Cup-and-curl pepperoni tops a pizza at Old World Pizza.
The plan was to open a coffee shop.
The only evidence of that plan is the small espresso machine that sits behind a bar in the back corner of Old World Pizza in Broken Arrow.
“That’s my machine that I brought from home,” said Lily Neal, who co-owns the newly opened restaurant with her husband, Robert. “I love my coffee, and sometimes I’ll make myself a cup or two during the day. And if a customer asks for a coffee or a cappucino, I will make it for them.
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“But when we started talking about doing a restaurant, we would keep talking about pizza,” she said. “My husband loves to cook and we were always trying new recipes and learning what we could.”
Neal was born and raised in Brazil by Italian parents, and while she has worked in the food business in the past, she had never attempted to run a restaurant before opening Old World Pizza.
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“We truly didn’t know what we were doing,” she said, laughing. “We started out with this little pizza oven we bought at a home improvement store. We would use ingredients we got at the supermarket. We made a lot of really bad pizzas.”
All those trials and errors have paid off, to judge by the pizzas Neal and her staff produce at Old World Pizza.
A margarita pizza at Old World Pizza.
The restaurant is in a space in Broken Arrow’s Vandever Acres Shopping Center that formerly housed a Cici’s Pizza. Neal said they had considered a couple of other possible locations, including another restaurant space in the shopping center that fronts New Orleans Street, but they proved too cost-prohibitive.
And Neal herself wasn’t instantly taken by the space when it was first shown to her. “I had wanted something more cozy, and this was a very cool-feeling place,” she said. “I want this to be a place where people feel comfortable, where they don’t feel as if they need to just eat and go.”
Fortunately, the food at Old World Pizza is the kind over which diners will want to linger, in order to savor every bite.
Pizza is understandably the star attraction. Pies come in 10- and 16-inch sizes, with prices ranging from $9 for a 10-inch cheese pizza to $27 for a 16-inch Ultimate Meat Lovers, which is topped with beef, pepperoni, salami, pork sausage and Canadian bacon, along with two kinds of cheese.
Some pies, such at the Chicken Bacon Ranch ($26) and the Four Cheese ($21) are available only in the 16-inch size.
Cory Lutz spins pizza dough at Old World Pizza in Broken Arrow.
The menu also lists a trio of pies under the title “Morrison Brothers Pizza.” Neal said they are named for the sons of the owner of a tae-kwon do business in the shopping center, who has been a fan of the restaurant since it opened in late November 2022.
“These were pizzas his sons liked to order, and the family has been so supportive of us, that we decided to put them on menu,” Neal said.
During a recent visit, my companion and I chose a small Supreme ($12.50), which comes topped with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, red onion and black olives, as well as two salads, the Caesar ($7) and the Caprese ($9).
The Caesar salad was chopped Romaine lettuce topped with commercially made croutons and a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese; it was the homemade Caesar dressing — thick, rich and tangy — that made it special.
The crust of a pepperoni pizza begin to puff in the 650-degree heat of Old World Pizza's brick oven.
My companion’s Caprese salad was on the surface even more simple: thick slices of fresh mozzarella cheese shingled with sliced Roma tomatoes and basil leaves, drizzled with a balsamic dressing, extra-virgin olive oil, and Pecorino-Romano cheese. But the freshness of the ingredients and the balance of flavors were just about perfect. She has had Caprese salads in Italy, and this one was at least an equal to any she has had before.
Old World Pizza cooks its pies in a brick oven manufactured in Italy; with temperatures hovering in the 650-degree range, the oven can cook a pizza in about four minutes. It results in a crust that has a crisp bottom with just the right amount of spotty char marks, an edge that is dotted with puffy blisters that turn golden brown, a good chew and robust flavor.
“We age our dough for three days,” Neal said. “It took us a while to discover that, but it makes exactly the kind of crust we want. We did the same thing with the tomatoes we use in our sauce. We tested tomatoes for days — some were too sweet, some were too acidic.
Lily Neal owns Old World Pizza with her husband Robert. The bright red brick pizza oven behind is something Neal refers to as “my baby.”
“A lot of Italian cuisine is very simple, very rustic,” she said. “That is what we are trying to do here — if you keep things simple, people can really taste the ingredients. And that means you had better use the best quality ingredients you can find.”
On a second visit, we tried perhaps the quintessential expression of pizza simplicity, the Margarita ($10 for a 10-inch pie), which is just white mozzarella cheese, red tomato sauce and green leaves of basil, representing the colors of the Italian flag.
And, because it is such a simple creation, there is no way to hide anything less than top-notch. Which was the case here — the lightly seasoned sauce was bursting with tomato flavor, the mozzarella had a pleasant underlying tang, and the dusting of semolina on the perfectly cooked crust added an added bit of crunch.
Old World Pizza is located in the Vandever Acres Shopping Center in Broken Arrow.
Neal said the menu will continue to evolve and expand. She is already offering calzones ($10-$15), as well as desserts that include canolli ($5) and tiramisu ($7), which uses espresso made in Neal’s personal coffee machine.
“We are looking for a way to do pastas, because we have people coming in all the time asking for pasta dishes,” she said. “But I want to be able to do it fresh, so that may take a little time.”
Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza at Old World Pizza is one of the few pies available only in the large, 16-inch style.
The open kitchen allows diners to see the brick pizza oven in action.
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Broken Arrow's Old World Pizza keeps it simple and tasty - Tulsa World
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