Top 10: Dewey's Does Pizza and Dining Differently

 Top 10:
Dewey's Does Pizza and Dining Differently

TOP: Brian Andrew and Stlpizzaguy give Deweys the “P” of Approval. The Pizza on the right is half Bronx Bomber and half Don Corleone. The pizza on the left is pepperoni. Brian Andrew is a great friend of mine who is instrumental in encouraging and promoting my pizza blog. After many months of asking to be on the blog, I relented to let him gain some pizza fame

BOTTOM: I love Deweys so much that it is my Facebook cover photo. This is a classic picture of the second time I visited Deweys Pizza in 2012. It captures the pure joy of seeing and anticipating a hot, fresh pepperoni pizza after having to wait a cramped hour in Dewey’s hallway of eager pizza eaters forced to wait.

The Large D outside this St. Louis pizza staple isn’t just for Dewey, it is for different. From the revolving waiters and waitresses one might encounter, to an open pizza kitchen, to the small size of the restaurant, and most importantly to their great tasting pizza, everything is carefully calculated to provide a certain different dining experience filled with anticipation and satisfying pizza.

When you enter the restaurant, you walk in to a narrow hallway that serves as a waiting area for customers.  Be prepared to wait to get seated as a customer here. You will wait anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour during weekend dinner time. As you walk through the narrow hallway filled with various pizza awards, on your left you see a busy open pizza kitchen through a large window, with cooks kneading the dough, tossing the dough, or throwing pepperoni at the kids who are staring. On your right, the room opens up into a small bar and modestly sized restaurant.

If you are brave or have a lunch hour to come here, the pizza is definitely worth it in the end. My usual experience is you can barely get in the restaurant because it is so crowded during the weekends, like trying to get into a popular, crowded club, but the prize of everyone at Dewey's is the pizza. This is the Dewey's experience.

Dewey does dining differently

Revolving waiters, waitresses, and an artificially small restaurant

Every customer has a hostess who seats you, one staff member who takes drink order,  another for a preliminary salad order, another person who takes the pizza order, one server who delivers your food and another server who comes and asks for refills. Instead of only having one server throughout the night, you could have as many as five! Dewey's uses a great team approach to serving guests with the staff constantly roaming the room and taking customers through the dining process. Have no fear, Dewey's uses the same staff member to deliver and pick up the check.  

When I’m waiting at the Kirkwood, Webster, or St. Charles location for upwards of an hour in a narrow hallway,  I get angry and say that Dewey’s purposely makes their places artificially crowded by having such a small dining area. The pizza place could easily be double the size given the high demand, and in fact most restaurants today are rather large. The size of a Dewey's pizza dining area is probably equivalent to most people's living room and kitchens combined, and there may be room for one large party but not much. Quality control has to be the reason for the small size of the restaurant. A pizza place that has many carry-out orders plus demanding customers dining in must have a kitchen with capacity to handle the crowd. Whenever I am at a Dewey's, their pizzas always come out within 20 minutes of ordering it. Recently I went to Mellow Mushroom, with a dining area quadruple the size of Dewey's. Although I didn't have to wait to be seated, I waited for almost AN HOUR for my pizza.

So the bottom line is although I have to wait to get seated at Dewey's during dinner time, the pizza comes out quickly once I order.

MY PIZZA PICKS:

The Bronx Bomber (Left) and the Don Corleone (Right). The other half of the pizza in both pictures is pepperoni.

The pizzas are VERY artistic looking eye-catching, but it tastes even better than it looks. The freshness of the dough and the toppings are always something that sticks out to me. My top choices for pizzas here are the Bronx Bomber and the Don Corleone The Bronx Bomber showcases the most fresh toppings with green peppers, onions, mushroom, circular sausages, olives, and pepperoni piled on top of each other. The Don Corleone features pepperoni, capicola ham, and genoa salami--the perfect meat lovers pizza.

Those are my traditional pizza picks. I am a traditional red sauce pizza lover. For the more adventurous non-traditional pizza lovers, Dewey's has more than five olive oil, ranch, or white-sauce based pizzas on the menu. Dewey's makes all types of pizza very well. And if you can't agree on red sauce or white sauce, Dewey's does half-and-half pizzas so no one has to impose their pizza preferences on the other person.

THE PIZZA DETAILS:

Dewey's uses a high temperature deck oven, cooking pizzas in less than 8 minutes at temperatures over 500 degrees. Their style of pizza is closest to New York-style, with pizzas coming in 11', 13', and 17'. 

THE CRUST: Chewy, but in a good way. The crust at the end is not overly crisp, but slightly chewy. Many people who have been to Dewey's say that this is their favorite crust in St. Louis.

THE SAUCE: A zesty marinara sauce plentifully spread throughout the pizza. Slightly sweet.

THE TOPPINGS: I was once told that Dewey's gets their toppings fresh from the Hill at an Italian meat market. I will say they taste very fresh, and also that some toppings are not baked in the pizza, like the green peppers and onions are put in late in the baking process, making a great contrast to the well-cooked sausage and pepperoni.

THE CHEESE: Mozzarella

If you haven't been to Dewey's yet, give it a try. This Cincinnati-based pizza chain with St. Louis roots is a pizza treasure. 

Matt Burke is a great friend of mine from Parkway North High School. Last March, we visited Deweys and I told him about my plans for the pizza blog. Many of my memories with Matt focus around pizza since almost every Friday night we would eat Pizza Hut at his house before watching Chapelle’s Show on Comedy Central. He is famous for consistently eating an entire large thin-crust pizza from Pizza Hut.

SPECIAL SHOUT OUT to my brother Evan Block. Dewey's has been his favorite pizza for at least the last 10 years. Thanks to his persistence, I've had it more than 50 times now, and it is in the top 10. 

FUN FACT: Andrew DeWitt of the Cardinal DeWitt family opened the first Dewey's in Cincinnati in 1998. It quickly spread to St. Louis, Missouri and has locations in Illinois and Kansas.