John Nealon Opens Crust Issues in Norwalk Featuring Pan Pizzas

Roll into the former Davinci’s Pizza (or Cosmos if we take it back to 1985) at 60 Connecticut Avenue, and it’s a way different vibe than it used to be.

Quirky artificial intelligence cartoons, featuring pizza, are pasted in the entryway. Sawed off cookbook bindings are the art on the walls. A black and white photo of Marco Pierre White stares at you if you glance to your right. And if you’ve been to owner John Nealon’s other restaurants, there’s always a good playlist coming through the speakers.

At Crust Issues (I’ll address the name soon. Keep reading.), it’s a different vibe for Nealon, too. Call it a change of pace. Call it more relaxed, even if he won’t admit to ever being relaxed when it comes to his restaurant, and in this case, when it comes to pizza dough.

If Nealon sounds like a familiar name to you, it’s probably because it should be. He owned Taco Daddy, it’s cocktail alter ego, The Lila Rose (named after one of his three children), and Cugine’s Italian in Stamford’s South End, and if we go back a little further, he was one of the founders and co-owners of the Fortina locations.

Chicken cutlet and homemade pimento cheese on a pizza? Don’t knock it until you try it. That green sauce that looks a bit like a chimichurri or pesto, isn’t that. Nealon calls it a green sauce, similar to what you’d get at a Venezuelan or Peruvian restaurant, minus the mayo.

Now it’s all a lot different. The scenery certainly is, as Crust Issues is in a small strip mall across the street from Bob’s Discount Furniture. And this is more of a counter style, order your food, and he’ll bring it over, or place a takeout order kinda spot. It’s certainly not as big, space wise, as his former restaurants. It’s not even a party scene like what he had before. And instead of being mostly on the floor meeting, greeting, and serving as a general manager slash owner, he’s typically behind the counter, in the kitchen, making dough and making your pizza.

If this all sounds like a lot, it is. And that’s without previously mentioning that he’s not even making the Neapolitan, turned crispier artisan Neapolitan-ish pizza that they used to crank out of wood fired ovens at Fortina. Nope. It’s not that. This is pan pizza.

Ya gotta have a spaghetti on the menu, right? This one’s got plenty of parm and the sauce is finished with a touch of goat cheese right before it’s served.

Pillowy gnocchi, green sauce, butter, parm, and chili flakes

I promise, I’ll clear it all up.

How’d he end up next to a car wash, in a strip with Naughty Nancy’s and Javier Eastman Tattoo Studios?

“Taco Daddy became a party,” Nealon explains. “It was like a club and that’s not at all what we wanted it to be. After some time off, I was close to doing a fun concept in Greenwich, had a verbal deal for it, but it fell through. I paused my whole summer for it. It’s a cool idea, but I’m not bummed we aren’t doing it, because I love what this is.”

How Nealon ended up in Norwalk and with his newfound Crust Issues, was after a summer spending lots of time with his family and coaching soccer. Ultimately, he knew he wanted to get back to running a restaurant of some sort, and had a “What do I do?” moment, so he called his broker.

“He goes, ‘I have something in Norwalk, but you aren’t gonna like where it is,’” Nealon says. “When I heard, I said, ‘Ehhh…I’m good, man.’ He convinced me to come take a look at it. OK, the bones are here. It’s been Italian or some kind of pizzeria for a long time. The first name I could think of for the space was Tough Location! But I took a drive down the streets and noticed lots of residential around it. My mind started thinking about ‘What can this be?’ I thought about what I do with my kids. Pizza, burgers, chicken tenders. Low key, casual, and a place that’s OK with you coming in with your kids.”

Mozz sticks on pizza? Why not?!

The ”what” ended up being pan pizza, and not for any particular reason, just because Nealon had been wanting to try his hand at that style for a few years, stating that while we was at Fortina, he learned a lot from his then partner, Christian Petroni, and revealing that before he moved to front of house operation, he was a cook in his younger years.

As for the pizzeria’s name, it stems from the term “trust issues.”

“It’s based on trust issues that I may or may not have,” Nealon says. “You will encounter some people in this industry, both bad and good, and I’m grateful I’ve been around more good than bad, but you can lose a lot of your Bambiness in this business.”

Now with a space and an idea, Nealon’s menu would be straightforward; pizza, a few salads, a few pasta dishes, meatballs, homemade mozzarella sticks, and a cutlet program that featured three red sauce joint staples, scarp, marsala, and parm, all served with a heap of mashed potatoes.

