CNY Pizza Tour, stop #33: A craft beer bar in Manlius with pizza that’s literally fire

(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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Manlius, N.Y. — Sometimes it’s nice to actually eat a pizza in an actual restaurant rather than have it delivered. You know, relax at a table with a beer and enjoy a conversation while your pizza’s in the oven.

That’s what you do here at A.W. Wander in Manlius. This bar on the village’s main drag has a cozy dining room with a flat-screen that plays random movies without sound and a bar next to a giant wood-burning pizza oven.

Ironwood Pizza had operated here for eight years before closing in April 2020 during the Covid pandemic shutdown. At the time, Joe Ori and Dan Chapman owned All Who Wander, a tiny craft beer bar in the plaza behind the Swan Pond. They bought this building and moved in, keeping the stove and expanding the beer offerings.

“This place was a pizza place with beer. Now it’s a beer place with pizza,” said Derek Allen, the general manager.

You now can pair 90 beers with any of the 10 creative pizzas or appetizers made with local ingredients.

OK, let’s throw a pizza on the fire to go with this big mug o’ beer ...

Address: 145 E Seneca St, Manlius. (315) 692-2026. They don’t take orders over the phone, but you can order online here.

Do they deliver: Yes, via DoorDash. But why would you want to? Seriously, this bar/restaurant has a pleasant vibe with dozens of beers from around the world.

What I ate: A Spicy Honey Pepperoni pizza. (Full disclosure: I bought three pizzas, but this is the one I’m actually reviewing.)

Why this pizza? The owners and staff unanimously agreed that I should try this. It’s the most popular pizza sold here, and it features local ingredients and everything that’s good about this place. Works for me.

RATINGS (out of 5)

Crust: 5/5. Making pizza dough for A.W. Wander is Patty Guynup’s retirement job. She comes in a few times each week to whip up a new batch.

Patty will only use Caputo flour from Naples, Italy. It’s slowly ground to preserve the European winter wheat’s aroma and flavor. It has no chemicals or bleach. Many Neapolitan pizza makers are loyal to this powder-like flour that produces an airy, crispy crust.

The dough here ferments for three days before Don’dre Huddleston, the cook who creates all the pizzas, presses and twirls the balls into 12-inch circles.

When it comes out of the oven, the crust is about ⅛-inch thick in the center and mostly ¾-inch around the rim. A bubble here or there might reach a hollow inch.

Toppings: 5/5. The ingredients are simple, but they somehow come together to make what tastes like an elaborate pizza. The kitchen staff grinds sweet Alta Cucina tomatoes from Italy and tosses in a few herbs to make the red sauce.

Don’dre scatters a couple handfuls of Grande mozzarella cheese and about 37 slices of cup pepperoni.

Nick Bartholomew, the pizza baker who’s also in charge of maintaining the expansive beer menu here, scoops the pizza from Don’dre’s counter onto a long-poled paddle and slides it into the oven. He had just added a third log to the fire to push the temperature back up to 800 degrees.

After 95 seconds, he lifts the pizza to let the rising heat kiss the crust for 8 seconds and lays it onto a pizza pan. There, he cuts the pizza into six slices, drops about a quarter-cup of Grande shredded parmesan cheese and finishes with hot-pepper-infused honey from HoBe in Baldwinsville.

Value: 3/5. I paid $18 for the 12-inch Spicy Honey Pepperoni. It was among the most expensive I’ve reviewed during the CNY Pizza Tour, at nearly 16 cents per square inch, and that was the cheapest among the three I bought Saturday night. Keep in mind, these are smaller than what you get from your typical pizzeria.

Then again, this is what some would call an artisan pizza. They’re cooked by burning hardwood in a brick-lined oven, and the ingredients are higher-end. It’s not a basic pepperoni and sausage pizza that you’re going to bring home on a Friday night.

Charisma: 4/5. These are rustic pizzas, meaning they’re similar to homemade. They come from creative recipes, they’re not always going to be perfectly circular, and the pepperoni slices or sausage clumps may not be evenly spread. You might even find one or two blotches of charred crust.

So what, they’re loaded with unique flavors that blend well together.

Total: 17/20. This was a pleasant change of pace. Too often at the end of a long week, we’ll grab a pizza to go and scarf it down on the sofa while streaming a movie.

At A.W. Wander, we tried creative combinations of meats, cheeses and vegetables all resting on one of the best pizza crusts around. We enjoy all this while sitting at bar high-top table next to the bar that kept us hydrated with beers we’d never heard of.

“That’s what makes this place so great,” Derek said. “We do our best to make everything top-notch, including the experience.”

Charlie Miller finds the best in food, drinks and fun across Central New York. Contact him at (315) 382-1984, or by email at cmiller@syracuse.com. (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.