Don't judge it by the storefront: Savannah Pizza Company is better than it looks

Savannah Pizza Company opened on South 14th Street back in March, and Fernandina hasn't made up its mind about it. Scroll through the reviews and you'll find people who swear by it sitting right next to people who swear at it. That kind of split usually means something interesting is going on, so I went three times to settle it for myself. My cholesterol has filed a formal complaint, but my stomach overruled it.

Let me start with the honest part: this place is uninviting. The storefront gives you nothing. Inside is somehow less. A cramped strip of standing room where two customers constitute a crowd, with a dim, mostly empty stretch behind the counter where pizza boxes sit stacked and the kitchen guys do their thing. There are no chairs. The seating you see outside belongs to the Inkwell Bar next door. Savannah Pizza Company is a walk-in, grab-your-food, walk-out operation.

The inhospitality extends to the internet, where their only real presence is a Toast ordering page. The profile photo is, and I need you to trust me on this, the back of a Honda. The Inkwell's signage is more visible than the pizza company's. If you look closely, you can see the person taking the picture standing off to the right. The menu itself leans on AI-generated food images, which I'll say makes it hard to know what you're actually ordering, because the food does not look like that.

Here's the thing though. The counter service was genuinely good every time. The girl taking my orders was pleasant, kept me posted when there was a wait, and made a cramped little pickup window feel friendly. And the ordering itself is painless: order on your phone, get the text, walk in, walk out.

Now the pizza, because this is where Savannah Pizza Company surprised me. A build-your-own small runs about $10 before toppings. My first one, pepperoni and feta on their normal crust, landed somewhere around $12. It arrived unapologetically greasy. The bottom of the box was grease-logged, and it was grease-logged every single visit, so consider that your warning if you're grease-averse. But this pizza tastes great. It took me right back to what Pizza Hut was when I was a kid. Back when pizza had no concern whatsoever for your waistline. I caught myself craving it again days later.

Then there's the cheesecake stromboli, which is exactly what it sounds like: a stromboli stuffed with cheesecake. For $8.79, with the option to add strawberries, raspberries, cookies, or pineapple. It comes out warm, the dough is extremely chewy, and it feels like something a doctor would show you on a chart to avoid. It's also delicious. If you like cheesecake at all, this is your thing. One tip: don't get it plain. The fruit absolutely transforms it, and I will be back for another one whether my doctor likes it or not.

The rest of the menu is deeper than you'd expect from a place this size. Specialty pizzas, jumbo pizzas, New York thins, lasagna, calzones, sandwiches, salads, wings, sticks and rolls, and a monument of excess called the 100 pepperoni pizza: $24.99 — over 100 pepperonis, more than a pound of cheese. I didn't order it. I just want you to know it exists.

What I did order was the Island BLT, smoked chicken with pineapple, mozzarella, crispy bacon, lettuce and tomato on a toasted roll. It was fantastic. Even the bites that missed the chicken were flavorful thanks to the bread. At $13, it costs more than a whole small pizza, which is a strange bit of math, but I'd order it again.

The garlic parmesan wings were juicy and solid, $8.99 for a half dozen jumbos with breadsticks and two dips, though every order of wings mostly reminds me that I don't love eating with my fingers. The one miss was the sweet sticks: cinnamon sugar strips with cream cheese icing for $7.69. The icing is good, but for a dollar more, the cheesecake stromboli exists, and that's the end of that conversation.

My last visit I built the pizza I'd been thinking about all along: feta, pepperoni, ricotta, and spinach, and it was phenomenal. A small is the right amount for one person.

So the mixed reviews make sense to me now. If you show up wanting atmosphere, seating, hospitality, or a website with a photo of the actual restaurant, you're going to walk away disappointed. But if you want greasy, deeply satisfying pizza from a place that spends exactly zero effort on anything except the food, Savannah Pizza Company earns a huge thumbs up. You already know what the established local spots taste like. This one's worth finding out about. If you'll excuse me, I'll be at the gym, sweating out this grease.