistency. I have been here 3 times in the past 60 days and each time had the same pizza and server who also bartends. First time was def a 5 star experience. Server went way out of her way to accommodate us and my pizza was perfect! Second time, my cheese was overcooked and service was just okay. Friday night our server seemed crabby, somewhat unapproachable. When I explained I didn’t want my cheese overcooked she seemed offended. Also, when I told her I wasnt familiar with some of their beers on tap she seemed annoyed. Yes, it was Halloween and maybe she missed out taking her kids trick or treating, or, maybe she’s just moody.

This isn’t my favorite Pizza Luce — the downtown Mpls location gets that award because of their amazing beer selection — but there are many reasons why the St. Paul location warrants 5 stars.
So, right off the bat, I will say there are a few annoying things about this Luce compared to some of the others, namely the bar: they don’t have a full bar so I can’t get a mixed drink (and their bloody mary’s on the weekend have sake instead of vodka. They are fine but I would prefer the vodka) and the beer selection is pretty small. Also, the parking in this neighborhood is less than ideal.
HOWEVER. Here is what is amazing about Pizza Luce (in general) and the St. Paul location. It’s still 5 star worthy.
1. Their brunch is tops. There is seriously something on the menu for everyone — people who love sweet, savory, vegan, vegetarian, gluten-​free, allergies, etc. This spot is one that we frequent often with a few friends because of various food allergies in the group and they are super accommodating and everyone is always happy with what they get. Also, $ 1.99 mimosas? Yes, please.
2. Outside of brunch, the food at Luce is amazing in general. I am no longer a vegetarian — and neither is my husband — but we still get vegetarian pizzas from here, namely the Ruby Rae with veggie sausage and The Rustler, quite possibly one of the best pizzas in existence. We have taken out-​of-​town, non-​vegetarian guests to Luce to try this pizza and they absolutely rave!
3. A highlight to this location is their bar HH special. If you go and sit at the bar during HH and order a drink, you can get one of their slices for $ 1. Best deal ever. Especially if they have their tri-​pepper veggie slice: bianca sauce, green peppers, red peppers, and spicy peppers. Seriously, this slice is one of the best. EVER. Anywhere. So good.
A few other notes? Their spinach salad is absolutely amazing, as are their veggie spaghetti and meatballs, and the rice krispie treats are one of the best desserts out there. We are very lucky to have such a good local pizza chain like Pizza Luce in the state and the St. Paul location definitely lives up to all of the standards of earlier locations!

I liked Pizza Luce! I got the banh mi sandwich with mock duck on foccaccia and it was really tasty. It came with great, salty chips. The Wild Mushroom and Arugula pizza was fantastic. My other dining companions really enjoyed the Bear pizza. Service was friendly and fast. I especially liked the drink that was a watermelon, lemonade, tastiness concoction.
They have a tiny parking lot on the side but street parking is easier as the lot is narrow and doesn’t have a through-​way.

When Jenny and I walked in, I immediately felt like I was standing in the middle of a production of the Vagina Monologues.
There were tables and tables full of HS/​college-​aged women shrilly cackling in delight and making painfully high-​pitched squealing noises, presumably about lipstick, extreme motorsports, indulging in low-​calorie snack packs and other stuff ladies talk about.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I love teh weemen – but it was as uncomfortable an experience for me as sitting in a full salon as I felt completely creepy and out-​of-​place the entire time. These seemed like those caricatures of women you see on those terrible after school specials, though; the ones that spend hours gossiping, twirling their hair and crying because math is hard and they can’t hug all the cats.
Jenny looked like she wanted to crawl out of her skin and slither back to the car even more than I did.
I’m about as feminine as an ignited iron-​clad lawn mower covered in spikes and virgin blood, though, so take all that as you will.
Indeed, I was even less enamored with the food here than Jenny was.
The artichoke dip appetizer tasted as though someone had dumped about three lemons worth of juice into it and the bread to dip ratio was absurd (four mini loaves for a very shallow dish). I was absolutely ravenous after spending four hours hauling bucket after bucket of water from my flooded-​ass basement and I couldn’t eat more than a couple of small bites before I threw in the towel. Since hunger is the best spice, I can’t imagine how much more abhorrent this would’ve tasted if I’d have just been ‘bored eating’ like usual.
I was debating heavily on what pizza to eat since I noticed most of them had some kind of fruit in the list. I’m absolutely not a fan of fruit+cheese, fruit+meat, fruit+anything but more fruit. That being said… I was in the mood for something with a kick and the Fire Breathing Dragon pizza seemed to fit the bill. I asked the waitress if I could opt out of the pineapple salsa (*shudder*) and she sort of looked a little nervous. She spit out that she’d have to ask and hurried off to the kitchen.
Images of a Soup Nazi style chef quickly flooded my head and all I could hear was «NO FUCK YOU EAT THE PINEAPPLE SALSA YOU NANCY SWINE» ringing in my ears.
Thankfully, the substitution was able to be made (because, fucking gross).
The pizza came out relatively fast and didn’t –look– bad on first glance. I tore in like a starving grizzly, because I was.
It was… sweet? Cloyingly sweet as time went on, in fact, and completely devoid of any ounce of spiciness. It was rather reminiscent of a dessert pizza with chicken, to be blunt.
It was cooked well – the crust had an appropriate amount of chew, the toppings were all sufficiently prepared – but the flavors just tasted muddled to me. I toyed with the idea of asking to try a different pie but after taking a bite of Jenny’s Wrangler pizza, I quickly realized that ‘muddled overly sweet flavors’ was just the name of the game here.
I was even less enthused when the bill arrived. For a bowl of thickened lemon juice, a beer and two (small) wholly underwhelming pizzas, we ended up shelling out 50 bucks. That’s enough to make you shit a brick, son.
¹⁄₁₀ never got hard enough to bang and would never try to again.

