Cappy’s Pizzeria Owner Is Happy To Focus On Pizza, Salads & Calzones!

EVEN THOUGH I keep asking him to add some more menu items, Harold Hasselbeck, the owner of the Cappy’s Pizzeria in the City Plaza at Tampa Palms shopping center, says he’d rather keep doing what he does well than bring on additional menu items and spread himself and his small, but happy staff too thin.

OK, I get it, especially when everytime I take the office to Cappy’s, everyone is still happy, despite the comparatively small menu selection. Although the laminated menus themselves feature way-cool album covers on one side and the menu on the other, which fits well with the super-funky décor and vibe at all four Cappy’s locations (Seminole Heights, South Tampa and Riverview are the others).

In previous reviews of Cappy’s, I’ve always explained that even though this uniquely decorated, full-service dine-in and carry-out pizzeria serves both thin-crust and deep-dish pizza, it’s a little bit of a misnomer to call Harold’s thin crust “true New York style” or his deep dish pizza “true Chicago style,” but that doesn’t mean that both styles aren’t delicious, because they are.

But, we’ll get back to the pizza in a bit. For starters, Cappy’s only offers cheesebread ($4.25) and breadstix ($3.25, served with a side of a deep-red, thick marinara dipping sauce) and a variety of salads, all available in small sizes from $4.50-$5.50 and large sizes for $7-$8.50. Our favorites at the office are the large Greek salad shown on the next page — which features lots of feta cheese, kalamata olives, pepperoncini and a nice-sized scoop of Cappy’s house-made potato salad, with a slightly sweeter house-made dressing — and the small tossed salad with Cappy’s house-made Italian vinaigrette dressing, which is a perfect appetizer-size salad for two.

Cappy’s also adds feta to its non-traditional Caesar salad and although I’m not the biggest fan of spinach salad myself, Cappy’s has a spinach & goat cheese salad with white raisins, shaved almonds and a house-made honey balsamic vinaigrette that got rave reviews from the couple at the next table on our most recent visit.

Pizzas & Calzones

Cappy’s opens every weekday at 11 a.m. (noon on Saturday & Sunday), and offers great lunch prices, like single NY-style cheese slices for $2.50 and $3 if you want one topping. I’m partial to the sausage and premium meatball toppings (see below) at Cappy’s, but there are almost 30 different toppings available, with veggies like artichoke hearts, banana peppers, carmelized onions and jalapeños to meats like anchovies, bacon and ham and premium toppings also are available.

There are also lunch-sized calzones for just $5, which comes with mozzarella, a side of marinara sauce and two fillings of your choice. You can even add extra fillings for just $1 apiece.

There also are lunch combos such as two one-topping slices or a one-filling, lunch-sized calzone and a fountain drink for just $5.99, or add a mini-salad (smaller than a small) of your choice to your $5.99 combo and the price is just $8.50.

You can order small- or large-size NY-style pizzas (with a truly crispy crust) and small-, medium- or large-size Chicago-style pizzas for lunch or dinner (Cappy’s Tampa Palms stays open until 9 p.m. on Sun.-Thur. and until 10 p.m. on Fri. & Sat.) and in addition to the regular toppings, you can add premium toppings like chicken, goat cheese, feta and sun-dried tomato.

NY-style pizzas start at just $9.00 for a small or $11 for a large, up to $14.50 for the small and $18.50 for the large“Cappy” (with sausage, ham, pepperoni, fresh mushrooms, onions and green peppers). Our office gobbled up the large Cappy (we ordered it without sausage).

Chicago-style pizzas cost the same for a small as the NY-style and the medium deep-dish costs the same as the large NY-style. The large Chicago style starts at $14 for just cheese and we ordered sausage and meatball that even if I wasn’t in training for a four-mile kayak race, I probably still couldn’t have finished more than two filling wedges of at a time.

Cappy’s also offers a nice variety of  beers on draft (I love the Peroni and Fat Tire), plus red and white wine and red and white sangria by the glass, as well as wines by the bottle.

Cappy’s Pizzeria is located at 16019 Tampa Palms Blvd. For coupons worth $3 off a $20 purchase and $5 off a $30 purchase, see the ad  on pg. 41 of our last New Tampa issue. For more information, visit CappysTampaPalms.com or call (813) 512-8947.