white pizza with meatballs
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Review: Paradise by the Slice

Editor’s Note: Paradise by the Slice was sold to new owners in 2019.

As part of National Pizza Month, I have spent four weeks sampling some of the most clever and unique pies in Berks County.

Each restaurant has impressed in a different way, taking pizza in completely opposite—but delicious—directions.

Still, the question remained: Who has the best pizza in Berks County?

Despite devoting my October to finding the answer (I stopped counting after my 15th slice), it’s a question that I would be hard-pressed to answer.

What I did know is that my research would not be complete until I tasted the pizza from the restaurant that was voted Best in Berks 2013 by the readers of Berks County Living: Paradise by the Slice.

Wernersville is no island paradise, and the restaurant’s logo—a pizza slice sitting on a beach chair underneath a palm tree—certainly seems out of place on a cool fall evening.

One of the things I am always looking for is the unique: unique food, unique experiences, or anything else that sets the restaurant apart from their competition. So when I found out that Paradise by the Slice has their own app, I didn’t hesitate to download it.

screenshot of an app with a logo for Paradise by the Slice

The app is just a cleaner version of the restaurant’s webpage with options to view photos, get directions, follow them on social media, learn about the restaurant, and order on your phone.

In all my times of ordering take-out on my phone, it has been the old-fashioned way (10 digits, speak to an actual person, hope they get the order right). But after using Paradise’s app, I’m hoping more restaurants offer online take-out ordering because it made it fast, easy and convenient—three of the four things you look for when ordering take-out.

screenshot of an app showing confirmation of a pizza order

The fourth thing, of course, is the food. And with a Best of Berks award in their back pocket, I wasn’t too worried about that when I walked up to the take-out counter (which, oddly enough, is completely detached from the rest of the restaurant).

I resisted the temptation to sneak a slice on the drive home, a difficult task when you’re trapped in a car that smells like cheese and garlic for 15 minutes.

After finally arriving home, I threw open the lid and got my first look at the White Meatball Pizza.

white pizza with meatballs and ricotta

The 14″ pie was topped with garlic butter sauce, sliced meatballs (cut to look more like pepperoni) and mozzarella with handfuls of ricotta, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes strewn about on top.

It’s rare to find any dish—pizza or otherwise—that doesn’t pair meatballs with marinara sauce (Swedish meatballs being the exception) so I was intrigued by the combination of them with the garlic sauce. But I can safely say that it worked.

The key was proportions: there was not too much of any one ingredient to overpower the rest. The sauce was very light, just brushed onto the crust before the toppings were added, and though you could certainly taste the garlic, it wasn’t overly strong. The meatballs, by virtue of being cut so thin, were also milder, and with the mozzarella in between, it wasn’t that much different than taking a bite out of a meatball sandwich.

If one ingredient did stand out over the rest, it was the ricotta, and I think it’s because it was such an unusual topping. The fresh cheese was dropped on in clumps, and while it is a very mild cheese by comparison, getting a mouthful of it really changed the flavor, making it a little sweeter with a light texture.

basket of fries topped with sesoning

Wanting to try more than just pizza, we added a side order of Paradise’s beach fries. Advertised as hand-cut to order, they were reminiscent of Boardwalk fries, thin-cut with potato skins clinging to the ends. Though they were very good, I wish we could have enjoyed them fresh from the fryer at the restaurant because the container had begun to sweat on the ride home, making them a little soggy. I’m sure they would have been even better on the table.

As has been the case with most of my pizza adventures, the meal was too much for two people so Julie and I had two slices and a serving of fries to put in the fridge so we could stretch our $20 across two days.

If you asked me if Paradise by the Slice is the “Best in Berks,” I don’t know that I could give you a definitive answer.

But if you asked me if I would go back again, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Very Good
Ambiance: N/A
Price: Reasonable

Paradise by the Slice
63 E. Penn Ave
Wernersville, PA 19565

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Lunch & Dinner Pizzerias Reviews
Best Pizza: Nonno Alby's
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Review: Nonno Alby’s Brick Oven Pizza

sign that reads "nonno Alby's wood oven pizza" with a drawing of a pizza man in front of a brick oven

For many, food is a family affair.

Whether gathering the family around the dinner table at home or at your favorite restaurant or helping your mother or father in the kitchen as they make your favorite recipe, food has a way of bringing families together.

The same holds true for restauranteurs, where children are brought in to the family business at a young age in hopes that they will someday carry on their parents’ legacy.

In the case of the Nonno Alby’s Brick Oven Pizza, it means proud parents watching their children take what they have learned and create something uniquely their own.

Opened in 2013, Nonno Alby’s occupies the original G.N.A. Ristorante property in West Reading. The second generation of the Grande family named the restaurant for their father Alby, who still oversees operations at G.N.A., now located just a few blocks east.

