Craft Pizza Company

I stopped by for a yummy slice of pizza before a movie. I went with a mushroom/​ricotta cheese slice which filled my soul with delight. I wouldn’t mind coming back to the craft pizza joint at the UTC mall – highly recommended for your pizza needs at the mall!

So apparently Chef Chad White has his namesake in this place. I’m kind of surprised, but upon hearing that I was drawn in.
Ok so it’s not Project Pie, or Leftys, but its pretty darn good. I’ve eaten here twice now and for food court pizza I’d have to say I was pretty happy. Pizzas aren’t artisianal but definetly could be described as «craft» the dough is made from scratch daily and the ingredients are fesh. Coming from Chicago I can pick apart any pizza joint I eat at in California without guilt But I won’t this time. The pizza was good. And just the right amount of sauce. Customer service was wonderful. The lady at the register, Olivia, was very attentive and friendly with a wonderful smile, she made me feel happy about being stuck in the mall shopping for a brief moment. Wait times were a little longer then I would have expected but perhaps it was because both times it seems they were a little understaffed. Overall I give them 5 stars for taking food court pizza up a few notches and the excellent customer service. I’ll definetly be back when my girlfriend drags me back to UTC.

Terrible service. Called in an order, the person that answered the phone was very rude, hanging up on me abruptly. When I called back to cancel my order due to the unprofessional manner in which he conducted himself, the employee hung up on me again. My husband hearing it all called back at 7:23pm on 12÷8÷15 having heard the whole encounter. the same person proceeded not to get a manager and refused to give his name. Even with no pizza, this place has left a terrible taste in my mouth.

Delicious slices and garlic knots. Great location, I visit every time I’m in the UTC area. Great prices! Friendly service too! What more can you ask for?

Ridiculously OverPriced…$ 4.00 for a small slice of Pepperoni. Rude staff.

Tried Craft for the first time the other day. I will definitely be going back soon. For a mall food court the pizza is amazing. Really for anywhere it is. I tried the mushroom ricotta, lasanga, and hawaiian. All were fantastic. I really liked the Hawaiian though. It was perfectly sweet and salty. Cost a little more than some pizza places, but you can taste the difference in quality.

pretty decent pizza parlor, if a bit on the pricier end. there’s definitely better in the area (regents), but that’s still located outside of the mall itself. i usually get their pepperoni – it’s crisp and curled and not an oily mess. they also offer two kinds of soup – italian wedding and minestrone – and they’re both decent.
however, the biggest issue with this craft pizza is its inconsistency in both quantity and quality. the first time i ordered their lasagna, i think i died and went to heaven after the first few bites — the melted mozzarella on top was pliable and thin, the slices of squashes inside were soft and buttery, and the ricotta cheese was abundant and deliciously milky. the second time i ordered their lasagna it had the same quantity (a large square cut), but the top mozzarella layer was so thick and rubbery that it was just disgusting, and there was considerably less squash in the lasagna. the third time was probably the most pathetic – the quantity has been reduced by a third, the mozzarella was burnt on top, there was a very very thin layer of ricotta, there was no squash, and the marinara sauce just tasted like heated, pulpy, tomato juice.
unfortunately it’s not just the lasagna. their salads are all fantastic, but occasionally they forget ingredients like tortilla chips, or cheese, or cherry tomatoes. sometimes they have the opposite problem – adding too much of a single ingredient that it overpowers the entire salad (bleu cheese atomic bomb of 4 months ago; i still have nightmares about it). their breadsticks can be delicious as advertised with cheese and rosemary and moist in texture, or just plain dry with little rosemary and no cheese. sometimes their pizza suffers from the same issue my lasagna did; the cheese can be so overcooked that it becomes rubbery and disgusting; sometimes it’s the opposite and it’s soft and edible. and occasionally they just botch up orders entirely.
if you really must eat here, make sure to only order their salad, pizza, and soup. from my experience, they seem to botch up the pizza and salad the least (pizza is easy to see if you eat at their restaurant; but if you’re ordering online, you’re taking a gamble). their soup has been very consistent in quality, but there’d be no hope for this joint if they can even ruin soup.

We’ve ordered delivery from Craft Pizza twice and the food arrived before the quoted delivery time both times.
The Hawaiian pizza was really good, but even better is their Meatball & Mozzarella Stromboli. Salads are great too.

