DE Pizza Review: Henlopen Pizza Kitchen

Rating:

Final Composite Score: 7 out of 8 slices (rounded up from 6.58 average)

[Her: 6.75 out of 8 slices]

[Him: 7 out of 8 slices]

[Younger Son: 6 out of 8 slices]

Read the full "dialogue review" below these real-time pictures of your reviewers' pizzas, in real pizza boxes (hey, it was sorta takeout --- read below).

Pictures by the author of the actual pizzas consumed by your correspondents.

Him:

This is our review of Henlopen Pizza Kitchen. And let me start by saying something important: HPK is primarily a takeout and delivery place. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

Younger Son:

It's not just takeout. You can eat there.

Her:

They may have added tables.

Him:

Apparently they have, which was a surprise to me. But we didn’t eat in HPK. Instead, we took our pizza next door to the Coastal Taproom, where the beer is cold and the 80s pop hits drown out the sports on their huge number of TVs.

Her:

Is that their actual slogan?

Him:

No, that’s just my lived experience.

Her:

It did feel very 80s. 1983 specifically, based on the music.

Him:

So, we ordered two pizzas: one half cheese and half pepperoni. The other pizza was a roasted pork and broccoli rabe. The highlight of the experience was that we were joined by our younger son — a new voice in these reviews. He grew up on excellent pizza in New Jersey and, unfortunately, much less excellent pizza in the Washington, D.C. area.

Younger Son:

It's a privilege to participate.

Him:

So let’s go through the categories: cheese, sauce, crust, toppings, service, and any wild card observations. Younger Son, what did you think?

Younger Son:

Well, the service is hard to evaluate because I picked up the pizza myself.

Her:

And how was your service?

Younger Son:

Outstanding. Truly excellent. But I don’t think we should let my phenomenal service influence the pizza score.

Him:

Fair.

Younger Son:

I thought the pizza was quite good. The plain slice was really excellent, which to me is the mark of a good pizza — you don’t need to add anything to it. The cheese, the crust, and the sauce all worked together. I’d say they formed an orchestral whole.

Her:

The pizza brings out the fancy words.

Younger Son:

Fine. I liked it. The pork slice was also very good — totally different flavor, but roasted pork and broccoli rabe work together, and they worked here. And eating it in the Coastal Taproom next door was a great environment.

Her:

Okay, my turn. The cheese slice was my favorite, but it was also the first thing we ate, and it was perfectly hot. The cheese was just a little bit runny, which I liked. The sauce was good, the cheese was great, and the crust was almost great. It just needed a tiny bit more flavor.

Although — and this may just be the slice I had — the crust on the pepperoni side tasted better than the crust on the plain cheese side.

Him:

Interesting.

Her:

The pepperoni itself was excellent — crispy, flavorful, top-notch. Exactly what you want.

The roasted pork and broccoli rabe — which was my pick — was a little disappointing. Sandwiches with these ingredients were staple of my family's trips to Philadelphia when I was a kid along with cheesesteaks. But this pizza needed something. Maybe garlic, maybe salt, maybe both. Broccoli rabe is one of my favorite vegetables, so I really wanted to love it, but it didn’t quite get there.

Also, we should talk about the Caesar Salad. It was surprisingly delicious. The lettuce was perfectly crisp and cold — honestly one of the best Caesar Salads we’ve had at a pizza place on the Delaware shore.

Younger Son:

And the croutons were not physically painful to eat.

Him:

No tooth-cracking?

Younger Son:

No tooth-shattering croutons.

Him:

So I’ll say this: the cheese pizza at Henlopen Pizza Kitchen is the first pizza we’ve had in Delaware that truly reminded me of the pizza I grew up eating in New York. And if that sounds like very high praise, that' s because it is.

Her:

That’s big.

Him:

It was thin, foldable, with real mozzarella — and you could taste the difference. We have had far too many different kinds of cheese on this journey: provolone, fontina, even something called "pizza cheese," which is mildly scary. But this cheese had that rich, slightly fatty, authentic mozzarella flavor. The slice folded the way it’s supposed to fold. The crust was chewy, flavorful, and had enough salt to make it interesting.

The sauce, I agree, could have had more personality. It wasn’t especially tomato-forward or bold, but it was fine. It did its job and, I agree with the prodigal son, that the ingredients blended together nicely.

The pepperoni — I completely agree with you — was outstanding. Crispy, slightly cupped, holding little pools of grease that burst into your mouth with each bite making it better than the last. It was exactly what you want from pepperoni pizza.

The roasted pork and broccoli rabe, though, was a miss relative to expectations for me. It needed more salt, more garlic, more something. It tasted like an ordinary pizza topping, not like a composed pizza with an original idea. I wanted to love it, but I didn't.

One more thing before I end this filibuster: the grease situation. There wasn’t excessive grease pooling on the slice. You didn’t have to blot it with a napkin. It was balanced.

Younger Son:

Minimal drippage.

Him:

Minimal drippage. We may need to add a glossary to this review so that everyone understands our made-up words.

And I have to say — eating pizza in a bar is just fun. The music, the TVs, the noise, the people-watching — it’s a much better environment than sitting quietly in a faux-Italian restaurant listening to off-brand Sinatra.

Her:

We never sit quietly anywhere.

Younger Son:

It reminded me of a place I used to go in Chicago when I was in school — a dive bar with a hole in the wall connecting it to a takeout pizza place. When you’re five beers in at 1 a.m., that slice is life-saving.

Her:

You’ve never had five beers.

Younger Son:

That’s not the point.

Him:

All right, anything else before we give our review scores?

Younger Son:

The cheese slice definitely stood out.

Her:

Agreed. That was the best thing we had.

Him:

And I’ll just say — when you start loading up pizzas with lots of toppings, there’s always a risk of drifting into California Pizza Kitchen territory, which is not where you want to be.

Younger Son:

That’s harsh, but fair.

Him:

Okay, time to score. One number for everything. Our grading scale is up to eight slices. Younger Son?

Younger Son:

I’ll give it a six. I ended up closer to a six than a five, although I considered five and a half. But I’ll stick with six.

Her:

I’ll give it a six. Maybe a six-and-a-half. No, I am going to end up at a six-and-three-quarters.

Him:

Wow. I didn't know you could give quarter slices in these reviews. Then again, we don't have a lot of rules.

I’m giving Henlopen Pizza Kitchen a seven. This is the closest we’ve come to true New York-style pizza in Delaware, and that matters to me. It brought me back to my New York pizza-eating days as much as looking in the mirror without my shirt on.

I almost gave HPK an eight, but the pork and broccoli rabe held it back.

So we’ve got a seven, a six and three-quarters, and a six. We’re going to do what we always do and round up — because we are pizza lovers and we believe in supporting good pizza.

Her:

We are generous graders.

Him:

So we’re calling it seven out of eight slices. I am confident that's going to put Henlopen Pizza Kitchen in our Top Five, and pretty close to the top.

That’s our review of Henlopen Pizza Kitchen — and its unofficial dining room, the Coastal Taproom next door. If this was a bar blog or a beer blog, Coastal Taproom would get a nice score. But it's not.

Her:

But we also recommend it.

Younger Son:

Strongly.

Him:

All right, that’s it.