Fessler's Legendary Pizza & Hoagies

The Story

Fessler's has held the corner of Fairfield and Washington in Bellevue since 1963. It opened as a Pasquale's, part of a group that was everywhere in Northern Kentucky and on Cincinnati's west side in the early sixties, and the Fessler family has run this one from day one. Second-generation owners Paul and Connie Fessler took over roughly two decades ago, ended the Pasquale's association, and put the family name on the sign and the boxes and the shirts.

They didn't touch the menu.

That's the part I keep turning over. Paul went to the Culinary Institute of America and cooked in high-end kitchens before coming home to run a neighborhood pizzeria. He had the training to reinvent the place and instead kept making the thing that had already worked for fifty years, under a name that finally belonged to the people making it.

The Vibe

You order at the counter, take a numbered table tent, and they bring the food out to you. Turn around from the counter and take in the dining room, because that's where the small building shows off: pressed tin ceiling painted copper, Edison chandeliers on chains, exposed brick with framed local art, cream beadboard booths with butterscotch vinyl seats, corner windows onto Fairfield with red-white-and-blue bunting in every one. Wooden pizza discs stamped 10 INCH and 15 INCH hang by the register as a size guide that doubles as decor.

There's not a single TV in the place. Different, and kind of nice.

It was raining the evening we went and the place was busier than it looks in the one pic I took, especially with the torrential downpour. Older women at the window table, families in the booths, a steady line at the counter. Sixty-plus years of local memory eating dinner. It’s a comfortable vibe.

The Food

Crust first, because it's what surprised me. Thick, stiff, and crunchy in the good way. We lean thinner at home, so this was a change and a really good one because a thicker crust is really easy to screw up. Nobody asked which crust I wanted, even though the website lists traditional and thin. I'm glad they didn't ask. A house with a point of view about its own crust shouldn't be handing that decision to me.

Both pizzas were terrific. This one was already on our list of the best pizzas in NKY before I sat down, so I came in with expectations, and they held. We had the Meat Lovers and the Supreme, both twelve-inch, both piled high and both balanced in a way that piled-high pizza often isn't. Credit the sauce for that too. There's just enough of it and no more. I hate when the sauce takes over and runs everything else off the road, and this one knows its job is to hold the rest together.

They were out of green peppers and offered to swap banana peppers on the Supreme. I love banana peppers, so that was a welcome trade, though I like green peppers too and I'll order it as written next time.

The Italian Supreme is damn good. Baked pepperoni, salami, and capicola on an eight-inch torpedo roll that comes out glossy from the butter and garlic salt they brush on every bun. It looked soft in the basket and wasn't. Crunchy without being hard. The meats are tasty on their own, but the banana peppers are what make it work. Three cured meats will flatten out on you without something acidic pushing back, and the peppers do exactly that.

My wife wasn't with us, and her instructions before I left were that I'd better not come home without a hoagie, and it better be the legendary one. So the Steak Supreme went home in the bag and the verdict is hers: it deserves the billing. It’s loaded without being loaded with ingredients. Steak, provolone, lettuce, tomato, onion, and dressing, and that's the whole list. The combination hits anyway, which is usually a sign the steak is carrying its own weight instead of hiding under something.

One thing I'd change, and it's really one thing wearing two hats. The dressings come as sealed Kraft mayo and Marzetti packets rather than made in the kitchen, and they charge a dollar apiece for them. Charging a buck for a packet is ridiculous. Work it into the price of the sandwich and say it comes with it. Nobody has ever left a restaurant happy about a dollar line item for dressing.

The bigger miss is that there's no house ranch at all. This is a kitchen that brushes every bun by hand and makes its own everything else, and I'd bet real money their ranch would blow the packet out of the water. So make the ranch. Charge for it, don't charge for it, I don't care. Just make it. Two twelve-inch specialty pizzas and two hoagies ran about $54 before drinks and tax, which is honest money for that much food. The chips are bagged Miss Vickie's off the rack by the register, and nobody's pretending otherwise. I'm not going to hold that against anybody, because the Sea Salt is stupid good and while I’ll press on making ranch, they get a pass on making fresh kettle chips every day.

Worth knowing what else is back there: the counter boards carry a lot the printed menu doesn't, including pasta, wings, burgers, and a pizza burger. Goetta shows up as both a hoagie and a pizza topping. If you want to know where you're eating, that's your answer.

The Bottom Line

Worth a Short Detour and this really borders on Worth the Drive. I can see myself back here with the whole family, and I can see myself back here with a buddy for a hoagie and a beer, which are two different visits and both of them easy to picture. There will be a next time regardless of what I decide, because my wife called this some of the best pizza I've ever carried through the front door and she wants to see the room herself.

The leftovers went home in printed sub wrap, a corrugated sub box, and a branded pizza box. Sixty-three years in and they still care what the food looks like when it leaves the building.