This place makes some of the best pizza I have ever had in a mall food court, and I was happy to learn that they sold pizza by the slice in the form of meal deals. For instance, you can get two large slices and a drink for $ 8.95.
I went for a slice I have never experience, the lasagna slice and a more typical slice, the supreme. The lasagna slice came with meatball, that replaced the ground beef, with dollops of tomato sauce, with plenty of fresh mozzarella, with fluffy ricotta cheese, and with chopped basil. Did it kinds resemble lasagna? Sure it did, especially in flavor. Its great texture was no doubt pizza, but the slice tasted dam good. I especially liked the zesty meatballs and the vibrant flavored tomato sauce, not to mention that soft textured creamy ricotta cheese.
The Supreme slice was quite the ordeal. It came with a variety of toppings such as pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, onions, and some great red peppers. Everything tasted great, but I was especially fond of the red peppers with their fresh quality and farm to table quality. The sausage had a good herb flavor. Both slices came with a very nice crust. I would say it’s a little thicker than one would consider as New York style, but it sure is close. The texture was very nice, where it offered a little crunch and some chew towards the middle, but I would say it needed additional salt.
All ordering and food pick up takes place at the counter. The employees were all very nice and gave me a nice run down of all their products and some of the ingredients they use. Nice people and great pizza.

When your hungry and stuck in a mall, you’re forces to pay prices that don’t match the product. I’ve been here several times though I know I’m being way over charged. This pizza is okau. Almost no vegetarian selection and at four bucks PER SLICE you should find better deals outside the food court.

More prestigious than the usual food court pizza shop, «Sbarro».
Various pizza slices on display, several of the gourmet variety.
I ordered the combo deal with two slices and one drink. I split it with my son, so it may be too much for one person to eat two slices. It was almost 9 bucks.
— Carnivore Slice (Pepperoni, sausage, bacon). Strong, and very salty.
— BBQ Pizza. One of the better BBQ slices I’ve ever had. Right amount of ingredients and a great BBQ sauce base.
They have other menu items, but it’s the pizza you see when you first walk in. Their BBQ sauce is intriguing so I might have their BBQ Salad next time.

This pizzaria operates out of the food court at the UTC mall. They offer hearty pizzas w great flavor. My daughter had a skating party for her birthday and Craft was very convenient and helpful in supplying food for the event. Prices aren’t terrible, but also not overly easy on a budget. Staff have always been helpful and friendly.
Keep on Unilocal’n!

BBQ chicken salad dreamy heaven!!! Try the strawberry lemonade as an Arnold palmer. Oh yum! 5 stars all the way!

Super tasty vegetable pizza. Good cheese and sauce. I loved the grilled tomatoes topping. Some complain that the sauce is too sweet but I think it compliments the red chili pepperoni really well.
The pepperoni was alright but nothing to write home about.

They’re bribing people with free cookies in exchange for positive Unilocal!reviews. Not only does this violate the rules of Unilocal!,but it’s unprofessional and demonstrates that they can’t let their products’ qualities speak for their ratings so they need another company’s cookies to supplement and buy them a better rating. That’s not how this system works, Craft Pizza, but nice try.
Also their pizza sucks. Overpriced and mediocre.

I just stumbled across Craft Pizza at Westfield UTC today. I was surprised to find such a high quality place inside of a food court!
I’m very picky about my pizza, and this is some of the best I’ve had since moving to San Diego. The crust was perfect, and amazing cheese.
Don’t pass up the strawberry basil lemonade. it’s so good. And for dessert the Cravory cookies are crazy good.
I will definitely be back!

I don’t really come here for pizza but this place has become my place for pizza especially if you’re not tryna order a whole box and just tryna enjoy a slice. The pizza here is like all the good stuff you want in a pizza minus the greasiness. I believe they have probably like 11 – 12 types of pizzas but I’ve only tried 3 which was the hawaiian, carnivore, and pepperoni. They all taste good with their different ingredients. If it’s not papa johns id have this next since goin here is a bit of a drive while papa johns is like 3 minutes down the road on the boulevard. If you go here for pizza what they usually do is take your order and then have every slice you ordered set in their oven for about 2 – 4 minutes and then give you your pizza. Also, if you know what you like you can order ahead of time for pickup if you’re getting a whole box of pizza and they also do delivery if you’re place is within their range which I believe is to be 5 or 10 miles from UTC basically.

