Pie: Sneak Peek

The tiny and unassuming Pie in Bethany Beach is easy to miss. Tucked into the corner of a little shopping mall (Bethany Station, where Japanesque is located) just steps from Pennsylvania Avenue and across the street from Sedona restaurant, Robin Summer Rankin's pizza parlor is just around the block from her mom's iconic Bethany landmark, Patsy's. Of course it's all about pizza at Pie, and on our most recent visit we were fortunate enough to get a seat at the bar, ably manned (well, actually, womaned) by the terminally outgoing and on-top-of-everything Cristin. She tends service bar. She tends the sit-down bar and takes food orders from there. She takes carryout orders. She distributes carryout orders (even with an order of 10 pizzas, she took the time to mark EACH BOX with the type of pizza it contained). She rings up checks. She give servers checks and change. She just graduated as an RN from nursing school. She leaps tall buildings in a single bound….

The menu is all about … well, pie. Oval, crispy crusted pies with white sauce, red sauce, several selections of cheeses and your choice of over 23 toppings are just about 3 bites more than a single-person serving, i.e., the perfect size. Grab your statistics textbook from college: The possible combinations of all these items calculates to about 21, 765.26 different pizzas, give or take. OK, I made that up, but you get the idea. They even offer corn, chèvre, Kalamata olive, crabmeat and short rib toppings.

This is not Robin's first rodeo. She, like her mother, is a classically trained chef, and it's obvious in the various combinations pizzas on the menu (10, to be exact, plus a DIY section). There are three salads on the menu (fun to play in while your pizza bubbles in the oven) and non-pizza lovers (really?) can add crabmeat, short rib or shrimp to any of these salads. Robin bakes all the desserts – check out the gallery. The peach pie and the blueberry pie were delicious.

I will be going back there, and I'll get more pictures so this sneak peek can turn into a review. But our first impressions are of a well-run neighborhood-style eatery with consistently tasty pizzas served piping hot. I especially like the fact that some of the cheese is applied after the toppings are on the pizza. This sort of “locks in” the toppings and makes for a nice, sandwichy “bite.” They have a fairly extensive selection of crafts, including the obligatory Dogfish Head, Mispillion River, New Belgium and EVO, just to name a few. Four or five are on tap, the rest bottled.

Pie is in Bethany Station at 120 Central Boulevard in downtown Bethany Beach. Going east on Garfield Parkway, turn left on Pennsylvania Avenue, and make your first right. Pie is tucked in on the right.  Call them for takeout or for their hours at 302-539-2600.