Last updated: December 6, 2023

As soon as the warm air rushed out of the restaurant and clashed with the cold air, I knew this was going to become a place I craved.

A reader recommended I check out Sal’s Pizza Factory not long after it opened. It’s a Northeast-style pizza shop off of Monroe Road marked by a red, white, and green sign, selling pizza by the pie or slice, pasta, and cannolis. I grew up outside of Albany, New York, where pizza shops are everywhere. I grew to despise pizza when I was a kid, because we ate it more than I wanted to: when there was too much going on to cook, when extended family was over, when my brother was being difficult. My young brain took pizza for dinner as a sign that my brother’s tastes mattered more than mine. It was an irrational hatred, but somehow stayed with me until recently.

There’s a distinct smell in those pizza shops of my childhood, smells of yeast and grease and warm sauce. It was something I hadn’t smelled in a while, until that rush of air outside of Sal’s.

The pizzas at Sal’s are the closest I’ve tasted to the ones back home. They’re too big to hold with one hand, and greasy enough to know you should only have one slice but not so greasy that you’ll actually have just one. The best pizzas are the simple ones, the basic cheese, pepperoni, or meat lover’s. Yet the more adventurous pies can satisfy you when you can’t decide whether you want to eat a pasta or a slice. On one recent visit, I was torn between pizza and the penne a la vodka, so I ordered the chicken vodka pizza, heaping with chicken and slathered in the vodka sauce. I couldn’t even finish off a single slice.

The dining room is bare-bones, with tables and Italian-themed paper place mats, but stone accents that help you see what the restaurant could be one day. There’s something about eating in that dining room that makes you feel as if you’re supporting someone’s dream. Maybe it’s the cold weather, or maybe it’s just me getting older and craving nostalgia, but Sal’s has a way of making my heart feel as full as my belly.

Aren’t those the best kinds of restaurants? —Kristen Wile