While Nonno Alby’s and G.N.A. have a family connection, the two restaurants are vastly different. While G.N.A. offers a fairly expansive menu of Italian dinners, sandwiches and pizza, Nonno Alby’s is all about pizza and burgers.

Walking through the front door, you can see the heat glowing from the brick oven behind the bar at the far end of the dining room. Unfortunatley we lost site of the glowing coals once we were seated on the opposite side of the room divider.

The only deviation from burgers and pizza is found in the appetizers, mostly sharable salads, but a sign at the front door advertised the addition of baked wings to the menu. Our waittress read off the available flavors and suggested honey BBQ (which is not actually on the menu, but honey and BBQ are, and the two are easily mixed). It did not take much to sell us on it so a few minutes later we had a plate of 10 wings in front of us.

plate of bbq wings with carrots and celery and a cup of ranch dressing

Served on a plate with mixed vegetables and a cup of ranch (bleu cheese is also available, if you are so inclined), the wings were glistening with the honey-infused glaze.

Baking them gave them a nice crisp, but not as much as if they were fried. The honey came through more than the barbecue sauce, giving them a nice sweet flavor.

The wings were just a precursor to the pizza. While most pizza places offer small and large pies, Nonno Alby’s only serves individual 12″ pies, each with its own signature toppings, many of which are imported from Italy.

My eye did not have to travel far to find my pizza of choice as the namesake Nonno Alby’s pizza was at the top of the list. The Nonno Alby’s is topped with imported San Marazano tomato, buffalo mozzarella, fresh Italian sausage, sauteed rapini (broccoli raub) and red pepper flakes.

pizza with golden crust topped with mozzarella, broccoli rabe and sausage

Brick oven pizza has a crispier crust than traditional pies. Slices are rigid so you don’t have to worry about the toppings sliding off as it sags. Every bite included a healthy helping of toppings that hit on a wide range of flavor profiles. Sweet ground tomatoes, mild heat  from the ground sausage and buffalo mozzarella, and the slightly bitter rapini came together for a memorable pizza.

In the seat next to me, Julie had ordered something completely different: the Bianca (white) pizza. Her pie was topped with baby arugula, buffalo mozzarella, proscuitto di Parma, shaved Parmigiano Reggiano and extra virgin olive oil.

pizza with golden crust topped with prosciutto, arugula and shaved parmesan cheese

As much as I enjoyed my own pie, hers may have been even better. I have never been a fan of white pizza, but I think that’s because it usually comes sans toppings. This was something completely different. The proscuitto, and even the parmesan, gave it a salty flavor while the arugula leaves helped to tone it down just enough that instead of becoming overpowering, it was near perfect.

In hindsight, we did not need to order so much food. Though we certainly got our money’s worth for $40, we would have been fine skipping the wings, or we could have justed ordered a single pizza with the wings and been fine. As it was, Julie took home two slices while I cleaned my plate but probably shouldn’t have.

Nonno Alby’s continues a family tradition of serving great food in Berks County.

If I were Alby, I would be proud to have my name attached to the restaurant.

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: Good
Price: Reasonable

Nonno Alby’s Brick Oven Pizza
701 Penn Ave
West Reading, PA 19611

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Lunch & Dinner Pizzerias Reviews
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Review: Bella’s Subs & Pizza – CLOSED

small building with red and white siding and a sign that reads "Bell's Subs & Pizza"

Editor’s Note: Bella’s has closed. The location is now home to San’s Sushi, Poke, Ramen.

The great thing about pizza is that there is no “right way” to do it.

A Yelp search for pizza shows more than 250 results for Berks County, and that means more than 250 different styles of pizza to choose from.

Most of the differences are subtle: lighter or heavier sauce, spicier or milder pepperoni, thicker or thinner crust.

But then there are the places who are serving something that strays a little farther from the round pie with canned sauce and shredded mozzarella.

Bella’s Pizza opened in 2013 in a small location along State Hill Road. The building, which had previously housed a Coney Island hot dog stand (and before that, a patio store) is actually connected to the much larger Kwik Stop convenience store.

Seating is limited, especially when the weather renders the outdoor picnic tables useless. Thankfully delivery is available for those of us fortunate enough to live close enough to the restaurant, and I will happily trade the 45-minute wait for the convenience of delivery.

The restaurant offers more than pizza. Their menu boldly proclaims the “best cheese steaks in town.” There are also plenty of hot and cold sandwich options, six flavors of wings, burgers, salads and traditional Italian dinners.

While all of those sound appealing, one item on the menu stood out to me: grandma pizza.

Maybe it was the yellow highlights around the three grandma pizza options, or maybe it was the description (“THIN CRUSTY SICILIAN Delicious!“). Either way, I was having a Tony’s Special Grandma Pizza delivered to my door.

