Is Little Arthur’s $40 Pizza Really Worth the Price?

Where:

205 E. Seventh Ave., Capitol Hill

The Draw:

East Coast–style pizzas and hoagies; friendly service

The Drawback:

Too-salty cheesesteak; the $40 margherita pie lacked enough cheese.

Noise Level:

Loud

What To Order:

The plain cheese pie

There were a lot of questions flying around this past summer when AJ Shreffler, the chef and owner of Little Arthur’s in Capitol Hill, announced on Instagram that his pizza would be “the most expensive in town.” Reddit posters asked, “How and in what universe is someone getting away with charging $40/pizza?” and “Has anyone looked into the cost of dough, sauce, and cheese? What a joke” and simply “WTF?”

I had a question, too: Well, is it worth it?

A Pennsylvania native, Shreffler started with hoagies in 2019. In his home kitchen, he made the kind of sandwiches he missed eating back East and sold them via pop-ups. Those sandwiches, too, were criticized for their prices, which currently range from $22 for an Italian to $24 for a cheesesteak. This August, he added pizza to his menu, including the $40 pie, when he opened Little Arthur’s inside Out of the Barrel Taproom.

While some Denverites may be unwilling to pony up that kind of cash for East Coast–style subs and pies on principle, I was curious. On my first visit, I ordered a plain cheese pizza and the cheesesteak I’d been salivating over via Little Arthur’s mouthwatering Instagram account. But after I snagged one of the six tables situated along the glass garage doors, a staffer came over to explain that the beef wasn’t up to snuff, so Shreffler wasn’t serving the cheesesteak. He was apologetic and, as we’d already paid for the sandwich, offered us anything on the menu to make it right.

We asked for another cheese pizza, a decision that seemed wise when the pies arrived. With a patchwork of deep red dollops of tangy San Marzano tomato sauce, dark brown bubbles of blistered crust, and yellow and white mozzarella and pecorino cheeses, the pies looked just as delicious in person as they had on my screen. They tasted just as good, too. The crackly, crispy crust had bite from its 72-hour sourdough process, but it was still foldable, a trait tested and approved by my New Yorker husband. And, at least in this instance, cost wasn’t a detractor: Divided into eight triangles, one 20-incher easily fed my family of four for less than $4 a slice.

Unfortunately, unsatisfactory meat affected my second visit as well. With the cheesesteak still out of reach, I ordered the Italian. The hoagie deploys a heavily sesame-seeded house-baked roll inspired by Philadelphia’s legendary Sarcone’s Bakery, and it holds thin-shaved ham, salami, and capocollo from Denver’s River Bear American Meats. Seasoned with oregano, olive oil, and red wine vinegar, the sandwich was far better than you’d find at your average sub shop, but the roll isn’t large enough to feed two. I’ll admit that I’m not a huge lover of sandwiches, but spending more than $20 for a single serving of bread and deli meat seems excessive to me.

I am, however, a huge fan of cupping pepperoni, which we added to our pizza the second time around. While some of the salamis were wet and dripping with grease, others were dry and far too charred. This is a forgivable misstep at my cheap neighborhood pizzeria, but not when it’s a $5 upcharge.

A week later, I saw my coveted, ooey-gooey $24 cheesesteak back on social media. When I arrived, I ordered that, the margherita pizza, and the robust cookie tray for dessert. My total was more than $100.

Nearly 30 minutes later, the cheesesteak arrived, looking just as rich and creamy as I’d hoped. Delivered on that same seeded bun, it’s loaded up with 10 ounces of shaved rib-eye. The use of Cooper sharp—a melty cheese that’s long been popular at delis in the Northeast—makes this iteration unlike any cheesesteak I’ve had in Denver. As much as I’d anticipated digging into this Philly-born icon, though, I’m not sure I’d order it again. It ventured into too-salty territory, which was a bummer because I could otherwise understand the hype.

The enthusiasm around the $40 pizza was similarly lost on me. What makes the margherita pie so special (and so expensive), according to Shreffler, is the fior di latte mozzarella, a cow’s milk cheese sourced from a sixth-generation dairy farm in Naples, Italy. I’m sure this hard-to-come-by cheese is delicious, but I wouldn’t know because some of our slices only had two small circles of it, and they were overpowered by the tomato sauce.

These shortcomings bring me back to my original question about Little Arthur’s: Is it worth it? There’s no question that Shreffler is using top-tier ingredients and putting time and effort into creating a short menu of different-for-Denver pizzas and hoagies. And Shreffler’s place certainly isn’t the only new pricey pizza joint in town (see: Roberta’s Pizza in Uptown). I’ll go back for that cheese pizza, but I didn’t find much else at Little Arthur’s that warrants a bill roughly equivalent to what I pay for a week’s worth of groceries.

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