“The Brickyard” is the commonly used nickname for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500. A Duke City pizzeria with the sobriquet Brickyard Pizza launched in August, 2004, but has absolutely nothing to do with the famous race. It isn’t even affiliated with Albuquerque’s famous racing family, the Unsers, several of whom have won motor racing’s crown jewel.

Brickyard Pizza occupies the Brick Light District area edifice which previously housed Rebar, a restaurant I thought had a promising future. Its menu is limited to pizza, calzones, sandwiches, salads and beer–the inexpensive foods and popular libation on which college students subsist (aside from the collegiate diet of the four food groups: frozen food, fast food, canned food and free food–when they can get it).

The pizza can be ordered deep-dish (thick crust) style or hand-tossed (thin crust) and you can order it either by the slice or in medium (12″ for deep dish and 13″ for hand tossed) and large (18″ for deep dish and 16″ for hand tossed) sizes. The menu offers several specialty pizzas, but you’re free to build your own, albeit at $1.45 for each additional topping. There are no appetizers (unless you want bread sticks) on which to nosh until your pizza arrives, thus heightening your anticipation which is exacerbated even more because the pizza smells terrific.

The “Supreme” includes sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, onion, green peppers and black olive. There’s no pretence to New York style here as the crust is absolutely rigid with a delicious, buttery crust that’s truly the star of the show. You can’t bend your pizza vertically as can real New York style pizza. The sauce is light and sweet with virtually no acidity while the ingredients are surprisingly good.

Another pizza, the “Lobo” is almost as much a winner as Don Flanagan’s women’s basketball teams with the triumvirate of pepperoni, sausage and green chile piled high on a crusty canvas and slathered with Brickyard’s sauce. While not particularly piquant, the chile lends a nice flavor to this pie. As a deep-dish pie, it’s nonetheless served on a flat pizza pan and probably isn’t quite half an inch thick, but more importantly, it’s very much high on flavor.

Brickyard’s pizza is surprisingly good, surpassing any frozen offering a college student might have in his or her freezer. We also found out the day after ordering a large pizza that it’s even better out of the refrigerator than out of the oven. UNM students now have two excellent pizza options–Brickyard Pizza and Saggio’s to quell their cravings for crusty pizza.

Brickyard Pizza
2216 Central, S.E.
Albuquerque, NM
262-2216

LATEST VISIT: 7 February 2006
# OF VISITS: 2
RATING: 17
COST: $$
BEST BET: The Supreme, The Lobo