Sal's Pizza.

Overview

Sal's Pizza opened in Crozet in 1987, three blocks east of where Crozet Pizza had already been operating for ten years. That a 9,000-person village has supported two independent pizzerias on the same stretch of Three Notched Road for nearly forty years is a small Crozet anomaly. Both kitchens are still family-run. Both still hand-toss their dough. Neither has folded into the other. Locals have settled into preferences and the preferences are durable.

Sal's is at 5752 Three Notched Road, in a low strip-style building with a covered storefront and a handful of parking spots out front. The dining room is one big rectangle, with a takeout counter near the door and tables running the length of the back wall. Booths along one side. A long pizza oven visible from most seats. The family pizzeria you grew up eating in, if you grew up in the Northeast.

What it is

Sal's tagline reads "What a real pizzeria is supposed to be." That is a sales line, but it's also a reasonable description. The pies here are the red-sauce, mozzarella-blanket, hand-tossed New York style, not the more chew-forward Crozet Pizza dough, not the Neapolitan reduction you find in Charlottesville's newer rooms. Sal's is closer to what Americans of a certain generation think of when they think of a pizza place: the slice, the fold, the grease blot on the paper plate, the regulars at the counter on a weeknight.

Dough is made in-house. Cheese is 100% whole-milk mozzarella, not a blend, not part-skim, not low-moisture by spec. Sauce is the family recipe and has not changed in any way the regulars would notice. Toppings stay traditional. The menu carries the standards: pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, peppers, onions, the meat-lovers, the veggie. There are stromboli and calzones. There are subs cold and hot. There are wings.

It is not trying to be Crozet Pizza. It is also not trying to be the rooftop place in Piedmont Place. It is a neighborhood pizzeria run by people who have been making the same pies the same way long enough to know what their customers will reorder.

What to order

The cheese pizza is the test. A whole pie comes out with a rim that's faintly puffed, a center that holds toppings without sagging, and the unmistakable structural integrity that comes from a dough that's been shaped by hand and a sauce that wasn't slapped on out of a 5-gallon pail. Locals who order the cheese order it because the cheese tells them whether the kitchen is having an on day. It usually is.

The pepperoni-and-sausage is the second-most-ordered pie and the one to bring home. The veggie deluxe is competent and generous. The white pizza is ricotta-and-garlic-forward, and a useful order to put on the table when half the group has already had cheese-pizza nights this week.

Skip the salads if the place is busy and you're getting a pie anyway. Add an order of garlic knots if there are kids at the table.

The dessert that defines Sal's is the fresh zeppole, Italian-American fried dough rounds, made-to-order, served hot, dusted with cinnamon sugar or coated in glaze, served with ice cream and chocolate fudge for dipping. They are not on most local menus and they are essentially the kitchen's signature. If you are taking kids to Sal's, you order zeppoles. If you are taking adults to Sal's, you order zeppoles and pretend they are for the table.

Visiting

Address: 5752 Three Notched Road, Crozet, VA 22932. Phone: (434) 823-1611. Email: salspizzallc@gmail.com. Website: salspizzacrozet.com.

Hours: Closed Mondays. Tuesday–Thursday 11 AM–8 PM, Friday–Saturday 11 AM–9 PM, Sunday 4 PM–8 PM. Dine-in, takeout by phone, catering on request, fundraiser pricing for local schools and nonprofits.

The dining room handles families well. Kids' menus and crayons are a default. Weekends after 5:30 the takeout phone rings continuously and the parking lot fills. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the room's quiet nights, those are the nights to bring a date or read a book at a corner booth.

Catering is real and a substantial part of the business. Sheet pies, party trays of subs, and salads for groups have been the backbone of Crozet sports-team postgames, school fundraisers, and church potlucks for decades. Call ahead for anything serving more than a dozen.

Why it matters

A village this size having two long-running pizzerias side-by-side is unusual. A village this size having two long-running pizzerias side-by-side that *both* still make their own dough is rarer still. The two places coexist not because Crozet has more pizza demand than the math would predict, but because they're not actually doing the same thing.

Crozet Pizza is the destination, the *National Geographic* mention, the wood-paneled dining room, the dough recipe perfected before opening day in 1977. Sal's is the neighborhood option, the weeknight pickup, the team party, the Sunday-night-after-soccer dinner, the place where your kid's first pizza memory will be set. Locals who say they "love Crozet Pizza" usually still order from Sal's twice a month. Locals who say they "love Sal's" usually still take out-of-towners to Crozet Pizza.

The split is what lets both kitchens stay full. It also says something about Crozet itself, a town small enough to have favorites, big enough to support both, old enough that the favorites have been in place since before most of the current residents arrived.

If you are visiting and have one pizza meal, eat at Crozet Pizza. If you are moving here, you'll learn the Sal's order within a year. Tuesday at six. A large half-pepperoni-half-veggie. Garlic knots. Zeppoles. A couple of cans of soda for the kids and a beer for you. That's the routine. It's been a routine for a generation.

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