Oh no :(
Ceres? Excellent pizza. Horrible logistics.
Ceres has a reputation yes, thanks to social media outlets and whatnot, but sad to say, Ceres is gentrified sourdough pizza.
My partner and I heard about Ceres a while back as we're pizza enthusiasts and love Lucali's, L'Industrie, Chrissy's, Impasto, Best Pizza, Fini Pizza etc, so we decided to carve out half of a weekday on a Wednesday to try out Ceres. And boy, that wait time was still ridiculous!
When you come here, you don't hear a single Native New Yorker accent. The crowd is so visibly all transplants...
Beside customer base, why on earth is any pizza almost $70? If you want a play on semantics, okay, the Nduja costs $68. I was thinking I better shit gold bricks. As much it was was extremely delicious and texture was great, the experience here was a nightmare where the cons outweighed the pros severely.
Look, I appreciate any sourdough or pizza goods establishment.
However, I feel the owner(s) should really take a logistics and bottleneck class in business school to gain more business sense and clean up their processes. Or maybe even a field trip to Japan to learn how they process high volume orders efficiently without compromising customer experience.
The logistics were an absolute nightmare - it made getting a table at Lucali's in Carrol Gardens or getting a court in McCarren Park in Williamsburg much easier feats to achieve.
This is by no means accessible price wise or even getting a table for a New York Pizza.
If you're looking for a complicated experience with little to no AC for gentrified Sourdough pizza that you may or may not get a table for, go ahead and try your hand at getting a pizza here.
Just be ready for ambiguity upon entering as to who's actually in line or who's waiting for their pizza to come out.
In our case, we came here at around 1:26, was quoted a 3:15 pickup and told to come at 3pm at a chance to snag a table Hunger Games style (no, a table is not guaranteed even if you spend $74+ on a pizza plus tax). And while we arrived at 3pm, no table was in site. The pizza was also late. By 20 minutes.
So we ubered home back to Brookyn to be able to eat our pizza with our big blue box and spent $49 to go back home. $74+$49 uber = $123 pizza experience.
So two hours for a delicious pizza that cost $123 with 182838843 rules (no slices, no sharing with others, 2 hour wait, no eating out of the box, etc) is not something we'd return for amongst all the competitive options in New York.
Also, of course the pizza became cold and wasn't like it tasted when we had a single bite before we jumped into our uber. The crunch was gone when we tried to reheat it...
An absolute nightmare. For as many delicious pizza places out there, I would not ever return. Maybe a place for the stay-at-home moms/girlfriends or super wealthy who have nothing but time to wait for a pizza.
But for true New Yorkers? Hard pass unless they improve their processes. :( it's really too bad because they have a lot of potential because their product itself is delicious.
To each their own - Ceres is like a Hot Supermodel who knows she's the shit... so she's toxic AF with her personality and has ridiculous rules to date or get access to her. Satisfying, but ultimately not with the headache to partake to many. read more