Have you ever wanted to delve back into your high school years and surround yourself with young screaming, gossiping teenage girls? Me, neither. But that’s what I got at Pizza Luce’ and trust me, It’s not what I ordered.
I’m a female. pretty sure, anyway, and it’s not that this place seems geared toward women that bothers me. It’s that it’s geared toward young, loud, extremely chatty high school girl types. This place needs some male influence to even the playing field. It’s so inundated with femininity that it has it’s period.
… too much?
Whatever. Moving on to the food.
I made a split decision to get the artichoke dip. Impulse buying drives the economy, ya know. The dip looked great, came out bubbling hot and had plenty of soft nutty bread to go with it. The flavors were tart from the artichokes and also very lemon-​y. I thought it was well balanced with the grainy flavors of the bread. This was a total win for me; A total lose for Sam.
I ordered The Wrangler. As copied and pasted directly from their website; «This little doggie is topped with barbeque chicken, banana peppers, red onion, mushrooms, cheddar and mozzarella cheeses on our BBQ/​red sauce.» Sounded alright at the time.
This pizza reminded me of the Rodeo burger from Burger King. It was loads too sweet, it had way too much going on and when you hit a banana pepper it was like a shock to your taste buds and seemed to only make the sauce even sweeter. In my very humble opinion *cough, cough*, the flavors were geared toward a young, child-​like crowd, reminiscent of Cici’s. I gave up eating it after two pieces. I, honestly, had just expected more from a place with such a loyal following. Although, there are some die-​hard Domino’s fans out there, too…
The price for the pizza didn’t reflect quality. It felt more like paying for brand. Mine was just under $ 14 and I felt a little sore dishing out my payment. Normally, I would have sent a gross pizza back, but after trying Sam’s pizza I figured there was no point and I wanted to leave before someone tried to have a pillow fight with me.
The employees here are great, though. Our waitress was super nice and attentive. They turned tables like pros. one minute it’s a messy disaster, the next it’s spotless and set up like it was never used. They’re the reason there’s three shiny stars sitting up at the top there instead of two. Good, well trained employees can keep a business afloat.
There’s just not much else to say about Pizza Luce except «Eehh, not impressed».

Oh, Twin Cities… you’re so lucky. So many great dining options available… including pizza. A place like this in Madison would go gangbusters.
Dateline: Thursday, January 9, downtown St Paul. Hungry group of team members causing ruckus by demanding that we order pizza for lunch.
+ Super intuitive website makes online ordering easy
+ Website allows you to modify specialty pizzas, and does so with ease
+ Website delivery instructions worked flawlessly, and driver adhered to them to a «T»
+ Excellent specialty menu items; so interesting and intriguing
+ Salmon salad was delicious!!! A small was perfect lunch size, and a steal at $ 10
+ Delivery arrived *exactly* on time — we requested noon delivery; driver was in the office at noon on the dot.
+ Driver was *extremely* friendly and courteous — major kudos
+ No delivery fee!!! w000t!
+ Pizzas were excellent. Madison (my home town) doesn’t have a ton of great pizza options, so I snuck a piece or two — purely for quality control purposes, I assure you — and wow. They were both superb. The sauce was full of flavor, the meats perfectly cooked and seasoned. Crust had that idelic mix of support and chew, with just a hint of smoky char. Cheese was a tad salty, but really tasted great.
I can’t wait to order from here again. Truly divine.