CNY Pizza Tour, stop #47: Baldwinsville’s Pizza Man Pub thrives on family recipes and community spirit

(It’s a debate every Central New Yorker has had at some point: Who’s got the best pizza? This year, we’ll do our best to find out. I’m on a quest to find the best pizza shops in the Syracuse area. Throughout 2024, I’ll visit 50-plus pizzerias. At each, I’ll sample their most popular pizza, or whatever they recommend. As I go, I’ll score each one, and tell readers a little bit about the shop itself.)
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Baldwinsville, N.Y. — Good luck talking to Jimmy Delia about pizza without getting interrupted.
On Monday, his Pizza Man Pub in downtown Baldwinsville was filling up with customers enjoying “Pubs-giving,” a party created by bartender Jordan Perrin to celebrate the celebrations to come this week.
As Jimmy walked me through his sauce recipe, a customer came along and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Jen! How’s your mom doing?” he said mid-hug. “Tell her I said hi. And we’ll see you here this weekend. Right?”
Without skipping an ingredient, he went on to describe how he blends tomatoes, herbs and oil with a paint stirrer connected to a power drill. But then another customer edged in to say goodbye on his way out.
That’s just how it is here at Pizza Man. It’s as if a Town Square collided with the TV bar “Cheers.” Everybody here knows your name, and the delivery drivers know all of your pets’ names.
But this pub serves some damn fine pizza.
Jimmy’s father, Jim, and friend Al Romano founded Pizza Man in June 1983. Jim bought the building a few years later. The restaurant then was nothing more than a kitchen behind two Blodgett pizza ovens, a counter and a few of tables. He added two more ovens to keep up with the growing demand.
In 2007, Jim took over the storefront next door. The space that once housed the Chamber of Commerce became a pub that comfortably now seats 60 thirsty and hungry customers.
To accommodate the newfound built-in customers, Pizza Man expanded its pizza menu and added a lot more food options.
All the while, Jim’s four sons grew up working here in some capacity.
Jimmy was folding pizza boxes when he was 10. When he turned 12, he was promoted to pouring soda. It would be a couple years before he actually made pizza.
“I didn’t care. I just wanted to be here, with my dad,” he said.
Jimmy bought the business from his father seven years ago. “And my 7-year-old wants to be here all the time.”
The recipes and all the ingredients they call for have remained the same after 41 years. So has the temperature of the water for the dough, depending on the humidity in the kitchen. And yes, they have always used a drill to stir the housemade sauce.
Speaking of sauce and crust, let’s grab a slice …
Address: Pizza Man Pub, 50 Oswego St., Baldwinsville. (315) 638-1234
Do they deliver: Yes, and you can obviously eat in the tavern and watch a game on of the of the 11 flat screens.
What I ate: A large Sweet Heat with Meat pizza: cup-and-char pepperoni, meatballs, fresh basil and a hot honey drizzle.
Why this pizza? First of all, it’s the owner’s favorite. It’s a relatively new pizza on the menu, having only been here about five years. Yet, it has a cult following and has become one of the most popular pizzas on the menu.
RATINGS (out of 5)
Crust: 4/5. Jim learned to make this pan-pizza dough at Tino’s, a long-gone pizzeria on North Salina Street in Syracuse. He brought the recipe with him when he when to work for his father at the Country Inn in Baldwinsville. He eventually taught his sons the secret to mixing proper proportions of all-trumps flour, salt, sugar, yeast and water at just the right temperature.
The dough sits on lightly oiled pans until your order comes in. Jimmy works his fingers from the center of the disc to the edge. Its first 13 minutes in the oven are spent on the pan; it sits bare on the brick for the final 50-60 seconds.
The crust ends up slightly thicker than a hand-tossed New York-style pizza, but it’s fluffier inside its crispy shell. The endpoint of my slices measured about ½ inch, with the outer rim ¾ inch.
Toppings: 5/5. Every shop I’ve visited for this CNY Pizza Tour uses a ladle to dump the sauce onto the dough. Pizza Man is no different. However, Pizza Man uses the ladle’s 10-ounce bowl to pour the sauce, but not spread it. Jimmy gently shakes the pan back and forth while rotating it counterclockwise to evenly distribute the sauce, just like his father before him, and his father before him.
The pan then goes onto a scale so Jimmy can sprinkle exactly 10 ounces of cheese over the sauce. His mix is two-thirds mozzarella and one-third non-smoked provolone. And like his predecessors, Jimmy shreds the cheese from 10-pound bricks each day.
“Like us or not, this pizza is going to be the same,” he said. “You’ll like this pizza now, and hopefully you’ll order it again, and it’ll taste exactly the same.”
Now it’s time to hide all that cheese with a bunch of deliciously fat meat, first with two grips of sliced meatballs and then 50-or-so cupping pepperoni to fill in the blanks.
The oven hovers between 450 and 475 degrees, depending how many pizzas the kitchen is pumping out. Jimmy pulls down the door during the last 2 minutes to make sure the heat has encouraged a decent char on the pepperoni.
With a minute to go, he pulls the pizza and places a handful of fresh basil leaves on top of the meat. He then scoops the pizza off the pan and slides it back into the oven for a minute.
The final step before it reaches your table is a healthy drizzle of Mike’s Hot Honey. This somewhat new condiment pairs with the ‘roni cups to create a sassy syrup that gives this pizza its personality.
Value: 3/5. I paid $24.99 for this 16-inch pizza. While that’s a little above average than most specialty pizzas we’ve tried, this is one labor-intensive pizza with costly ingredients. Cup-and-char pepperoni costs 20% to 30% more than lay-flat, and they’re shredding and mixing Arrezzio mozzarella and provolone.
At 12 cents per bite, that’s a good deal.
Charisma: 4/5. The 1½ pounds of meat make this a dapper pizza, and the basil that Jimmy carefully places face-up makes it a delicate pizza.
For any of you who may find vegetables on a pizza offensive, or vegetables in general, don’t worry. You can barely taste the basil. Just call it an herb, not a veggie.
Total: 16/20. There are a lot of reasons to visit Pizza Man, and the food is certainly one of them. Jimmy is using recipes that have lasted generations. But it’s more about the place itself.
What started as a pizzeria has grown into a hub in this community of 8,000 residents. It’s become home base for families after a Friday night football game or a Saturday marching band competition at Baker High School a half-mile away.
On Monday, it was a night to celebrate a made-up holiday. On Thanksgiving-eve, longtime friends will reunite on what’s become the busiest nights of the year for Pizza Man. And Saturday, they’ll all return for the Festival of Lights Parade, the second-busiest night of the year.
“That’s Baldwinsville, though. All the restaurants and businesses work together to make this community what it is,” Jimmy said just before greeting a family of regulars for Pubs-giving. “We’re just one of many, but we are all family here.”
Charlie Miller finds the best in food, drinks and fun across Central New York. Contact him at (315) 382-1984, or by email at [email protected]. (AND he pays for what he and his guests eat and drink, just so you know.) You can also find him under @HoosierCuse on Twitter and on Instagram. Sign up for his free weekly Where Syracuse Eats newsletter here.