Uptown or downtown: Two Greeley pizza joints to get your gastric juices growling

By Emily Kemme

Greeley has no shortage of prime pizza spots, so it’s easy to satisfy a hankering for it. But as with hankerings, not all pizza is the same, which is part of the flat pie’s charm. It’s one of those foods about which there is heated debate, centered on who’s got the most authentic representation of the concept.

The reality is: there is no such thing as one true pizza style.

According to Food Network, there are no less than 31 regional pizza styles in the United States. This doesn’t even attempt to catalog pizza anywhere else, particularly in Italy, where the pie originated in Naples in the late 1800s to honor Savoy’s Queen Margherita. As an aside, yes—this is where the Margherita pizza had its birth.

Luckily, we aren’t going to attempt to discuss more than two styles for this story. Let’s take a look at two of Greeley’s best, the uptown Greeley Pizza Co. in NorthGate Village shopping center and Right Coast Pizza in downtown Greeley on the 8th St. Plaza.

Greeley Pizza Co. & Taphouse

It’s called the Almost Famous Pueblo Slopper. Loaded with red and green chile purée, and overflowing with mozzarella and cheddar cheeses, generous nuggets of humburger, Pueblo chiles and a drizzle of tomatillo salsa, it’s a bit like a deconstructed cheese-smothered burrito atop a pizza. Photo by Emily Kemme.

Bill Stockert describes the pizza crust he bakes at 800 degrees in his Marra Forni brick oven as a cross between Neapolitan and Detroit styles. Making hybrid pizza isn’t uncommon, and it particularly makes sense given Colorado’s high altitude.

The ingredients for classic Neapolitan pizza dough are simplistic: flour, water, salt and yeast. But Stockert adds half a cup of extra virgin olive oil to each batch of dough to offset Colorado’s dry climate. 

Greeley Pizza Co. in NorthGate Village, 7008 W. 10th Street, bakes Neapolitan style pizza and has a wall of pour-your-own beverages, including domestic and craft beer, margaritas and cocktails. Photo by Emily Kemme.

The flour he uses is “double aught.” Also called “double zero” or “00 flour,” it earns that designation from the Italian grading system for milling flour, which ranges from 00 as the finest and grade 2 being the coarsest. To be graded 00, it’s milled several times, making it powder fine, much finer than flour you’d find at the grocery store. It gives pizza (or pasta) that chewy texture, and particularly for pizza, a crispy, flaky crust. Finely milled flour is healthier, too, with a 13% protein content. It takes three days to digest, less than half the time of other flours, Stockert said.

GPC’s brick oven is domed; the tile dome and interior pizza stone were sourced from Italy. The stone rotates for even, fast cooking. And while Neapolitan pizzas are typically baked between 800-900 degrees for 90 seconds tops, Stockert said that Colorado’s elevation requires longer cooking times.

After fiddling with the recipe, he’s learned that 4-and-a-half minutes is ideal.

“If you cook it quicker, it burns the outside and leaves the inside raw,” he said. “The result is a perfect pizza where you can taste the bread, cheese, sauce and toppings, and nothing is overpowering,” he said.

Crusts at GPC are puffy with a satisfying crunch when you bite into them. Two other GPC style elements pull from the NYC Neapolitan—the center of the pie is heavy—and Detroit: layers of cheese and sauce.

For pizza purists, get the GPC Combo: red sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, olives and green chiles—you can sub the chiles with bell pepper if you’re a stickler for authenticity.

But for the daring, order GPC’s Almost Famous Pueblo Slopper. It’s topped with red and green chile purée and overflowing with mozzarella and cheddar cheeses, generous nuggets of hamburger, Pueblo chiles and a drizzle of tomatillo salsa. Think of it as a deconstructed cheese-smothered burrito atop a pizza. 

And then there’s the on-tap drink wall: 33 pour-your-own options include domestic and craft beer, margaritas and cocktails. Pour as little (or as much) as you like—you’ll be charged by the ounce. Make it a mini-beer festival with small tastings; once you tap into a favorite, own it with a full glass, if you like.

Alexa plays Irish music overhead, while in the background sports broadcasts glow from wall-mounted TVs. 

“I feel if you play happy music, it’ll bring people in,” Stockert said. 

You can’t get more happy than non-stop sports paired with a rollicking Irish jig. It makes that drink wall endlessly appealing.

Where: 7008 W. 10th St., Suite 500 in Greeley

Hours: Sunday through Wednesday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. | Thursday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. | Friday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. | Saturday 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. | 

Contact: (970) 978-4438

Right Coast Pizza

The Southwest pizza at Right Coast features house roasted green chiles and homemade sausage. In true Jersey style, it's loaded, but still pliable enough to fold in half. Photo by Emily Kemme.

A little broody, vintage brick-walled ambiance greets lovers of Jersey-style pizza at this downtown pizza joint on the 8th Street Plaza. Scrolled across the wall facing the long bar is a loping, nearly three-foot-tall Nelson’s sign, providing a historic harness to the building’s past life as a venerable office supply company. 

Similar to New York style’s thin crust, New Jersey’s take isn’t that much different, but the bottom is crispier. Hand-tossing gets it into that classic circular shape; it also ensures that the sticky pizza dough is exposed to enough air to dry it out enough to crisp the crust. 

The more humidity, the stickier the dough, and even though Colorado has a dry climate, the combination of tossing and baking longer in a brick oven over high heat gives good results. For Jersey-style pizza lovers, that means the crust is pliable enough to fold in half and it’s not overloaded with ingredients that might get in the way.

Across from the long bar at Right Coast Pizza, 811 8th Street, Greeley, is a loping, nearly three-foot tall Nelson’s sign, providing a historic harness to the building's past life as a venerable office supply company. Photo by Emily Kemme.

Right Coast’s menu features a lot of names derived from Jersey, server Jessica Lozano said. There’s the Garden State—the state’s nickname, so labeled by Abraham Browning on New Jersey Day, August 24, 1876, when he spoke at the Philadelphia Centennial exhibition, according to the NJ.gov website. 

“Browning said that our Garden State is an immense barrel, filled with good things to eat and open at both ends, with Pennsylvanians grabbing from one end and New Yorkers from the other,” the site states.

Right Coast’s version of the nickname is loaded with onions, green peppers, black olives, tomatoes and mushrooms on red sauce.

Other Jersey-named pizzas are the Trenton Thunder (diced pork roll, green peppers, mushrooms and scrambled eggs topped with cheddar, a Jersey twist on the Denver omelette) and the Vernon Valley — ham, pepperoni and homemade sausage on red sauce.

But since we’re comparing apples to apples, order the Southwest and see how Right Coast handles its house-roasted green chiles and homemade sausage pie. The answer is: very well. 

If they’re pouring it from one of their 36 taps, balance the smokey, vegetal flavors of green chiles with a pint of Crabtree pumpkin ale. It’s mellow, accessing the gourd’s subtle sweetness and adding a handful of seasonal spices.

In addition to Colorado craft beer, Right Coast has a full bar with rotating drink specials.

Where: 811 8th St. in Greeley

Hours: Monday through Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

Contact: (970) 352-9129