rev:text
| - Papa Del's has been one of my favorite dining establishments in Champaign (and THE best pizza) since I first tried it as a college freshman 34 years ago.
Del's is most well known and well loved for its pan (thick) pizza. Though it is thick and cooked in a pan, I don't really consider this to be a Chicago deep dish pie, but I consider Del's pan pizza to be a style of its own. Though the pan pizza is good, I feel it is overrated by most patrons as it has a disproportionately high ratio of dough to toppings.
My preference therefore is Del's thin, which I think is the unsung hero of the Papa Del's menu. Their thin pizza has a crust roughly 1/4 inch thick, which comes out from the oven crispy on the bottom and softened by the ingredients on top. To me, the thin pizza's proportion of dough to sauce, cheese, and other toppings is just about perfect.
Normal cooking time for a thin is 30 minutes and for a thick (pan) is 45 minutes. Adjust these numbers upward if you are dining at a busy time, particularly on Illini home football game weekends.
Del's serves excellent garlic bread which will tide you over between the time you sit down and the time your pizza is served.
Service and the overall dining experience at Papa Del's can be spotty at times. The main dining room is a building whose tall ceilings and walls turns it into a bit of an echo chamber; the space would be improved by wall treatment that would deaden the sound. Groups of patrons are sometimes doubled up at the long tables with other groups of patrons, even when there's plenty of vacant dining space available, and the college-aged wait staff can be hard to flag down at times, though at other times they are attentive and responsive.
For those reasons I order for pick-up (Papa Del's also offers delivery) more often than not. In any event, my fondness for Papa Del's is not about the service and dining experience; it's all about the pizza.
|