Matthew L.
Yelp
My wife and I ordered takeout from Colony Grill in Fairfield on a Saturday afternoon while our son was having a play date at the nearby Sandcastle Playground. I'm from the New Haven area so I was raised on New Haven-style Apizza. My wife, however, is originally from Stamford: home of the original location of Colony Grill. She was raised on this style. Colony Grill's specialty is Tavern (or Bar)-style pizza. Tavern-style is not just found in one specific location. This style can be found almost anywhere in the country. Its origins are cloudy, but the style was popularized by several bars, taverns and pubs by putting pizza dough directly into a shallow pan. What you end up with is a personal-sized pizza with a cracker-thin oily crust. Perhaps the inventors of this style thought that if the pizza was really thin then that would leave more room for beer.
Colony Grill offers a wide variety of toppings for their pizza, but they are most famous for the Original "Hot Oil" Pie. Hot Oil is chili-infused olive oil. The standard "hot oil" pie is a plain mozzarella pie with a drizzling of the hot oil and then garnished with a "stinger" (fried Serrano pepper).
Anyways, my wife and I have only ever eaten at the original location, but we haven't had Colony Pizza in maybe 10 years, so it sounded like a good idea to have some again. I called in the takeout order when we were at the playground with our son. They gave us a wait time of 20 minutes. Upon arrival, there was a decent amount of parking in the back and I parked in a "Take-out Only" (10 Minutes Max) parking spot right next to the back door. The place was hopping when I walked in, and it smelled great. My pies were done by the time I walked in. I drove back to the playground and we all had a delicious pizza picnic lunch. My wife ordered the original "hot oil" pie, I had the same thing but with extra "stingers", our son and his friends shared a plain mozzarella that we ordered "lightly done", and our play dates' mother ordered a meatball and onion pie. We were all VERY satisfied. It was a great day.