Posted by Michael Stern on December 13, 2007
Pizza at the Colony Grill is unique. It is thin-crusted, thinner even than the Neapolitan-style pizzerias of New Haven; and it is brittle. Regardless of the ingredients on top, each triangular slice can be lifted by its broad end from the circumference of the pie and the pointy end of the slice will remain on the same plane as the rest. There is real character to this crust, and at the outermost edge, a luscious crunch unlike any other pizza you will eat.
As for toppings, the usual repertoire is available, including clumps of excellent locally-made sausage; but Colony connoisseurs frequently get what is known here as a Hot Oil pizza. Hot oil -- "hot" meaning spicy -- is drizzled over everything and seems to bake right into the crust, giving every crunchy bite a zest that is not merely fiery, but brilliantly pepper-flavored. We love the hot oil with sausage, or with wide discs of pepperoni.
Pizzas are served on metal trays. There is only one size, about enough for one very healthy appetite. Pizza is the extent of the Colony Grill menu, other than drinks. This place is a local tavern, featuring a long bar along one side of the room that you enter off Myrtle Avenue; and while it is famous for pizza, many customers come for shots and/or beers. We sat there during lunch hour and watched at least a dozen customers go to the back for take-out orders ranging from one to eighteen pizzas.
Overall: Worth planning a day around
21 out of 22 people found the review helpful. Was it helpful to you?
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"Here is a Hot Oil Pizza with huge discs of pepperoni. (That single green pepper is what marks those pies anointed with hot oil.) Yes, it is indeed oily; but the crust remains remarkably stiff. No spillage or slippage when you lift slices from this tray!"
Michael Stern
"Sausage for the sausage pizza is made on Myrtle Avenue. It is delicious. Most customers eat directly off the tray on which the pizza arrives, making the little paper plates supplied with each pizza superfluous."
Michael Stern
"Here is a close view of the underside of the crust circumference on a Hot Oil Pizza. It is ridiculously luscious, rich and crisp ... and impossible to stop eating."
Michael Stern
"At the end of a meal, the pizzas will be gone, and there will be a large pile of oil-sopped used napkins in the middle of the table."
Michael Stern
"The walls of the Colony Grill are covered with pictures of friends and neighbors from the last half-century, as well as statuettes of leprechauns, and police patches from local and faraway departments. Our kind of place!"
Michael Stern
"From the outside, the Colony Grill looks just like any neighborhood tavern. It is indeed a place locals come to imbibe at the bar under a TV set; but it is also a significant pizza destination."
Michael Stern
"This is a lunch run to Westport, CT."
wmcgee
