There’s thin-crust pizza, and then there’s the Thinny Thin Pizza. But you’ll only find the latter at one spot: Angeloni’s Restaurant & Pizzeria in Caldwell, New Jersey.
You might not expect a Jersey shop’s plain thin-crust pizzas to create a major sensation—they’re a dime a dozen, right? But Angeloni’s, a family-owned shop founded in 2012, has built its reputation around the signature pie.
The Thinny Thin pizza is pretty much what it sounds like, with a crust that’s thin as a whisper. Yet, by all accounts, the flavor pops, thanks to an abundance of cheese spread from the tip to the edges of each slice.
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And fans of Angeloni’s weren’t pleased that the beloved pizza joint didn’t make NorthJersey.com’s “March Madness” bracket list of the area’s best pizzas earlier this year. “The Thinny Thin pie is an absolute must,” one Angeloni’s customer told the website. “Cheese all the way through the end of the crust, which crisps up in the oven. It is heavenly.”
Folks in New Jersey are just as passionate about—and proud of—their pizzas as any New Yorker. And rightly so. When the NorthJersey.com tournament’s starting bracket left out several local favorites, not just Angeloni’s, the outcry was so great, writer Esther Davidowitz had to create a second list. And this time, she led with Angeloni’s Thinny Thin pie. She described it as a “paper-thin pie that sports a unique burnt-cheese crust on which you can add just about any topping.”
Davidowitz wasn’t just enamored with Angeloni’s Thinny Thin pizza. “What about its wildly popular Zingada, a pie with a razor-thin crust loaded with finely diced pepperoni, mushroom, sausage, meatball, hot cherry peppers and crowned by aged Parmesan cheese?” she wrote. “What about the Gina Marie with homemade mozzarella, marinated eggplant and a nice helping of garlic?”
Another Angeloni’s devotee, Kyle Clark, also raved about the Thinny Thin pizza on the NJ105 website. “It looks so thin you can barely see it, but I’ll be damned if it’s not the perfect way to make it,” he notes in a June 30 article.
“Coming from the Trenton area…I’m used to tomato pies and wanting my pizza with thin crust,” Clark continues. “But Angeloni’s takes this to an entirely new level. Their crust is so thin, it flakes off in your mouth. The edges of the crust are so unique you seriously need to try it for yourself. It’s thin and crispy, and the crispiness is what I find to be the key.”
In a “One Bite” pizza review for Barstool Sports in 2020, Dave Portnoy came away from Angeloni’s impressed, giving the Thinny Thin pie a score of 8.8. Devouring the first slice quickly and digging into a second one, Portnoy compared it to a classic bar- or tavern-style pizza, adding, “This is very good bar pizza….This is as good a bar pizza as I’ve had in a long time.”