My wife and I didn't grow up in the Quad Cities but became transplants back in the early 90's. Unlike people who grew up in the Quad's, we have never been fond of Quad City-style pizza. There are a couple places that make a pseudo-QC-style pizza that we like, but the full blown places like Harris Pizza, we just don't like. We're spoiled by trips to Chicago to places like Pat's Pizza, Salerno's, Pequod's and Vito and Nick's. However, over the past few years, some "authentic" pizza places have sprung up around the Quad Cities. One of them - Crust Wood Fired Pizza - was one of our favorites. However, Crust closed during the height of the pandemic in 2020. That really bummed us out, but then we found out in the fall of 2022 that the owner of Crust had started up a new venture in Bettendorf by the name of Smash Pizza. We've been there a couple of times and it's starting to become our favorite non-Quad City-style of pizza.
Brian Olsen grew up infatuated with food. As a young child he would watch re-runs of cooking shows with Julia Child and Graham Kerr. When he turned 16, he was old enough to work in a restaurant and he got a job working at Gramma's Kitchen just off Interstate 80 in Walcott, IA. While going to high school, Olsen thought he wanted to study engineering. However, during the summer after his junior year in high school, he visited Iowa State University to talk with engineering professors and students. But going back to work at the restaurant, he realized that he would rather be working in a kitchen than being behind a desk working on a computer all day.
Prodded by his parents as to what he was going to do with his life after graduating high school, Olsen decided he wanted to become a chef. He proposed going through the culinary program at Scott Community College, but they wanted him out of the nest. He had family up in the Twin Cities and they encouraged him to enroll at (the now-closed) Le Cordon Bleu School for the Culinary Arts in Minneapolis.
In 2011, Olsen had an opportunity to help start Crust Wood Fired Pizza with developer Mark Roemer. He later became a part-owner and the managing partner of the restaurant. In 2017, Olsen had another opportunity to buy into another local restaurant developed by Roemer - Central Standard. The wood fired ovens at Crust provided the buns that were used at Central Standard.
In early 2020, just before the pandemic wreaked havoc on a number of restaurants, Olsen was looking to do something new - and on his own. Just before the pandemic hit, Olsen sold out his interest in both Central Standard and in Crust with Crust eventually closing their doors later that year. (A couple of other pizza places have gone into the old Crust space over the last couple years. One lasted about a year or so, but suffered from staffing issues. The other one opened in the fall of 2023 and we've tried it and didn't care for it.)
Olsen's plan was to open up a new restaurant that focused on New York-style and Sicilian-style pizzas, as well as artisan breads that he would sell at retail from his restaurant. He had the spot picked out, equipment ordered, and his initial plan was to open in the fall of 2020. But with the pandemic disrupting supply chains around the world, Olsen's new venture was going to have to hold off for awhile. In the meantime, he acquired a food truck and began to sell pizzas at various sites around the Quad Cities. We saw the Smash food truck at Crawford Brew Works in Bettendorf quite a bit and we found out that it was former guy behind Crust and he was going to open up a brick and mortar location in Bettendorf at some point. We were excited because we liked Crust and couldn't wait to try his new venture.
Olsen opened the Smash Pizza location in September of 2022. It was appreciably smaller than Crust and we found that getting into the place even into early 2023 was sometimes impossible without a long wait as they do not take reservations. We finally made it into Smash last summer. This particular visit was our second time visiting the pizza place.
It was after 8 p.m. on a Saturday night when we got into Smash. It was well past the restaurant's busy time on Saturday night, but it was still well over half-filled with diners. As I said, it's not a big place and the dining area can get fill up rather quickly. We took a table in the corner near the small bar just in front of the open-windowed kitchen. In fact, we were so close to the bar that the bartender ended up being our server.
It was server by committee that night and one of the three who eventually waited on us was a familiar face from the days of Crust. My wife remembered her from Crust and I finally recognized her after talking with her for a couple moments. She told us that they were out of the Sicilian-style dough - a thicker dough that's made into a square, similar to Detroit-style pizza. The dough is fermented for 5 days before it's ready to cook. "We usually run out of the Sicilian-style pizza pretty quickly, especially on the weekend," she told us. "We get a lot of take-out orders for the pizza because it can feed a family of 4 pretty easily." We had tried the New York-style pizza - a more thin crust - on our previous visit, and had wanted to try the Sicilian-style at some point. That will have to be down the road.
Looking through the menu, they have a number of specialty pizzas including the Bee Sting - tomato sauce, cherry peppers, pepperoni, hot sopressata, locally-sourced honey and arugula. The Alla Vodka featured a vodka-tomato sauce, house-made sausage, garlic, spinach, fried kale, and Mediterranean oregano. The Meatball Ricotta pizza had a braised tomato sauce, mozzarella, house-made meatballs, ricotta, and Mediterranean oregano. And the Calabrian has a garlic cream sauce, nduja (a spicy pork sausage), corn, onion, Calabrian chili oil, and topped with fresh basil.
Smash also features a bread plate as an appetizer, as well as a charcuterie board. They have dips and drizzles to go with the bread such as a house-made marinara, California olive oil, and the Calabrian spicy oil to choose from.
Smash has a variety of wines by the glass and a number of craft beers to choose from. One of the servers came over to take our drink order and I got a hazy IPA from the Stompbox microbrewery in downtown Davenport. My wife got a glass of the house Malbec.
My wife always has to have some greens before getting pizza and she ordered up the house salad consisting of chopped fresh romaine lettuce, sliced cucumbers, radishes, and red onions, then topped with toasted bread crumbs and finished with a parmesan buttermilk dressing. She always liked the salads over at Crust and she likes the salad equally as well at Smash.
We got our usual sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven. The pizza was blistered and the cheese was caramelized in places. The New York-style pizzas come in one size at Smash - 16". (The Sicilian-style pizzas come in a 14" size.) The slices are big enough where they can be folded like a traditional New York pizza, but the crust on Smash's pizzas aren't as thin or pliable as a true New York-style pizza.
The toppings are definitely top notch. The sausage has a nice spicy taste; the pepperoni is probably a tad too salty, but still good; and the chopped roasted mushrooms they use on their pizzas at Smash are fresh. They have a great marinara sauce and I asked our server if we could get some marinara on the side to dip some of the crust edges into. One of the trio of servers brought out a cup of marinara and she said, "We usually charge $2 dollars for the marinara, but I'll give this to you for free tonight. We're getting low on this batch of marinara, so we have to make more tomorrow." It was perfect for some crust dipping.
We ended up being the last ones in the place and they began to move tables and chairs around the dining area and out the door. We asked one of them what was going on and she said, "We do a Sunday morning yoga class in here. We used to do it elsewhere, but Chef Brian said that we could do it here." My wife said that she remembered that the lady who initially waited on us used to have yoga classes.
We had more than enough pizza left over to take home for a lunch meal or a snack over the next couple of days. But it's also expensive - our pizza was $28 bucks and the salad was $7. Add in a glass of wine and a couple craft beers and the tab adds up quickly. Both times we've gone into Smash, it's a $70 bill by the time tips and taxes are figured in. But compared to some of the other pizza joints in the area, you can really tell it's a definite step-up in taste and quality. Smash Pizza isn't going to be a regular stop for us because it is sort of pricey, but we'll definitely be back at some point.
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