Flagstaff's Best Pizza Joints

(This article was written by me and first published in Flagstaff Live!)

In search of Flagstaff's Best Pizza

Pizza. The variety you can find in this one menu item is almost amazing. It may sound simple and easy, but pizza is really an art form, at least at the great pizzerias. It’s like the famous old saying goes, “Pizza is a lot like sex. When it’s good, it’s really good. When it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.”
I went on a quest to find not just good pizza, but the best in Flagstaff. I forced myself to dine on pizza pies at New Jersey Pizza Co., Fratelli Pizza, Oregano’s, NiMarco’s Pizza, Roma Pizza, Scott’s Chicago Pizza, the Pizza Guy and Alpine Pizza.
Here’s a look at the best of the pies I tried.

The Best

New Jersey Pizza Co.

This small and relaxed pizzeria gets the overall best pizza rec. I managed to come here over and over to be sure it deserved top billing. It does.
New Jersey pizzas run from $8 for a plain cheese 12-inch to $18 for 16-inch specialty pies.
There’s an actual chef back in the kitchen and you can taste the care in the pizza. All of the ingredients blend together smoothly to complement, not overpower, the others.
The sauce is fantastic! Flavors of fresh tomatoes and spices are infused to make an almost creamy sauce. The cheese is generously doled out. It’s salty, but not overly so.






The crust is very thin and crispy. Everything about this pizza tastes fresh.
Another reason for the superior taste, New Jersey uses as much locally grown and organic ingredients as they can. Many places charge extra for organic, but that’s not the case at New Jersey Pizza Co. Another bonus.
You can even order pizzas (for a little extra cash) with their homemade Mozzarella cheese. I saw them making this one day when I was dining there and it’s pretty cool. Tasty too. (You can buy New Jersey Pizza Co.’s homemade cheeses at the Flagstaff Community Market on Sundays through Oct. 12.)
New Jersey Pizzas take time to make. It’s never a quick in-and-out dinner, so plan accordingly.

Fratelli Pizza, downtown location

Fratelli is the classic Flagstaff pizza joint. It’s comfortable, low key, has a super friendly staff, and makes a good pizza pie.
My favorite thing here: the slice combos. (See sidebar for details).
To feed the family, the office or a group of friends, ordering a whole pizza is a better deal. They range from $7.25 for a 10-inch plain cheese to $20 for the 14-inch Chicago, which their menu calls “the manliest pizza alive.”
Fratelli makes a great thin crust. The cheese is super-gooey with just the right amount of sauce. The dough is homemade and hand tossed then baked in a stone deck oven—perfect if you like New York-style thin crust, which I do.
I recommend going for a little different pizza here: the pesto. It’s basically their thin crust cheese pizza with pesto sauce. Even if you’re not a huge pesto fan you should try this. The pesto is blended right into the cheese. It tastes so fresh and smells so good. Most days the pesto pizza is one of the options on the slice deal too!

Also worth mentioning in the best category: Oregano’s Chicago-style stuffed pizza. Their stuffed pizza tastes like authentic stuffed Chicago pizza. The stuffed feeds an extra person than the same size thin crust and runs from $12.95 for a 10-inch cheese to $22.95 for a 12-inch meaty Numero One-O.
I used to live in Chi-town and ate the best stuffed pizzas on the planet. This one isn’t the best I’ve had, but a great substitution considering your only other option is to fly 1500-plus miles to eat.
A great way to test out Oregano’s stuffed pizzas—the lunch special personal sized pizza (see the sidebar for details).

The Rest
There will be NiMarco’s fans who disagree with this, but I have to say NiMarco’s may be the most overrated pizza in town. They have a great patio and great prices ($1.75 for a plain cheese slice) and great sauce. But the pizza itself is sub-par and greasy with a cracker-like, dare I say cardboardy, bland crust. The sauce is tangy and tasty, but not good enough for me to recommend ordering pizza here.

NiMarco's Pizza

By Angele Sionna


[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="101 S. Beaver Street, Flagstaff, AZ"][/caption]

101 S. Beaver St., Flagstaff, AZ

(no menu online)

The Food (taste/flavor/quality of food & drinks)
>>= mixed bag, can be good but can be bad, can’t count on it

The Atmosphere (environment, wait staff, comfortableness)
xxx= good but could be improved

Price (what to generally expect to pay per person per entree)
$= under $10

Value (what you get for your money)
*** = fair -you get what you pay for, not in a bad way

NiMarco’s Pizza says on their sign that they’ve been serving “Flagstaff style” pizza since 1979. If that’s the case, Flagstaff style is average pizza with a cracker-thin dry crust but really good sauce.

I was very excited to try NiMarco’s for the first time this week. I’ve driven by their place countless times and always thought that their patio looked like fun. It’s a simple house-style restaurant with about a half dozen tables outside. The inside has a relaxed look with a fireplace dominating the single roomed restaurant and wooden booths around the outside of the room and tables in the middle. Nothing fancy, just easy to kick back in. That’s a good description of the menu as well. NiMarco’s serves slices, whole pizzas, calzone, a few types of salad, and wings.

During the school year, NiMarco’s patio is almost always packed with college students when I’ve gone by. On our visit, there were only a few customers, as it’s the middle of summer break. I figured the big college student clientele meant they must have cheap slices and good beer.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="NiMarco's Cheese Pizza Slices"][/caption]

I didn’t try the beer but I did grab two slices. The plain cheese, which I got, were $1.75 each, tax included. Good price. (Adding topics ups the price depending on what you get because they have different “levels” of toppings.) The pizza itself was too greasy and is nothing impressive. The crust was too crusty and really dry. It’s best described as “cardboard crust,” to use a common pizza term. The sauce however was really tangy and good. Unfortunately, not good enough for me to recommend ordering pizza here.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="NiMarco's Calzone"][/caption]

What was good at NiMarco’s was the calzone. My husband ordered the “Your Way” calzone ($7.50, including tax) with extra cheese, pepperoni, sausage, onions, and ham. They said it would take 20-30 minutes and it did. Again, the crust wasn’t that great, but on the calzone it is really thin so it didn’t matter as much. It was lacking in the cheese department (and we got extra cheese - yikes) but overloaded with onions. Those should have been reversed for better flavor. This dish is loaded with sauce, and that’s a good thing. Until you get to the second half, because the sauce and all the ingredients’ juices seep thru and make it really soggy. This is particularly bad because everything at NiMarco’s is served on throwaway products – paper plates, paper cups, and plastic ware. While that’s easy for them, it’s not good for us patrons, as the plastic knife just didn’t cut it with the calzone, literally. Add that to the soggy plates and you’ve got a mess.

I find NiMarco’s paper/plastic products policy very wasteful and surprising, actually. It’s like a delivery place that has good seating. They use three paper plates for each entrée. Add that to the other paper/plastic waste from the cups, napkins, and cutlery and I actually got to the point where I kinda felt bad about eating there on an enviro-friendliness level. This may seem kind of silly, but I guess I just expected a little better from a place that prides itself on being Flagstaff-style, as the city and its residents are very eco-conscious.

All in all, the price is right at NiMarco’s but the product reflects it. I would skip NiMarco’s and opt for their competitor just up the block – Fratelli Pizza. (See my Fratelli review HERE.) NiMarco’s does have a better patio and is about a half block closer to Northern Arizona University’s campus, which is probably why it draws such a crowd when school’s in session.

See more photos of NiMarco's Pizza HERE.