Via 313 Pizza
The Cadillac is gorgonzola, fig preserves, prosciutto, parmesan and a balsamic glaze, and it is the pie the reviewer picks off this menu.1
Why go
The name is the argument: via meaning by way of, 313 being Detroit's area code. Brandon and Zane Hunt grew up there and opened Via 313 on 8 December 2011 out of a trailer at East Sixth and Waller, and their own line for what they are doing is that they make genuine, Detroit-style pizza for our family and friends
having studied the best pizza our hometown has to offer.
2 That intent is worth holding onto when you read the crust. Detroit-style means a steel pan modeled on the auto-parts trays the city was full of in the 1940s: cheese spread all the way to the pan wall so it fries into a crust against the metal, sauce ladled over the top after the bake instead of under it.3 Jordan Haro, writing for The Infatuation, says the crust is thick enough to be closer to a cheesy bread casserole than to a pizza, and that it is delicious regardless.1 The thickness is not a miss, it is the format. That review carries the address 1802 East Sixth, which is one of five Via 313 dining rooms; the door on my list is the trailer parked in the Craft Pride yard on Rainey Street, which is the same format the business started in.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Cadillac. Haro calls it
our favorite pizza here
and describes it asheavy, sweet, and savory.
1 - Avoid: treating a square as a slice. Haro warns that
the sheer volume of bread in each square slice can put a hungry human under the table after three or four helpings.
1
What locals & experts say
- Jordan Haro, The Infatuation:
Via 313 objectively puts something together that is simply delicious.
He also concedes it runsa little bit on the pricey side
for pizza and argues the quality earns it. Unrated, because the outlet scores only full-meal rooms.1 - The founders on their own pizza:
we make genuine, Detroit-style pizza for our family and friends,
from brothers who grew up in the city that gives the style its name and who spent the first years of the business in a trailer.2 - I haven't found a review of this trailer. All the coverage belongs to the brick-and-mortar rooms or to the chain.
- The accolades on the home page are not counted here. Via 313 advertises an
Independent Pizzeria of the Year
from Pizza Today, a Food Network top-five placing and a Food and Wine line, none with a year or a category attached, and all of them chain-scoped.3
Good to know
- Which door: this is the Rainey Street trailer behind Craft Pride. Via 313 also runs dining rooms on East Sixth, Guadalupe, West Sixth, US 290 and FM 620.
- Hygiene: no Austin Public Health record exists for this door, which is missing data rather than a finding.5
- Price and hours: not published on any page read.
Verdict
could-visit — Austin's Detroit-style institution, and the saved door is the trailer in the Craft Pride yard on Rainey Street rather than one of the five dining rooms. The pizza is a steel-pan bake with the cheese laid to the edge and the sauce ladled over after, and the Cadillac, gorgonzola with fig preserves and prosciutto, is the reviewer's pick. Mid-ladder because the only assessment on record was written at a different address.