I knew from the description that I was getting a Sicilian pizza with roasted peppers, tomatoes, mozzarella and spinach, but that does not begin to describe the beautiful pie that was inside the box.

Like all Sicilian pizzas, it was a large, square pie, but that was where the similarities ended.

square pizza topped with cubes of mozzarella, chunks of tomato, and spinach leaves

Fresh ingredients meant bright colors as the golden brown crust was topped with alternating bursts of milk white, bright red and deep green. The fresh mozzarella was dropped on in chunks, too big to melt during its trip through the oven. Large slices of tomato and whole spinach leaves were scattered about as well.

Though every bite included the crunch from the crispy crust, the layering of ingredients meant each was different. Sometimes it was the creamy taste of the mozzarella, or the sweetness of the tomato, or the mild bitterness of the spinach, or a combination of all three. In any case, every bite was enjoyable.

Nervous that a single pie would not be enough for myself and my three hungry friends, we added a Bella’s Special to our order.

pizza topped with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, onions and peppers

A more traditional round pie, the Bella’s Special was loaded with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, onions and green peppers. Everything about it was very good, from the slightly spicy pepperoni to the generous helpings of veggies (I have never had a pizza with too many onions), but after experiencing the uniqueness of the Grandma pizza, this pie just could not compete.

Sadly, two pies proved to be too much for us, but we could all agree that the pizzas, especially the Grandma , were well worth the price (just over $40 after tipping our delivery guy).

Our two pizzas could not have been more different. And while I would like to say they were equally enjoyable, one was clearly a notch above the other.

There may not be one “right way” to make a pizza, but Bella’s Grandma pizza was definitely done right.

BCE Rating
Food: Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: N/A
Price: Reasonable

Bella’s Subs & Pizza
1912 State Hill Rd
Wyomissing, PA 19610

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Lunch & Dinner Pizzerias Reviews
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Review: Island Pizza

large building with a neon sign palm tree and the words "Island Pizza"

No one would ever confuse Berks County for the Caribbean.

Reading is a long way from Aruba. Birdsboro is very different from Barbados.

But there is a place in eastern Berks County that at least tries to make it feel a little more like the islands.

Island Pizza sits along Route 422, about 10 minutes east of the city. The building sits on an “island,” its neon palm tree shining bright atop a hill high above the highway.

With the divided highway, the only way to reach it from the west is through one of those jug handle turns that are a rarity in Berks County.

But there is more different about this place than turning right to go left.

mural with an iguana and parrot in an orange sky with the sun in the upper right

Inside, every square inch of the walls are covered in bright murals depicting parrots, flowers and iguanas. An underwater scene adorns the short wall at the kitchen counter, with crabs and clownfish and others brought to life in vivid color.

order counter with a painted mural of multi-colored fish

The menu is a lot larger than I would have thought. In addition to more than 20 specialty pizza options— most of them featuring island names like the Martinique (chicken, red onion, tomatoes, bell peppers and mozzarella) and the Bermuda (white pizza with fresh garlic, broccoli and spinach)—the restaurant features burgers, steak sandwiches and hoagies.

Island Pizza is also “crazy about fries” with 18 styles that range from Cajun and seasoned fries to ranch bacon cheese and pulled pork BBQ. We decided to go with something a little more Italian in nature with the Parmesan garlic fries.

basket of fries topped with parmesan and minced garlic

Too hungry to wait for our pizza, we asked to have our fries first. The crispy fries were dusted with in powdery Parmesan; a small pool of oil had gathered at the bottom of the basket. The fries at the bottom were too soggy to pick up without a fork, but using a fork was only a minor inconvenience.

The fries were greasy and good, and the garlicky sauce was doubly good, serving as a convenient dipping sauce for the pizza yet to come.

stuffed pizza with a cup of tomato sauce for dipping

For our pizza, we decided to go all-out with a gourmet stuffed pizza, the Aruba.

stuffed pizza with the top peeled back to show the sausage and cheese inside

Peeling back the doughy lid revealed a meat-lovers dream, filled with meatballs, sausage, pepperoni, ham, bacon and mozzarella.

Everything about it was excellent. All of the meats worked well together with the pepperoni adding just a hint of spice to the pie. The sauce, served in a bowl on the side, was thick marinara that added just a little sweetness. in the end though, I dipped more into the garlic sauce from the fries than I did in the marinara.

The pizza, which cost about $20, was enough to easily feed a family of four. After we each finished two of the oversized slices (mine were bigger than Julie’s, of course), we still had two slices left for lunch later in the week.

It may not be the Caribbean,  but Island Pizza is an oasis of sorts, a relaxing place friendly service.

And some darn good pizza.

BCE Rating
Food: Good
Service: Good
Ambiance: Good
Price: Reasonable

Island Pizza
3060 Limekiln Rd
Birdsboro, PA 19508

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Lunch & Dinner Pizzerias Reviews Uncategorized