What is Old Town Pizza?
Fifth Avenue eats very well. It has a James Beard winner in Craftsman Court, the gastropub the rest of the Valley measures itself against, and a coffee line that never ends. What it has rarely had is the simplest thing in urban dining: a place to grab a cheap, hot, foldable slice. Old Town Pizza is that place.
It is a small, counter-service New York-style pizza shop at 7111 E 5th Ave, the same building as Citizen Public House. The owner, Dana, came with more than 25 years in the pizza business and a stated mission of bringing New York classics to Old Town. The tagline on its website is “all about the sauce.”
The menu is short and properly New York. Classic pies in 14- and 18-inch sizes. Sicilian squares, thick and crisp-edged, which the shop calls its famous ones. Grandma-style pan pizzas baked 16 by 12 inches, including the Hot Honey Roni with cup-and-char pepperoni and Mike’s Hot Honey over a garlic-oil base. Calzones and strombolis. Garlic twists by the piece or the basket, meatballs in marinara, a burrata caprese, and mini cannolis at the end.
It is not trying to be a destination. It is trying to be the place you remember exists at 3 p.m. on a shopping day, and on a block of reservation-only rooms, that is a public service.
How to order
Pick your format. The thin New York pies are the default; the Sicilian is the shop’s specialty and the better choice for a group, since the squares travel and reheat well. The grandma-style pans sit between the two and carry the most interesting toppings. If you are eating alone, ask at the counter what is available by the slice; customers on the shop’s own site describe both slices and whole pies.
Go for the hot honey. The specialty list leans hard on cup-and-char pepperoni, the kind that curls into crisp little cups, and on Mike’s Hot Honey. The Sweet Heat stacks pepperoni, sausage, jalapeño and pineapple under it; the Hot Honey Roni is the cleaner version. For traditionalists, the Margherita with fresh mozzarella and basil, the White Pie with ricotta and provolone, and the meat-heavy Italian Stallion cover the classics.
Order ahead. It is primarily a carryout and counter operation, and online ordering through the website is the fastest route on busy afternoons and around ArtWalk on Thursday evenings, when the gallery crowds come through Fifth Avenue hungry.
Eat it in the neighborhood. A box of Sicilian squares works as a picnic in the shaded courtyards of the Fifth Avenue shops, or as hotel-room dinner if you are staying downtown. For a sit-down Italian meal with wine, Grimaldi’s is around the corner on Scottsdale Road; for a cocktail after, Citizen Public House is in the same building.
The slice shop Fifth Avenue was missing
Fifth Avenue was laid out in 1950 by artisans who named it, half as a joke, after New York’s grandest shopping street. Seventy-five years later, an actual New York import finally arrived in the form most New Yorkers would recognize first: a pizza counter.
The timing says something about how the street changed. Through the 2010s, Fifth Avenue’s food reputation was built from the top down. FnB in Craftsman Court won national awards; Citizen Public House opened in this building in 2011 with its famous chopped salad; Berdena’s and Cartel Roasting Co. made it a coffee street; Herb Box and Original ChopShop took lunch. What the block did not have was the cheap, democratic layer that every walking neighborhood needs, the meal a shop clerk, a gallery-hopper and a family with tired kids can all afford on short notice.
Old Town Pizza fills that layer, and it does it in the most portable way possible. It also extends a long Scottsdale habit of importing East Coast pizza, from the coal-oven pies at Grimaldi’s on Scottsdale Road to the late-night slice counters of the entertainment district. On Fifth Avenue, it is the first place in years where you can eat well for the price of a coffee and a pastry.
The honest assessment: this is a newcomer, the menu is deliberately simple and the room is built for counter service rather than lingering. Pizza obsessives will argue about the crust, as they always do. But a New York-style pie with good sauce, a Sicilian square with a proper crisp edge and a basket of garlic twists, on a block where dinner usually means a reservation, is a genuinely useful addition to Old Town.