Tony’s Cafe (Newark, DE)

At the corner of Possum Park and Paper Mill, five minutes from Main Street in Newark, there’s a little eatery called Tony’s Cafe that’s been producing some of the best pizza in town for quite some time.  A traditional little pizza place, there were several different kinds of specialty pizzas already made and just waiting to be eaten.  Predictably, I couldn’t resist getting a slice of philly cheesesteak and a slice of buffalo chicken (I’m a sucker for geographically named flavors).

The cheesesteak slice was excellent.  I could taste the peppers and onions the meat had been cooked with, the hints of red sauce that came through convinced me that even a slice of cheese from Tony’s could be the most flavorful thing you’ve eaten that day.  My favorite thing, though, about this slice of pizza was the amount of cheese.  I love cheese, and most other dairy products, for that matter, and there was no shortage of it on this slice.  It had been cooked into the steak (white American, I presume) and there were slices of yellow American layered on top.  The result is an extremely creamy, robustly flavored pizza that I’ll go crazy for every time.

The buffalo chicken slice was delicious as well.  If you consider yourself an authority on the flavor, or take Buffalo style very seriously, you might find yourself disappointed by the sauce Tony’s uses.  It’s orange and spicy, and is very good on chicken and when mixed with blue cheese, but isn’t the sort of thing to win an award for authenticity or originality.  That being said, it’s still a very well-conceived specialty pizza, with a blue cheese base instead of red sauce.  The chicken was tender and moist, and the pieces were just the right size.  I’m not overly fond of chicken, so having a lot of control over how much chicken I got in each bite was a huge plus.  It was the right amount of everything to be delicious, and on a ten-inch slice.

That’s not a ten inch diameter pizza, folks.  The slice itself was ten inches long; it came from a twenty inch pie they just can’t find boxes to put them in.  Two slices were more than my stomach had room for, so I put the end of the cheesesteak slice in a little to go box and finished it that evening.  Whenever I’m about to eat pizza I’ve refrigerated, it gets one bite to convince me that I’ll enjoy it cold.  After that, it’s the toaster or microwave for that slice.  Tony’s cheesesteak passed the one-bite test with flying colors.  I even ate the crust cold without dipping it in anything (that’s a huge victory for a pizza crust).

It’s the first time I’ve been to Tony’s since graduating, which is quite a shame.  I’ll be sure to make it more of a habit to stop in; it’s conveniently located, reasonably priced (I payed $7.50 for my meal), and incredibly delicious.  They don’t deliver, but their pizzas are always worth the drive.