Next Door Pizza

I made a mistake on Sunday. I got pizza from an unnamed chain pizza place. I hadn't done that in nearly four years before my relapse this weekend. Bad pizza is an addiction in America. It infects our children by showing up where kids hang out. Swimming pools. Roller Rinks. Schools! We grow up thinking pizza is a floppy, greasy, gummy mess covered in paper-thin slices of pepperoni. We order pizza delivered to our front door with foundations of lackluster crusts covered by the same mediocre toppings. Lucky for us in Lee's Summit, there is a renowned rehabilitation facility known as Next Door Pizza. With several treatment options, Next Door Pizza will get you on the good pizza wagon and get the bad pizza monkey off your back.



The Next Door Pizza "Clinic" opened February 1st; the brainchild of "Dr." Patrick Cuezze, a former lawyer and pizza hobbyist of five years. Located in the New Longview development, NDP is truly a neighborhood establishment. The restaurant walls are adorned with doors decorated by neighbors, patrons (Ask about creating your own door!) and local businesses (810 WHB, Strange Music, INC). A Resident of the New Longview area,Patrick is committed to this community within our community. He even walks to NDP on nice days he lives so close!


The star of NDP is the Deep Dish Pie. If you've never had "Chicago Style" pizza, you really must try it (make sure you have time; they take 40 minutes to bake). The Deep Dish crust is as flaky and buttery as your favorite pie filled upside down from traditional pizza,

meaning the cheese is at the bottom and the sauce is on top. You can create your own pie or you can go with one of their specialty pizzas. Top sellers are the "Combination Lock" (Pepperoni, Sausage, Mushroom, Onion, Green Peppers, Black Olives) and the "N9ne" (Named after LS/KC's  own Tech N9ne). The N9ne is the best pizza I've ever had in my life. Ever. I mean, there's BONELESS BUFFALO WINGS in this pie! Not to mention jalapenos, red peppers, pepperoni, Italian sausage, Red Onions and BACON! All of the specialty pizza's can be ordered as a crisp thin crust or a NDP Original, double stack; two thin crusts stacked on top of one another.

The reason the pizza at NDP is so good is simple. Patrick uses nothing but the best ingredients he can find and is committed to making the best pizza possible. The mozzarella blend NDP uses is unique to the area. It uses only Grade A milk; you simply cannot spend more money on cheese than Patrick is. The Italian Sausage is a local product. He searched far and wide for the right pepperoni. Those thin, food service slices just aren't good enough. The fresh produce is cut daily. Oh, and the aforementioned BACON is thick cut, just like it should be. Creating the two unique doughs they use is an 18 to 24 hour process and all pizzas are baked in deck ovens, the standard for quality pizza. Using the instant feedback power of the internet, Patrick has made improvements to the things people said were lacking; most notably the Salad Bar. NDP has added 8 new items since they first received word that their Salad Bar was lacking.

Next Door Pizza also offers one of the widest beer selections I've seen in a pizza Spot. You can keep up to date on the latest beer offerings on their Facebook Page. They also have a beer club that has a $10 enrollment fee. This $10 gets you a t-shirt along with the right to leave your own beer mug at NDP. You can then get your mug (up to 32 oz.) filled with any draught beer for the 20 oz. price. They also have a Takeout Pizza club you can join for $10 that includes a t-shirt and a Reusable Pizza box for your takeout orders. The reusable box comes worth a $1 discount on each order. Also get $1 off if you walk or drive a hybrid/electric vehicle (Hooray Green!).

Next Door Pizza is a Lee's Summit Spot that believes in our community. It's owned by a Lee's Summit family who has a vested interest in the future of the New Longview Community and Lee's Summit as a whole. Patrick and his family live and play in Lee's Summit. I'm not sure where that John guy lives and I know Pizza the Hutt ate himself to death in Spaceballs but once you've had Next Door Pizza, you won't ever go down the dead end path that is bad pizza ever again.