I'm in the process of putting on a new dealer up in Eau Claire and I ended up spending a night there this fall at The Lismore, a boutique hotel in the downtown part of the city that is a Doubletree/Hilton property. I was sort of hungry for pizza that evening and I did some on-line searches to see what was available around the downtown area. It turns out that a place on the outskirts of town - Geno's Pizza - got a lot of rave reviews for their pizza and I thought I'd drive out to see if it was up to all the accolades it received in their on-line reviews.
Kevin Burzynski opened Geno's Pizza in June of 2014 with a marketing plan of "word of mouth" to get the news out to the citizens around Eau Claire that they had the best pizza in town. His thin crust pizzas were chock full of toppings offering a great value for what people were getting. Geno's Pizza is located at the end of Fairview Drive on the south side of Eau Claire, next to the Metropolis Resort/Action City family entertainment center. (see map) Geno's shares the building with Casa Margarita Mexican restaurant. (And the restrooms for Geno's are located in Casa Margarita, as well.)
After parking out in front of Geno's Pizza, I went in to the restaurant with a couple guys who were there to pick up a pizza to go. I didn't know the drill in ordering a pizza, so I stood at the counter/bar and waited to order a pizza from the menu they had up front. It turned out the manager, Paul, ended up waiting on me. After I ordered a small pizza and a beer, he asked me if I wanted my beer while I waited to get my pizza. I told him that I was planning on dining in. "Oh," he exclaimed. "You could have sat down and I would have come out to take your order." Oh! OK - rookie mistake. But it was just him and a guy back in the open kitchen who were working that night. Paul was the bartender, server, and bus boy.
The dining space wasn't all that big and featured some high-top tables with some vinyl-checked table cloths on the regular tables along the wall. Flat screen televisions were hanging on the wall - all of them were tuned to a Green Bay Packers pre-season game.
The dining room looked into the open kitchen where some well-used gas pizza ovens were the centerpiece of the space. I asked Paul how old the ovens were and he said he didn't really know. "The owner bought them used," he explained. "But they've got a lot of seasoning in them and that really helps our pizzas."
I ordered up my usual sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza. The pizza was cut into tavern squares, the crust was thin and crispy, and the toppings were definitely thick and plentiful. The sausage was in large chunks and had a great fennel taste. The mushrooms were fresh and earthy, and the pepperoni had that great salty and spicy taste. The pizza went exceptionally well with my Goose Island IPA.
Geno's Pizza calls their pizza "the best in Eau Claire". While I can't comment on that since this is the only pizza I've had in my visits here, compared to other pizzas I've had around the Midwest, I thought their pizza was very good. The hand-tossed dough was thin and crisp, the toppings were fresh and plentiful, and they had a pretty good selection of craft beers that would very well with their pizza. It's not much to look at from the outside, but the small dining room with the open kitchen was comfortable and clean. If someone would ask me where to get a pizza in Eau Claire, I wouldn't hesitate in offering up Geno's Pizza.
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