Wow, craft pizza is absolutely amazing! It’s hard to find the perfect pizza but they do pizza perfect. This is my second time ordering from them and had to write a review because I’ve been so impressed both times.
I had craft pizza for lunch about a month ago and ordered one of their farm fresh salads. I got the pear and walnut chicken salad which was so delicious. All the ingredients were so fresh and crisp! They use a balsamic pomegranate vinaigrette dressing to finish it off which is so refreshing.
Yesterday I decided to try their margarita pizza with gluten free pizza dough and it was one of the best pizza slices I’ve ever had since living in San Diego. It was loaded with fresh garlic, Roma tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, fresh basil and I added their all natural chicken. It was the perfect pizza. I’ll definitely use them to cater my next luncheon at work. Thank you craft pizza I finally found my pizza place

Had a chance to to come back here and try this place proper, and it is better than I had thought, but only just slightly.
It’s been a new thing lately for restaurants to tout that they only use «The Finest of Ingredients.» At places like Quei Bravi Ragazzi, not only do you know they use the finest of ingredients, but when you have one of their salads, you know that the owner personally went to the Encinitas Farmer’s Market BEFORE it opened and had his pick of the fresh vegetables before anyone else could rifle through them. At dives like Rimel’s, sure they probably get the «finest of ingredients», but when it finally gets to your plate, it tastes like they rolled them on the floor, popped them in the dryer on high, and then let a preschool class play with them for a few hours.
Seriously, Rimel’s sucks.
The question should be, «Finest Ingredients, great! So, what’s that doing for you?»
In the case of Craft Pizza, yes, you just put fresh mozzarella and firmly sweet roma tomatoes with a hint of acidic bite to them on your Margarita, but if you make it in the morning and then just let it sit out for hours until someone decides to get a slice, by the time the meats have started to slightly change color and the cheese looks like it has sweat out most of its moisture, haven’t they lost a lot of their finer qualities?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to a lot of pizza parlors that use this method, partially cooking and then finishing it to order, it works. I’m just trying to make the point that if you’re going to be «using only the finest of ingredients», don’t abuse them to the point where you can’t taste or feel the difference between them and every other pizza parlor.
Anyway, been coming to the UTC for the last few months and trying different dives. Craft has always had samples out and none of them have been all that appetizing. But, the owner convinced me to try some the real way and had a slice of Margarita and Spicy Chicken in their #2 Combo.
The Spicy Chicken was very good, a fair amount of heat with a good salty and lightly sweet flavor beneath. The cream sauce with the chicken and cheese atop it could have made it unappealingly soupy, but it wasn’t too messy; which is impressive considering that when you look at it, it seems like someone just upended a bottle of flavored ranch across the whole of the pizza.
The Margarita, on the other hand, was less than average at best. The flavors mixed well together, though I would have preferred a bit more garlic. The basil came through the way it should should, but the tomatoes were a bit dry with two of them actually being a bit shriveled and crispy. This is a pizza that should be more salty and pungent, but it was too reserved with a bad cut to the tomatoes leaving them uneven across the slice.
I think my biggest qualm about Craft, however, is that two slices of pizza about the same or a little better elsewhere is $ 9+ here at the UTC while you can get it for $ 6+ at places like East Coast or Knockout. Normally I would think this place would be a weak 4-​Stars, but the price leaves a disappointment that brings it down to 3-​Stars.
On the purely knit-​picking side of things, their drinks come in small cup form that is mostly crushed ice leaving little room for soda, the girl at the counter knows little about the menu or how the kitchen works for questions, they do nothing to keep flies (of which they were only 1 or 2 of, but still), and their crust technique is nonexistent.
When it comes to New York Style pizza (thin and large slices), the crust should be in one of three forms: soft and foldable to keep the drip to a minimum, crispy and stiff with a lightly sweet burn, or that perfect place in between where just the lightest of pinch can keep the pizza upright.
Here at Craft, they roll the edges of the crust thin to the point that it cooks stiff while the rest of the slice is too thick to crisp and stay stiff. This makes the slices limp and impossible to fold. Also, the short time in the oven, to keep the outer edge from blackening, means that the bottom of the crust doesn’t heat to the point where it can caramelize through that light burn at all, leaving it a bit bland. No pizza place HAS to follow these rules, it just shows a finishing touch on that bit of refinement and perfect cooking.
So, yeah, revisit to Craft, a light bump, but nothing brilliant to make the cost worth it. Again, looking through other reviews, it seems like the real meal may be with the salads and baked goods, leaving the pizza by the wayside.

I love the UTC food court! It’s like Costco, just take a stroll through during lunchtime and you’ll get full off the samples :)
This pizza place put out some samples too and good thing they did because that’s how I decided on it. I got to try like four different toppings, that’s almost a whole slice! It’s a little pricey though. I got the lasagna pizza and it was very tasty, thin bottom crust with a bubbly outer crust at the top. The toppings fell too far to the bottom (or maybe they gave me a bad slice? unlucky?) so I had a looottt of crust: T I also got the salad with pecans pear slices pomegranate and balsamic vinegarette dressing, my fave.