What I mean by that is restaurants located in small towns, villages, or rural areas where somebody has been quietly operating for years, making great food, feeding their community, and never making any waves. I think Papa’s Express in Marcellus is one of those restaurants — even though it’s a pizzeria.
I had actually forgotten about Papa’s Express. They had emailed me about a year ago asking me to come out, and I added them to my list of places to get to someday — but they never made it to the top, so they slipped my mind. Then one morning I was sitting in my office working when another email came through. “Next time you’re in our area we’d love to have you stop by and try some food.” It landed on a day when I didn’t have much planned. I had a couple hours to spare, so I decided to head out for lunch.
I looked at their menu and saw they had a rodeo cheeseburger pizza — barbecue sauce, mozzarella and cheddar cheese, ground beef, and onion rings. And granted, I’m someone who likes to think I know a thing or two about high-quality pizza, but I still really love a good off-the-wall specialty pie. So I went out and ordered the rodeo cheeseburger pizza and asked them to load it up with extra onion rings. I’ll be honest — I thought it would look better on video and hopefully send more people out to try the place.
They brought out the pizza, but they also sent me home with an order of chicken wings tossed in their house Papa sauce. I don’t remember exactly what was in the sauce, but the wings were slightly chargrilled and crispy with just enough coating on them. What really stood out though was the blue cheese. They make it in-house, and if you’ve ever had the blue cheese at Original Italian Pizza in Syracuse, think of it as the same thing with a little less garlic. Thick, rich, and really delicious. It passed the blue cheese test with flying colors — that’s where you dip a wing, get a good-sized scoop on there, hold it upside down, and count how long before it falls off. This one held on.
The wings were good. The blue cheese was great.
But the pizza is what I really loved. Like I said, I seek out high-quality pizza and even try to make it at home. But I have a soft spot for a well-executed specialty pie — and that’s a little foreshadowing for another video and blog coming out later this week.
This pizza hit every note. Sweet from the barbecue sauce, cheesy from the cheddar and mozzarella but not overdone, with a satisfying crunch from the onion rings and a little salt from the ground beef. But what I appreciated most was the crust. A lot of specialty pizzas I’ve had in the past go overboard with the dough — you end up with something heavy from both the thick base and all the toppings piled on top. The rodeo cheeseburger pizza at Papa’s Express somehow managed to avoid that trap. The crust was thin — not thin-crust thin, but thin for a specialty pizza loaded down like this one. It had a light crunch on the outside and stayed soft and chewy on the inside. Perfect bake.
Now, some of you reading this are probably thinking there’s no way you’re touching a rodeo cheeseburger pizza. And that’s fine — you don’t have to go as far off the deep end as I did. But I would still recommend making the trip out to Papa’s Express in Marcellus. If you’re in the Syracuse area, it’s a short and honestly beautiful drive out to a lovely small town with some great local businesses. Papa’s Express is definitely one of them.
Papa’s Express
18 W. Main Street
Marcellus, NY
Follow them on Facebook
