Magic 5 Pie Co. Expands Menu in Norwalk...And It's TASTY!

Meatball parm, featuring a version of The Spread’s meatballs.

Now almost three years old, Magic 5 Pie Co. has had no problem with repeat diners. But the people have to first find it before they can return.

Tucked away in the parking lot of the East Norwalk Metro-North Station, even longtime Norwalkers won’t even see it from the usual slow crawl of East Avenue traffic. You’ll have to go all the way in the back. Or you can plug in “Magic 5 Pie Co.” in Google Maps for an assist.

An ode to Manero’s in Greenwich, this garlic bread is soaked in garlic and herb butter before it’s baked with a layer of gooey mozzarella on top. This is a pizza place after all.

Keep scrolling and we’ll tell you about these wings.

Chicken parm! FYI: Magic 5 is debuting lunch VERY soon.

“Lots of people still don’t know we’re in Norwalk,” says Shawn Longyear, who along with Chris Hickey, Andrey Cortes, and Christopher Rasile, are also all co-owners of The Spread and El Segundo just across the bridge in South Norwalk. “But once they find us, they come back.”

When I covered Magic 5’s opening in January of 2022, the menu was pretty straightforward; pizza, salads, raw bar, beer, wine, and cocktails. But they did represent something that was new to Norwalk in terms of pizza variety. We hadn’t had artisan pizza here before. And since then, we’ve gotten a few new additions here in terms of styles with SoNo Wood Fired bringing authentic Neapolitan and Crust Issues bringing in pan pizza that’s similar to Detroit style, just crispier and thinner.

For Magic 5 to evolve—before they could expand their menu to offer parm sandwiches, wings, more cocktails (in terms of seasonality and creativity), and some favorites, at least in some form, from The Spread and El Segundo—they first had to nail down their dough, something that’s always a work in progress at any pizzeria, even if they’re happy with it.

“We needed some time to learn the intricacies of the oven,” Hickey says. “None of us were pizza guys before. We had a couple guys go to classes (at Forza Forni in Brewster). The temperature can drop after 80 balls of cold dough go in there and suddenly you aren’t playing with the same deck of cards. We had to learn things, like to leave our dough out longer so it isn’t so cold.”

Cocktails are almost all new, too, and will change often. Pictured is a Maple Walnut Old Fashioned with High West bourbon, maple syrup, and black walnut bitters.

Many of these beautiful cocktails were created by Hickey’s wife, Blair, whose design touch you’ve clearly seen and marveled over if you’ve been to The Spread. This one is the Hibiscus Lollipop - Tito’s Vodka, fresh lime juice, ginger infusion, hibiscus lollipop, and a Tajín rim.

Southern Charm - bourbon, muddled blackberries, hibiscus tea, lemon

Some of the lessons learned that Hickey is referring to as it pertains to their 00 Caputo flour-based dough that’s cold fermented for a minimum of 48 hours, was nailing down the time that the dough rests outside of the fridge. The colder it was, the less evenly the dough would stretch, but the trial and error resulted in the consistency they were looking for; light, charred, and crispy after a few minutes in an 800-degree brick oven.

Longyear chimes in, “We had to get the pizza right. We wanted to nail that. Once we nailed that down, we have that oven, and we want to use it. It was time to slowly introduce things, first as specials.”

It was a given that Magic 5’s homemade chili crunch would end up on a pizza. There’s no rules here. If you want a pepperoni pizza, or a marg, you can have that. If you want something fun and creative, they’ve got plenty of that, too.

Stromboli stuffed with capicola, pepperoni, soppressata, mozzarella, and fontina.

The Hot Belgian Pig is a Brussels sprouts pizza that isn’t the typical white pie that you see everywhere else. “When we first put it together it was boring,” Hickey says. The switched up involves a little red sauce, Brussels, bacon, hot honey, and caramelized onions.

This past Super Bowl was the time for that. And what’s more “Super Bowl” than wings? The guys would reach out to cross promote with Casey Dohme, Matt Bacco, and Jaime Pantanella, the owners of The Blind Rhino in SoNo and Black Rock. Magic 5 bought The Blind Rhino’s wing sauces and did a pre order wing special for the big game that sold out in a matter of hours.

That collab helped launch Magic 5’s own wings that get a touch of dry rub before they get baked, flash fried, and finished in the scorching hot pizza oven. Now, they’re making their own wing sauces (buffalo, teriyaki, and BBQ), and that’s even led Hickey to making his own version of chili crunch.

Chicken souvlaki has made its way over to Magic 5 from El Segundo.

As did their Cubano.

“We started making our own chili crunch called Hot Tub,” Hickey says. “I bought plenty of stuff from Momofuku in the past because I love it. I started looking around and found that Trader Joe’s makes it close to theirs for half the price. I found recipes and started messing around, combining them. One of our kitchen guys added toasted sesame seeds to it. It’s a totally different flavor.”

Now that wings are a thing at Magic 5, it only made sense, especially at a restaurant that’s anchored by pizza, to have meatball parm and chicken parm sub (or grinders, wedges, sandwiches, whichever term you use), paninis, stromboli, calzones, and a few popular ones from their other restaurants, like a chicken souvlaki (El Segundo), and pork and veal meatballs that were popular since The Spread opened.

A mainstay since they opened, “The Bruce,” a tribute to New Haven’s white clam pies, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Street corn on a pizza? Yeah. They do that.

“We’re not confined to anything,” Hickey says. “Some of the things are influenced from our other restaurants, like our al pastor pizza, that’s El Segundo influenced. We sometimes take things that have been popular and well executed from our other restaurants. Sometimes we borrow components, sometimes it’s a whole dish put on a pizza, sometimes they’re apps we used to serve at The Spread that we now serve over here. And the possibilities with pizza are endless. The elote at The Spread, we added poblano peppers and now it’s on a pizza.”

And while Hickey, Longyear, Rasile, and Cortes may not do pickles and ranch on a pizza anytime soon, nothing is completely out of the question. They’re having fun experimenting, seeing what happens, seeing what sticks, and some of it might make the menu full time.

230 East Avenue (at Brim & Crown), Norwalk
203.354.3109, magic5pieco.com