Carlucci’s Pizza
890 Fuller Avenue NEI used to work a lot of Friday nights. I don’t so much anymore…at least not regular shifts. I do pick up some overtime Friday nights in the fall but that’s something that’s kind of outside of my normal work.
We’re a little short in the Grand Rapids office right now so a bunch of us are rotating Friday nights. My shift was a couple of weeks ago. It was a fairly easy night. I completed a couple of tasks with a colleague then had a time for an actual dinner break.
It was a Friday night so you know that means I had to find a pizza from somewhere.
I chose Carlucci’s Pizza on Fuller Avenue just north of Mason Street on the Northeast side of Grand Rapids. The small carry out pizza place is tucked in to a space next to a party store on the corner in a long brick building with a small parking lot between the building and the road.
I have driven past this place probably hundreds of times and never stopped. The reason I picked it tonight was because it was one of the nearby places with online ordering that popped up. I put in an order for a medium pepperoni, sausage, and jalapeno pizza and order of Moz stix. The cost was right around $20.
I headed to the shop to pick up my order after grabbing drinks and filling up my car at the nearby Speedway. It was a Friday night so they were pretty busy. I waited in my car for a little bit then headed in to find a very busy crew cranking out pizzas in a small kitchen. The only public space is a pick up counter right inside the door. There were a couple of other people waiting so we had to do the little dance around each other to get to the counter to give the ladies running back and forth our name to see if the pizzas were ready.
I timed it out just right. A cook had just thrown my pizza boxes on top of the oven to stay warm as the front counter employee was heading back there to check on it. I grabbed the two boxes then headed back to the office.
I was pretty hungry when I got back to my car so I actually popped one of the boxes open to grab something quickly. The Moz Stix were on top so I dug in to those first. They were actually really good. The thick pizza dough was layered with garlic butter and mozzarella cheese. It came with a marinara side to dip them in but I really liked this bread sticks without dipping them. The cheese was a little greasy and they was a little bit of run from the butter which just made these delicious, greasy, cheap mozzarella covered bread sticks. I was only going to have a couple but I ended up eating half of the order on the drive back to the office.
I was starting to get pretty full on the bread sticks by the time I got back to the office but I still had a whole pizza and I really wanted to eat at least some of it.
I went with the thin crust option which is kind of a New York Style crust. The pizza is cut in to triangles and can be kind of floppy in the middle. It didn’t help that I chose to do a 3-topping pizza so it was loaded down with pepperoni, sausage, and jalapeno slices.
The pizza was a little light on the cheese as the sauce really made it’s way to the top but it was a slightly sweet sauce so that didn’t bother me. The grease from the sausage and the pepperoni’s made this a little bit of a messy slice but it’s the kind of slice you can snap in the middle and fold over. That makes it a little bit easier to eat. It’s a delicious pizza and the perfect kind of Friday night comfort food pizza.
Carlucci’s Pizza has been on this corner for about a decade. I mentioned earlier I’ve driven this road hundreds of times and it’s never really caught my eye. I love neighborhood pizzas joints that just kind of melt in to the fabric of the surrounding neighborhood. Carlucci’s is that kind of place.
SW Michigan Dining 