Krispy Pizza

"They did not have to do that. That is the whole reason they are what they are."

My grandmother grew up blocks from here. Krispy is the pizzeria in Dyker Heights — not one of the good ones, the one — and it has been the same family on 13th Avenue for about sixty years.

We ordered from Krispy once for a family wake. The delivery was set for a particular time and the driver turned up early, which on any ordinary day is not a problem and on that day was. The owner had the man who took the order call us back to apologize.

Nobody makes you do that. There is no review to protect and no manager to satisfy — it is just how they were raised to run a business. Watch their social media for five minutes and you see the same thing: the family on camera, the sons in the shop, showing how a pie is actually made. That integrity is what turned a neighborhood pizzeria into one of the most respected in Brooklyn, and then in the city.

The specialty slices. That is the answer. There are more than fifteen varieties going at any time and the whole point of coming here is not to order the thing you always order — vodka, grandma, salad pizza, spicy pepperoni squares, whatever is in the case that day. Go with somebody and split three.

Then the pinwheels, which come in several kinds and are the thing that made the internet notice this place. They are worth the attention, which is not something you can say about most food that goes viral.

If you want the traditional answer, the crust is in the name: well-crisped, and the plain slice holds up next to anything else in southern Brooklyn.

The Palazzolo family have run Krispy since their father opened it, and the brothers have it now. A 2016 profile in the local press put the founding forty-nine years before that — which places the start in the late 1960s, and makes this roughly a sixty-year run on one avenue.

The social media is worth following on its own. It is not a marketing account — it is the owners and their sons, on camera, being themselves and showing the actual craft: how the dough is handled, how a pie is built, how it is supposed to be done. Very few pizzerias let you see that, and fewer still make it fun to watch.

Open seven days, 11am to 11pm most nights, so this is an easy one to get to. It is a sit-down room as much as a slice counter, and they deliver.

Dyker Heights is worth timing. If you come in December you are a few blocks from the Dyker Heights Christmas lights, which is the other thing this neighborhood is famous for — slices first, lights after, is a genuinely good evening.