Il Primo Pizza and Wings, Phoenix, Arizona
Created | Updated Mar 19, 2002
This entry is edited--4 February 2002. The edited entry can be found here.
Unlike most places advertising ‘Pizza and Wings’, Il Primo only has these two treats. But for Arizona pizza, it is very good, and their mild buffalo wings are phenomenal.
Driving to its location in northern Phoenix, AZ at Bell and Cave Creek roads1, the restaurant doesn’t look as fancy as places further west on Bell (such as Olive Garden, IHOP, Outback Steakhouse, and Boston Market), but the food is good and reasonably priced.
Walking in, they have a few gaming machines to the right and a sparsely-furnished dine-in area. One counter to order at, a PA system for order-calling, and bathrooms behind the back exit sign complete the fundamentals of this medium-sized restaurant.
On one wall, a gigantic TV shows the latest Arizona football game. Each table and booth have a rack for holding a pizza surrounded a napkin dispenser--nice for conserving table space.
Drink choices are fountain Coca-Cola products with free refills (Sprite, Mr Pibb, Barq’s root beer, Hi-C, and diet and regular Cokes) or draft beer, but the real reason why people come here is the food.
They serve three sizes of pizza with eighteen possible topping choices (including such unusuals as beef, broccoli, and zucchini). They also have four specialty pizzas; the Il Primo Special has pepperoni, mushroom, sausage, onion, bell pepper, and olive. They serve a Bacon Cheeseburger pizza fixed just like a bacon cheeseburger, beef and all, and the Hot Tamale includes pepperoni and jalapeno peppers. And there is a pizza for the vegetarians among us: broccoli, onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, zucchini, olives, fresh tomato, and extra cheese.
Il Primo makes good pizza--the only possibly lacking ingredient is the sauce (it is a very basic tomato). There are no differing crust sizes (i.e. thin/medium/deep dish) as there are in Chicago-style restaurants2, but the crust is a nice thickness and bakes up tall. Should it matter, there is cornstarch along its edges.
They prepare five different styles of buffalo wings (mild, medium, hot, suicide, and BBQ) with dipping sauces of blue cheese or ranch dressing. The mild wings have a fantastic, unique flavour, but the spicier ones are flavoured somewhat more commonly. Their wings come in sizes of 10, 20, 40, or 80, ranging from $4.49 to $24.993. Also, they do not include or sell any celery, although the combination of spicy wings and cool celery is a long-time tradition in the buffalo wing world.
Il Primo also sells pizza and wings together in combos, a nifty idea that combines certain numbers of wings and pizza for a lower price. It’s cheaper because of this to buy a combo of 40 wings and an extra large pizza than to buy 40 wings and two mini pizzas, and there is more food in the combo. Very nice.
The atmosphere at Il Primo is rather non-existent, but the quality of the small variety of food that they do have rivals that of the larger chain restaurants nearby. If you’re in the area, Il Primo Pizza and Wings makes a great meal!