POP'S
Hoppen Hierarchy:★★⭑
District: Aksarben
Thin crust, wood-fired pizzas
Perfect For: Casual Dining; Lunch; Takeout
Standout Dishes: Pepperoni Pizza; Italian Sausage Pizza
The first thing you notice when you approach Pop’s in the Inner Rail Food Hall is the giant wood-fired oven. This orange dome takes up seemingly half the stall, but there’s a reason it’s given so much real estate: it’s the sun around which the restaurant operates.
The oven was left when Noli’s Pizzeria, the beloved NY-style pizza joint in Blackstone, evacuated the space in early 2022. A sandwich shop briefly occupied the stall, but this oven was built to cook pizza, and it returned its original purpose when Pop’s opened in the fall of 2022.
Piero Cotrina, one of the genius chef/owners behind WD Cravings, honed the art of wood-fired pizza earlier in his career at Via Farina and consulted in the joint’s conception. His expertise helped train a team that may not have the tricky art of the wood-fired oven mastered yet, but they make some tasty pizzas.
And they’d better, because there’s not much else on Pop’s menu. It’s pizza, chicken wings, and a few salads—so if the pizza flops, the restaurant goes down.
Fortunately, the pies emerging from the signature oven are far from failures. The oven operates at blisteringly-hot temperatures, cooking the pizzas in mere minutes. The thin, hand-stretched dough achieves a crust that starts as puffy at the outside and becomes thinner and more flexible as you move toward the pizza’s interior.
Each pizza that exits Pop’s oven is a snowflake; no two are exactly alike. Because the dough is formed by hand, it’s not a perfect circle, and the wood-fired cooking process produces puffy bubbles and charred portions. Each bite, let alone each pizza, is unique.
Toppings are liberally applied atop the sweet tomato sauce, and gobs of mozzarella cheese cover the pie like a gooey blanket, ensuring nearly every mouthful gets a welcome amount of melty richness.
The drawback to the wood-fired oven is that it takes talent and experience to master, and Pop’s cooks have yet to perfect that process. Charring is welcome on this style of pizza, but some portions, especially around the outer edge, are just burnt. This creates an unpleasant bitterness that can wreck the palate for a few bites. Fortunately, these missteps have become fewer and more far between the longer Pop’s has been open as the cooks learn the delicate dance with the oven.
Pop’s encourages simplicity with its pies, which can be ordered as a large or personal size (the latter, 8-10 in. in diameter, is more than enough for a meal). Its signature pizzas all only have 1-3 toppings, and the Build Your Own option allows diners to select three (more can be added at upcharge). The pepperoni adds that classic salty, fatty taste that pairs perfectly with pizza, but don’t sleep on the spicy, smoked Italian sausage.
Outside of pizza, the Calabrian Chili Wings nail one of the two important elements to a chicken wing while flopping on the other. The downside is that these wings are quite small. They’re fried nicely to produce a solid exterior crunch, but there’s just not enough protein present, especially when an order of 5 costs $8.
The Calabrian chili sauce, however, redeems the wings. This buttery sauce adheres nicely to the wings while adding a smoky, spicy kick, though not enough heat to blow out one’s palate.
But the star of the show are the pizzas, which travel remarkably well, making them an excellent takeout option. Even after a 20-minute drive our pizzas were still hot, and the cheese was still soft enough to produce Instagram-worthy cheese pulls.
While Pop’s isn’t producing perfect pizzas, its product has plenty of promise. The wood-fired oven is a tricky beast to tame, but if the cooks continue to work at their craft, Pop’s could be a standout joint.
Every food hall needs a good pizzeria, and Pop’s provides an excellent option to diners at the Inner Rail.