In Syracuse, there's no shortage of pizza shops, so if you're gonna open one, you'd better offer…read moresomething different than the dozens of others. That's the idea behind CrisPi, a new North Syracuse pizza and wing shop from Nick Ford and Mike O'Connell. It's located at 609 S. Main St., a building that once was home to a Pies Guys pizzeria.
CrisPi's pizza is a tavern style pizza, which is thinner. Much thinner. CrisPi's signature "thinny thin" pizza starts with just 9 1/2 ounces of dough stretched into a 14-inch shell. A traditional New York-style pizza of the same size uses about 19 ounces. The wings are breaded, something very few other pizza shops in the area do, making them "crispier".
CrisPi also offers an "upside down" style pizza with the sauce on top of the cheese, and also offers a traditional style crust pie and traditional, "naked" wings without breading.
CrisPi has been getting a lot of attention lately being a newer restaurant, so I decided to give them a try. Every now and then, I get a craving for breaded wings, so I was excited to give them a try. For my first order, I just went with a traditional style pie with pepperoni, and then an order of breaded wings with garlic chili parm sauce.
My wife and I were not impressed, for the most part. We found the traditional style pizza to be lacking in flavor all around, to the point where it almost tasted like a pre-made pizza. The wings were large and the sauce was very tasty, but we did think the breading was too thick.
I usually give places 2 tries before writing a review, unless the food is ridiculously good/bad right off the bat, so I decided to give CrisPi another try yesterday. This time, I tried a meat lovers CrisPi thin pizza, and got breaded wings again, but with zesty lemon pepper sauce and I left the sauce on the size.
I enjoyed the thin pizza much more. There was plenty of flavor, it was cooked perfectly. The wings were still large, but the breading was a perfect thickness this time, although I felt the breading itself didn't have much flavor without a sauce. The sauce, again, was very good.
Overall, I think CrisPi has a lot of potential but still need to tweak some things to be a go-to in a city full of pizza options.