Canton’s CRISP restaurant offers new option for bar-style pizza lovers

This story originally appeared in the April 7 edition of the Citizen. Click here to subscribe today.

Robert Carnes opened CRISP, a family restaurant that features bar style pizza, in November of 2021. CRISP has a wide menu that includes appetizers, hot and cold sandwiches, pasta dishes, soups and salads, and other items. The restaurant also has a full-service bar.

The Canton location, at 955 Turnpike Street, is the second of three CRISP restaurants that Carnes plans to open. The first one is in Walpole, and plans are in the works for a third CRISP in Plymouth. When searching for a site for the second restaurant, he looked for a location that was closer to what he called the “Mecca” of bar pizza.

CRISP owner Robert Carnes

“People here know what bar pizza is,” he said. “People are familiar with the bar pizza.”

Carnes explained that bar pizza is a very specific kind of pie. “Bar pizza is always 10 inches round, it’s a pan pizza, it has no discernible crust,” he said. “We put cheese to the edge of the pan. There is no doughy crust. It’s sauce and cheese all the way to the edges.”

Carnes said that it became very popular a few years ago and that people rave about bar pizza. He added that it seems to have originated at the Cape Cod Café in Brockton. Carnes grew up in Whitman and worked at Venus Cafe during high school and college, learning firsthand how to prepare bar pizza from the experienced family owners.

Besides pizza, other popular items on the CRISP menu include fresh seafood, pasta, chicken parmesan, veal Marsala, sautéed dishes, sandwiches and wraps, and salads. Carnes expects that during the upcoming warmer months customers will order more of their lobster rolls. When planning the offerings on the extensive menu, Carnes kept one thought in mine.

“I wanted to make sure that a family that was coming to our restaurant, everyone could find something on that menu that they enjoyed,” he said. With the change from the fall/winter menu to the spring/summer menu happening soon, Carnes hopes to streamline the menu in general.

Carnes is an experienced cook, and in the kitchen at CRISP, he has an experienced staff. “We have two executive chefs who create and make scratch ingredients,” he said.

The chefs create marinara sauce, tartar sauce, buffalo sauce, barbecue sauce, and salad dressing in the kitchen. “We try to find the very best ingredients,” noted Carnes. There is also a catering menu available for private events.

A number of young people participate in town and school sports in Canton, Sharon, and Stoughton. Carnes said he has already reached out to sports organizations in the three towns with some fun promotions for athletes in spring sports.

In thinking about a name for the three restaurants, Carnes knew that he wanted something that would tie in with the quality of a bar pizza, especially its burned edges. He was looking for a name that would make people think of something fresh, new, exciting, and crisp. After talking to family and friends, he settled on CRISP.

A friend of Carnes’ wife designed the logo for the restaurants. It’s a red circle with edging and lines that cut the circle into pizza slices. Guests see the logo as they enter the restaurant. CRISP in Canton seats 60 people indoors among high tops and smaller tables. That number includes about 20 seats at the full-service bar.

The bar was constructed from junk pallets that were taken apart and stripped so that the slats could be used for the new bar. There are also hooks attached to the bar so that guests can hank up purses or bags. There are phone chargers at the bar as well. Carnes said that an outdoor dining area in the parking lot to the left of the entrance will be set up with decorative barriers, planters, tables and umbrellas. That will increase the seating to over 100 people.

There are six wall hangings that adorn the walls at CRISP. Five are large television sets; the sixth is a photo of Carnes’ maternal grandfather, John Malvesti, who was a career Quincy Police sergeant. The photo, which was on the cover of Life magazine on August 8, 1938, shows Malvesti and a group of friends when they were young men and getting ready to dive into a quarry in Quincy to swim in the summer. Malvesti is the second man from the left. “He was just someone you looked up to,” Carnes said of his grandfather.

For more information about CRISP and to see the menu, go to crispizza.com.

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Posted by Canton Citizen on Apr 16 2022. Filed under Business. Both comments and pings are currently closed.