Taste of Sacramento: Here are three longtime pizza spots that are big on flavor

Zelda’s Original Gourmet Pizza has been part of midtown Sacramento since 1979. The restaurant specializes in Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.

“If you’re from Chicago, you understand this style of pizza,” said owner Kerry Matthews.

Matthews is the son of the original owner, Zelda Breslin. She ran the place for 28 years, and Matthews took over after her death in 2006.

The family is from Chicago, where Zelda learned her recipe. “There were two guys, Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo, and they started this pizza in Chicago,” Matthews explained. They started Pizzeria Uno and began serving deep dish. That was in 1943. Later, they opened a second location, Pizzeria Due.

Zelda spent years working at Pizzeria Due. She knew exactly how to make the pies. And then she moved to Sacramento.

Zelda worked at their second location, called Pizzeria Due. She was there for years.

There are different styles of deep dish, but “for what we have, those guys invented it,” Matthews said.

The dough goes into the pan first. Some people compare it to a cracker crust or a pastry crust. The rest of the pie is built from the bottom up. The cheese goes in next, followed by the meats and vegetables. Finally, the pie is topped with tomato sauce and Parmesan.

Pizzas range in size from the 6-inch to the 14-inch. Menu options range from the basic cheese pizza to the combo (sausage, pepperoni, mushroom, green pepper, onion and garlic). There’s also a vegetarian supreme (zucchini, spinach, cauliflower and broccoli) as well as the spinoccoli (broccoli, seasoned spinach, fresh tomato slices, feta, mozzarella, cheddar and pepperoni).

Zelda’s also offers pre-cooked frozen pizzas, including the cheese, pepperoni, sausage, combo and spinoccoli.

The pizzeria has been takeout-only since March.

“I just know that people from Chicago who have had pizza at Uno’s and Due’s or Lou Maldani’s or Giordano’s — they say, ‘This is the stuff right here. You guys have hit the mark.’ And for us... those are the best compliments. Because they’re from where we’re from and they understand that we brought...that style of pizza out here and that we’re true to the original.”

Old Town Pizza & Tap House

Old Town Pizza & Tap House is a neighborhood pizza place in Elk Grove. Husband and wife team David Smith and Jamie Dougherty bought the place in 2012. Smith always had a dream of owning a pizza restaurant, and this one was ideal. It was the local pizza joint — the place everybody went to after Little League games.

“We grew up literally living around the corner from it,” said Dougherty.

Smith and Dougherty met in high school. They graduated in 2000 and Smith went to school in New York. But the couple kept up a long-distance relationship and eventually settled down back in their home town.

Old Town pizza is “neighborhood style,” according to Smith. The dough is handmade and hand-tossed. Pizzas are cooked in a brick oven — the same type used by many of the pizza joints in New York. But Old Town puts on more toppings, so the crust has to be slightly thicker.

Old Town’s menu includes several specialty pizzas.

“The most popular by a pretty wide margin is our meat lovers pizza, which we call The Chuck Norris, because it’s a roundhouse kick to the face of flavor,” Smith said. It comes with ham, pepperoni, bacon, sausage, linguica, meatballs, salami and red sauce.

Then there’s The Grandma Helen, inspired by Dougherty’s 93-year old grandmother. “She’s 100% Italian, 100% saucy,” Dougherty said. The Grandma Helen is made with red sauce, sausage, green bell peppers, onions, garlic, oregano and fresh basil.

The Mushroom Mayhem pizza is made with truffle oil, garlic, spinach, mushrooms and portobello. “The truffle oil very much comes through, it’s the star of the pizza,” Smith said. “And then we round it out with more mushrooms — and more mushrooms. If you like truffle oil, it’s definitely crave-able.”

Old Town is also a tap house and it’s known for its beer. “I think that’s kind of what put us on the map initially,” Smith said. “We have 18 beers that are constantly rotating.” Since the pandemic, beer is also available for takeout.

Smith and Dougherty are getting ready to open another pizza place on 24th and K. It’s going to be a different style, offering square slices and pizzas to go.

Pizza Supreme Being

Pizza Supreme Being is “just a simple place offering simple pies,” according to owner Ben Roberts.

Roberts spent over a decade cooking in Sacramento and he’s worked for some fine dining restaurants. But pizza is accessible and fun to make, so Roberts decided to apply his fine dining techniques in his own pizzeria.

“A lot of the cheese that we put on our pizza was stuff that I put on cheese boards in really nice restaurants,” he said. His pizzas are made with a blend of three cheeses, including “a certain provolone” and “a certain aged Gouda” — he’s not revealing the actual brands. And then there’s the mozzarella, which is hand-pulled in-house from milk curds.

Pizza Supreme Being does not use commercial yeast. Instead, they use naturally leavened dough from a sourdough starter. The final product is crust that’s thin where the toppings are but fluffy towards the outside.

As far as the pizza style, it’s just its own thing. “I pull inspiration from each region,” Roberts said. The sourdough crust and fresh mozzarella are reminiscent of Neapolitan-style, but pizzas are also big and floppy like a New York-style slice.

“We’re just a simple place offering simple pies,” said Roberts. The menu consists of just four pies, plus the occasional special. The options are cheese, pepperoni, Hawaiian and vegan. Pizzas only come in one size, 20-inches, and they cost $24 (for the cheese and the vegan) or $27 (for the pepperoni and Hawaiian).

On the vegan pizza, the cheese is replaced with a soy-based tofu ricotta. On the Hawaiian pizza, the Canadian bacon is replaced by Spam. Yes — that Spam. It’s sourced straight from the can.

“That’s my one curveball,” Roberts said. He argues that Spam is more Hawaiian than Canadian bacon. But he doesn’t expect everyone to like it.

“Every time someone does call in a Hawaiian pizza, we make sure to say ‘Hey, just so you know, this has Spam on it.’ Usually people are pretty down. There are the occasional people who don’t want it. And I don’t shame them for not wanting it. You can’t bully people into eating something they don’t want to eat.”

Pizza Supreme Being also offers square slices These are smaller slices made with a different style of dough. The bread is closer to focaccia and baked in a pan. The dough has to rise for 18 hours after it’s mixed. When they run out of squares, that’s it for the day.

Before the pandemic, Pizza Supreme Being was a popular lunch spot for state workers. “But we have a very supportive night life as well,” said Roberts.

Since March, the pizzeria has offered only takeout and third-party delivery. The dining room never reopened, even when restrictions eased. Customers place orders by phone or online, and pickup times are assigned to avoid lines.

“We’re going day by day. ... We really have no idea what can happen tomorrow,” Roberts said. “But I will say that our lights are still on, and we plan to be here tomorrow.”