Hideaway Pizza in Crestview FL
Posted By: Pizza Expert on July 18th, 2009
Thank you to Stuart from Third Coast Cusine for this great review. The town of Crestview, Florida is not really a destination in and of itself. Sure it is the seat of Okaloosa County, but it is primarily a jumping off point to more interesting locals like Destin, Ft. Walton Beach or DeFuniak Springs. Heck, the sheriff’s department isn’t even located there. The preponderance of business in this tiny Emerald Coast hamlet has migrated from the old city center where State Hwy. 80 and US Hwy. 90 intersect to the junction of Ferdon Blvd. with Interstate 10. There you will find all of the typical monuments to corporate ambiguity.
However, back on (not so much anymore) Main St. in downtown Crestview you will find The Hideaway Pizza. Aptly named because though it resides at 326 N Main St, the pizza joint (and Main St. itself for that matter) are a little hard to find. Ah progress. A descent GPS should save you a few minutes of zigzagging and confusion with quite the payoff at the end.
You will not find much in the way of a wine list at Hideaway nor is there an extensive selection of craft-brewed ales. What you will find are good old Italian/American standbys like Stromboli, pasta, salads & subs, and of course pizza. And what pizza. For toppings they have all the usual suspects and they use a “1950′s New York Pizza Recipe” which means no artificial ingredients, 100% mozzarella and everything made from scratch.
But the eye-catcher on the menu is a pizza called “the Hideaway.” A 15″ pizza with eight huge slices and each slice is covered in a different topping – one slice of pepperoni, one of sausage, one of mushroom, you get the picture. It looks amazing with such a colorful display. The most surprising slice of the set? One totally covered in black olives, unbelievable. There were so many you couldn’t even see the crust and the flavor was so robust it hurt.
If you are visiting the beautiful sugar white sands of the Florida panhandle and need a reprieve from all of the incredible seafood to be had there then tell Tom Tom to lead the way to The Hideaway Pizza. You’ll thank me later.
Hideaway Pizza gets 5 out of 8 slices
It is easy for anyone to misjudge how amazing an upside down pizza tastes right out of the oven. Normally, one would have to go to Brooklyn to enjoy a fresh, hot out of the oven, upside down Sicilian slice. This is no longer the case.
Many might argue that this pizza was originated in Detroit, but that is a fight that they will have to battle out with the New Yorkers. Places like Spumoni Gardens, Rosas’s and numerous others have been serving this style pizza for decades. Others refer to this as cheesebread with sauce on top (Mr. Waffle), but once you taste it, I think you will find it hard to classify as anything but delicions.
Since 
By 7:30, most people had arrived and ordered drinks. I suggest that we start cooking up some pizza! Julio decided to give us 3 pies with different toppings and 2 plain ones to start. For the record, this was above and beyond what I requested from him, all I asked for was plain pizza, so here is another example of how far he goes to make sure everyone is happy. When the pies came out of the oven they started to deliver them 5 at a time to the table. Seems as fast as they put a pie down, it disappeared. From the looks of it, our pizza lovers really seemed to enjoy the food they were being served.
