I went to Chrissy's Pizza and didn't wait in a big dumb line

Less than 50 minutes from the time I got there to the time I finished eating.

I don’t know how I first heard about Chrissy’s Pizza, but we’ve been following each other on Instagram since March 2023, and after fiiiiinally trying a pie last weekend, all I can say is…what the hell took me so long?

People talk about Chrissy’s as being really hard to get, and in the early days, it was. Back in 2021, Chrissy’s started out as a one-man operation: Chris Hansell slinging pies at home in Bushwick. By 2023, Chris’s pizzas had become A (capital A, capital T) Thing. Social media fueled the hype, and pizza pre-orders would sell out within minutes. Chrissy’s did a residency at Superiority Burger in the East Village, where it remained tough to snag a reservation. Last fall, when Chrissy’s opened its brick-and-mortar in Greenpoint, Instagram and TikTok flooded with videos of influencers talking about the crazy-long lines.

But when I went to Chrissy’s last weekend—at 6:30pm on Saturday—I walked inside and there were 3 people waiting to order. It took maybe 2 minutes for me to get from the back of the “line” to the cash register, where I was told that the wait time for my pizza would be 25-30 minutes. It was exactly 25 minutes from the time I paid to the time my name was called. And that’s on underpromising and overdelivering.

Which is all to say: don’t be afraid of the “long lines” at Chrissy’s Pizza. Yes, you’ll have to stand outside of the shop until your pizza’s ready (unless you pre-order for pick-up), but waiting in the kind of big dumb line that you see on social (and spoofed on SNL)? Not really a thing.

“We rarely ever have a line now especially with the online ordering,” Chrissy’s wrote in an Instagram story yesterday. “You MIGHT see a small line on a Friday, Sat or Sun at peak dinner hours but outside of that you can usually be in and out in 10-15 minutes. And at most during peak hours 25-30.”

This pizza is worth that 25 minutes. It’s worth the long subway ride from lower Manhattan. It’s even worth getting rained on, as I did on Saturday (twice). In fact, this is some of my favorite pizza I’ve had in New York—and I don’t say that lightly—with crispy, crackly crust and tomato sauce so tart it made me smack my lips. The neon orange mozzarella evokes Chuck E. Cheese nostalgia in the best way, and that dusting of grated parm is pure 🤌.

Next time I go to Chrissy’s, I’m getting the spicy white pie, and I’m going to make myself wait at least 5 minutes before taking my first bite. On this visit, my friends and I ate the pizza immediately—who could blame us?—and it was hottttt. We all agreed that our second slices, which had cooled off a little, were even better because the layers of flavor really came through.

We didn’t plan to go to Chrissy’s on Saturday, which is another thing I loved about my experience. It didn’t have to be—it doesn’t have to be—a Whole (capital W, capital T) Thing.

This is how it happened. My friends and I were supposed to meet at a wine bar called Bouquet. When we realized that Bouquet was closed for a private event, we pivoted to another spot. The vibes were weird at our backup bar, and it was only in searching for where to go next that my friend Val remembered Chrissy’s was nearby. So we walked over, and to my surprise, there wasn’t a line. We placed an order, and waited a normal amount of time, and ate the pizza standing at the tiny counter. We dunked our slices into pools of Rosi’s Hot Oil that got all over our fingers. We shared the last slice, one bite at a time. And when we left, we couldn’t tell if we were sweaty from the heat or wet from the rain or just greasy from the pizza, but it didn’t matter that our hair had frizzed and our shoes were soaked, because this was the best impromptu way to spend a Saturday night in New York City.

Rain or shine, do as Chris says: “Don’t let the influencers scare you. Come enjoy a pie.”