The one thing he really needed to do was nail down the dough and that proved to be tricky.

“I knew what I wanted it to taste like, I just didn’t know how to get there,” Nealon says. “There’s pan pizza all around here, people just don’t want to own it. Greek pizza places, and Colony is technically a pan pizza. We don’t put any fat in the dough. It’s still light and aeriated. The fat is in the toppings. I did some R&D at home and I do all the cooking in my family. I got in here in August and practically lived here. I tried a bunch of different flours, I had the mixer in here already, but I brought in a smaller mixer to test smaller batches. Early iterations had fat in the dough, but it was denser, and it didn’t allow those air pocket in the dough. I came in one Saturday night and I was getting closer to opening and having all the permits passed. I hyped it up for six weeks up to that point and I wanted to deliver. I made some dough, put it in the pans to ferment, and it came out awesome! I failed a lot for months, but this time it came out with perfect cheesy edges. I even remember the playlist I had on, “Checked Past & Tablecloths, lots of Kendrick, Drake, and Kanye, music I would never listen to. I brought the pizza home, so excited, and even Morgan loved it and she doesn’t really like pizza that much. At that point I wasn’t even testing my own sauce, I was using Rao’s during testing.”

Nealon went in the next day to different, miserable results when he tried to replicate the dough that he was so oven the moon about.

The idea for cutlets, aka, Italian fried chicken, and mashed potatoes came from Bubba’s Cooks Country in Dallas, where Nealon used to live.

“It was a hot, humid fucking day and it was a disaster, just goo, and I was so frustrated,” he says. “I fucking left. I was so down about it. And I know companies will send you dough or make it for you, but I never crossed that threshold. Then I ran into this guy in a coffee shop named Amit. We got to chatting about bread and I asked how he knew so much. He showed me his Instagram and said he makes this stuff for fun. He wanted to come make pizza, texted me one day and showed up an hour later with his own starter and tools. He showed me stuff I hadn’t seen in books or on YouTube. I’m a cook. I can make a grilled cheese effortlessly with my eyes shut. He can do that with just about any baked good. I was writing it all down in a notebook.”

What Nealon settled on for his pizza dough is a 36-hour fermentation that he mentioned he still tinkers with and probably always will. He tried fermentation times up to 72 hours and still wonders if he likes it closer to 24 hours. And while he won’t reveal too many secrets, he says it’s straightforward dough with nothing bad in it, no fat, no milk powder (although he tried that, too), and that it will be different depending on the day, but “no better, no worse, just different,” he says.

And what you’ll get is that crispy bottom, cheese crusted edges, and that aeriated dough that Nealon worked so hard at. Some are classic (cheese pizza, pepperoni, meatball and cherry peppers) and others are downright guilty pleasures like the Baked Potato (mashed potato, sour cream, cheddar, bacon, scallions), the Fried Chicken (chicken cutlet, pimento cheese, and green goddess that’s like a pungent combo of Venezuelan green sauce meets chimichurri), a cheeseburger pie called the Hamburglar that’s complete with a burger sauce, and he’s even made one with mozzarella sticks, and another, a white pie with chorizo, chopped onion, fresh herbs, and Goya Hot Sauce, his version of a taco pizza.

Nealon’s idea for Crust Issues, at the end of the day, is for it to be a casual spot where you’re comfortable having a chill date night, for takeout even, or to come by with your kids and have it be affordable. Pizzas are all under $20, wine is priced right at $20, and every massive, crispy cutlet dish (that’ll soon see the addition of one with gorgonzola cream sauce, similar to Cafe Silvium, but his own way) is $18 and will fill you up. Another add he plans to make soon is a “really good burger.

“Our ethos is simple…I want it to be approachable,” Nealon says. “We want to do a liquor program soon, but it won’t ever be a bad. We don’t stay open past 9. Like, I’m going home. Maybe it’ll change at some point, hours and days, but I want to see my wife and kids and be able to hang out with my oldest a little bit before she goes to bed. I know I’m losing money not being open some days, but I can’t replace the memories with my family. At the end of the day, it’s a pizza joint for people of all shapes, sizes, and financial conditions. It’s important to give people value.”

60 Connecticut Avenue, Norwalk
203.939.7171, Instagram: @crustissues203