Champaign-Urbana has a lot of good pizza. I don’t have the statistics to back this up, but I feel like we have a disproportionately high number of really good, locally-owned pizza options. I’m sure a lot of people have one or two favorites that have their fierce loyalty, but my family likes to change things up often. It had been a while since we had dine-in Papa Del’s (like, pre-COVID a while), so we decided to check it out again for dinner.
Probably the most important thing to know about Papa Del’s — in particular, if you have young, impatient children — is that deep dish pizza takes a long time to bake. If ordered on arrival, diners can expect to wait 50+ minutes for pizza to be baked to perfection. Those who’ve had the unfortunate luck to be at a restaurant with a hungry child will know waiting more than 20 minutes for food is probably going to be a bad time for everyone.
Fortunately, Papa Del’s takes pre-order pizza orders for dine in. I decided to call on our way, so really only giving them about a 15-minute heads up, but the timing ended up working out perfectly since we had planned on having appetizers as well. We ordered those once we arrived, and by the time the appetizers were finished, we only had to wait a few more minutes for the pizza to come out.
I had forgotten how much I like the inside of Papa Del’s. The large windows along the wall just lend to a nice open atmosphere; everything feels big — the pizza, the room, the building. It was nice to enjoy a meal out and not feel like we could hear every word at the table next to us.
To start the meal off, I decided to try the toasted cheese ravioli ($8) and the arancini ($10). I’ll admit this is a lot of toasted and fried carbs and sauce, so I wouldn’t actually recommend ordering both during the same meal, but for the purposes of this review, I decided to go ahead and try both.
If you read my Manzella’s review, you would know I order toasted ravioli almost every time it’s on the menu. Papa Del’s version was nicely breaded and toasted, well-filled with cheese (they offer a meat version as well), sprinkled with a small amount of seasoning, and served with marinara. Can’t go wrong with this classic appetizer.
I was a bit nervous to order the arancini because the arancini at Nando’s is probably my favorite bite of food in all of C-U. Papa Del’s arancini was served on a very long, thin plate. The five arancini were quite small, but they packed a punch when it came to flavor. Served on a bed of romesco sauce with extra virgin olive oil and drizzled in a balsamic glaze, it was a really surprising bite of food flavor-wise. The creamy risotto balls had peas mixed in, which combined with the balsamic broke up the flavor in a really interesting way. While I love the huge arancini at Nando’s, I think the smaller size worked well here. This is one of those dishes that one bite in I exclaimed to my husband “You have to try this!” — and then regretted it because I didn’t actually want to share. It was a perfect appetizer and will be an automatic re-order for me from now on during future visits.
For my daughters, we ordered a small thin crust cheese pizza ($10.50). I stole a slice before they had a chance to object, and it was very good — probably one of the better cheese pizzas I’ve had. Not too greasy, the cheese stayed on the slice instead of falling off; it was good, classic cheese pizza. My 7-year-old proclaimed it “the best pizza ever.”
Papa Del’s is obviously known for their deep-dish, so we ordered a deep-dish pizza. We had ours with sausage and black olives ($11.50 for the small pizza, plus $3 for sausage and $1.50 for olives). Remember how I said everything at Papa Del’s is big? That includes the toppings. The sausages were huge — basically we had five meatballs on each of the four slices, and the olives were likewise cut quite thick and served in abundance. The dough was a little sweet, but I thought it balanced well with the savory toppings.
Each slice had a lot of sauce, a lot of cheese, a lot of toppings, and a lot of bread. Despite only ordering a small, my husband and I were both full after one slice and ended up taking half the pizza home. I put the leftovers in the air fryer the next day, and it was just as good reheated as it was the night before. I previously didn’t think of Papa Del’s as a particularly inexpensive meal, but when you think about how much pizza you get for the price, I found it was actually a really good deal.
For dessert, I also ordered a cannoli ($4). Served with a drizzle of chocolate sauce, this was a great way to finish off the meal. The shell was just the right amount of crunchy, the filling was sweet but not overly sweet. I would definitely order this again (meaning, every time I eat there in the future).
Overall, this was a good meal, and the prices were very reasonable for the amount of food you get. The only downside is the unavoidable wait for such large pizzas to bake, but on nights when a longer meal might be nice to unwind — or on nights when pizza carryout sounds good, Papa Del’s is worth adding to your C-U pizza rotation.
Papa Del’s Pizza Factory
1201 S Neil St
Champaign
Su – Th 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Fr + Sa 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.