Coney Island Pizza – Poway

**Update: Coney Island Pizza has become Sweet Home Chicago, but still offers many of Coney Island’s pizzas.**

There’s this place I feel compelled to tell you about.  Except, it’s not perfect and there are some things that get us frustrated every time we order, and it’s kind of out of the way, so I don’t want to rave about a place you may not love.  Having said that, it’s become out order out default choice, much like Chinese take out to other people (although, not really any one I know).

I am not ashamed to admit that my favorite pizza used to be a thin crust sausage, mushroom, and pepper pizza from Papa John’s.  Add some totally unhealthy (and might kill you) garlic “butter” sauce and a pepperocini and I was a happy gal.  Some of our friends like NY Giant Pizza (in some form or another), I like to believe because of the convenience it brings to feeding a lot of people at once.  Even Oggi’s pizza has some merit, especially the one with white sauce and a ton of garlic.  Today, I’m announcing that from here on out, when I think of pizza, I can only thing of the Spinach Ricotta Pizza from Coney Island Pizza.  I’d also like to note that the menu on their website is way different from the menu we picked up and use when ordering.

We’re always getting coupons from pizza places in mailers and the paper.  T has been searching for a good stromboli (although, no one has produced a cheesesteak stromboli on the West Coast) and he keeps these coupons in our Restaurant Coupon folder.  Somehow, some weekend, we ended up on a search for Coney Island Pizza and found it down Poway Road (past the car dealers) in the same strip mall as the mediocre Thai place.  We had their stromboli (fresh, hot, tasty, really hot) and a mini cannoli (it was okay, nothing special, but they did fill it when I ordered it so it was still crispy).  T seemed to approve of the place.  Then, some later weekend, when we were probably doing yard work or housework or something that involved me getting tired, dirty, and sweaty, he called them up to see if they would deliver a pizza.  We ended up with half Spinach Ricotta and half something that had meat.  The pizza crust is as thin as you can get, crispy and chewy but not too chewy, and the toppings were very yummy.  I pretty much fell in love with the fresh ricotta sitting on the pizza.

Now, they have a very small delivery area.  The first time we called for a pizza, there was actually some discussion of whether or not we were too far away for them to deliver.  I think it we were any closer to Pomerado instead of Community, we would have had to pick that pizza up ourselves.  This means that any of you who live west of us are not going to be able to get a pizza delivered.  But you can come to our house and we’ll share a pie with you.

We’ve gotten their pizza 3 times now, every time with half Spinach Ricotta, half something with meat (this part changes under T’s direction) and always when we’re too tired to cook something up and too dirty to go out to eat.  There are always leftovers (2 slices from the large is enough, don’t try to eat another half slice or you’ll be too full – trust me) and they toast up perfectly the next day.  It’s simple, not too saucy, not too bready, and you know it’s a hit when T doesn’t leave any crusts for the dogs.  He’s also pretty fond of their italian ices, which come in little styrofoam cups and you have to scrape the surface with a spoon to make it icy.  He says he likes them better than Flavors italian ice in Carmel Mountain (I know!)

Coney Island Pizza looks like it’s been there for a while, so I’m not too worried about them going out of business.  They’re certainly not in a convenient location for a lot of people, but if you have a chance to go, I do recommend them.  They have a lot of non-pizza things for lunch and I think they also sell pizza by the slice.  And it’s yummy.  I almost wanted nothing but pizza for a week after that first one.  It’s so good, I would probably still eat it even if the dog licked it while my back was turned.  I mean, that hasn’t happened (that I know of, with pizza) but if it did I’d still eat the slice.  It’s not so delicious (or expensive) that I would pry it out of their mouth and eat it, something I’ve witnessed with a chocolate truffle back in the days before chocolate truffles were everywhere.  Ahem.