Rhinegeist’s new pizza restaurant is finally close to opening, and CityBeat was lucky enough to try the full menu.
Titled “Pizza Time,” the restaurant is a full-service pizzeria and caterer, with 11 different pizzas on the menu alongside salads, sides, desserts and a pizza-by-the-slice option.
The restaurant’s branding is intentionally 80s-retro, with pizzas named after classic TV shows and those red pebble cups that you’d see as a kid at your favorite bowling alley or Pizza Hut location. It’s located inside the brewery’s Over-the-Rhine taproom at 1910 Elm Street, and will be opening “very soon” according to Ben Castle, Rhinegeist’s vice president of hospitality and finance.
“We’re trying to make sure that our guests can come here, have a happy hour, have a beer. Maybe two beers. Then have a couple slices of pizza, so they’re not leaving to go get dinner, or to get food somewhere else,” he told CityBeat back in August. “One of the other really big initiatives we’ve got this year is Bengals watch parties, and there is truly nothing better than watching football and eating pizza. So we’ll now be able to do that in a big one-stop shop here all year.”
At the soft opening, my friend and I tried nearly every item on the expansive menu. “Expansive” might even be underselling it — Tracey Ireland, the brewery’s VP of marketing, told us not to go back for seconds because we’d have more than enough to try, and we thanked her for it after leaving with plenty of unfinished slices.
The first array of items we tried were all appetizers and standard pizzeria fare: garlic knots, cheesy bread, cheese and pepperoni pizzas. There was also a pizza with bacon, sausage and crisp, cupped pepperoni titled the “Big Biff.”
Everything in this grouping tasted about how you’d expect; I wasn’t the biggest fan of the cheesy bread, but the garlic knots were the clear highlight of the first round. They were just the right balance of crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and the sauce accompaniments — marinara, garlic butter or chipotle ranch — were perfectly paired. I could easily see myself ordering these one, two or three times while sipping a Cincy Light on a game day. (In fact, I was drinking a Cincy Light Chili-Lime during the evening, which is apparently a new, experimental addition to Rhinegeist’s menu that should be permanent. I hope they’re reading this.) All the pizzas we tried in this round were satisfactory, too. Pizza Time chef Dan Allen told us that they designed their pizzas — especially the crust — to hold in one hand while you’ve got a beer in the other. In that regard, they’ve succeeded; you won’t find any flimsy pieces or toppings falling off here, despite the ginormous size of each slice.
Next, though, were the real winners of the evening: Pizza Time’s specialty pies. Of the nine on the menu, we tried seven. The “Veg-O-Matic” was a great veggie pizza, with green peppers and fresh cherry tomatoes alongside red onions and mushrooms. The “Cherry Bomb” was a fun spin on a caprese, with lemon ricotta, basil, olive oil, those same cherry tomatoes and a great balsamic glaze.
One particularly interesting pizza was the “Meatballs,” which — as the name implies – heavily featured sliced meatballs. But the sauce on the pizza was made with Truth, Rhinegeist’s flagship IPA, which added a hearty new dimension to your typical meat-heavy pizza. My favorite pizza of the night, though, was the “Saved By The Bell.” With taco sauce, cheddar, chicken, lettuce, chipotle ranch, tomato, crunched-up Fritos and a giant dousing of chipotle ranch to top it all off, this was certainly the messiest (and best) pizza I ate all evening. I think everyone else around me agreed, too, as it was the only pizza that didn’t have any slices left over for us to take home.
Somehow, after all that, I saved room for dessert. The mini cannolis were essentially the platonic ideal of the popular dessert item, filled with a delectable ricotta cream and topped off with chocolate chips. I also loved the gargantuan cookies, which were large enough to fit entire Hershey’s Kisses inside each one.
Back in August, Ireland and Castle told me the idea was to offer a great, consistent food option so guests didn’t have to leave the building to find something to eat. With Pizza Time, it seems like Rhinegeist has delivered a home run.
The menu offers options for all group sizes, tastes, and price ranges; while some of the larger pizzas run upwards of $20, a slice of cheese is just $4. If you often find yourself in the brewery’s taproom on weekends, prepare to frequent the space even more than before. The pizza’s too good not to.
Pizza Time, located inside Rhinegeist’s Over-the-Rhine taproom at 1910 Elm Street, has yet to announce an opening date, although it will be “soon.” For more information on Pizza Time, visit Rhinegeist’s website.
