Red’s Savoy Inn and Pizza – St. Paul, MN

My friend Callous-un is in town this week for a conference, and she’s my captive audience for a few days. I was giving her the grand tour of St. Paul (just to anger M. and Trash Giant), and we realized we were starving. I had heard Red’s Savoy was pretty good, and in fact, I recommended it to a fellow Illinois native, WiseCracker, and he said it was good pizza. We found it pretty easily using the GPS so we headed inside.

It was the middle of the afternoon, so it was nice and sunny outside. We walked inside through a door with the word “PIZZA” over it. We assumed this was the proper entrance. We walked into a cave. Seriously, this was the darkest building I’ve ever been in. Callous-un had to grab the backs of chairs and the booths just to take tentative steps forward. Amazingly dark in this place. There was a super dimly-lit bar on one side and then a restaurant side with more tables than I expected. And there were plenty of people inside on a Saturday afternoon. We grabbed a table and hoped our eyes would adjust.

We perused the menu and decided on a regular pizza. Callous-un is a vegetarian, so we got half cheese and half Sausage and Pepperoni (for me, obviously). We asked about a random sandwich on the menu called the “Hot Dago”. Apparently, this sandwich is an Italian sausage patty between two pieces of French bread and then covered in spaghetti sauce. I guess the French bread makes it non-racist. I might end up getting this next time, since it sounds pretty good, but this time, we were going with the pizza.

The pizza took a LONG time to come out. Meanwhile we were treated to some of the local flavor – mainly a PWT family screaming swear words at their adorable little girl because she spilled her soda on the table. It was pretty sad actually, but the fact that it blew up so fast was pretty amazing to witness.

The pizza finally showed up and looked amazing. TONS of cheese on this thing.

And this is the second restaurant that Callous-un and I went to together where the food is served directly on a cafeteria tray. The pizza is cut into square pieces and somehow the cook in back managed to find the perfect dividing line down the middle where none of my tasty (and by tasty, I mean meaty) bits got on her cheese side. The pizza was really good – way better than I even expected, and despite the wait. There was a perfect amount of pepperoni and sausage on there and I didn’t have hardly any bites without meat in them. The crust wasn’t thin, but it wasn’t this either. Just in between. The sauce wasn’t boring ole’ Chef Boy-Ar-Dee or anything, it was a really tasty marinara with a little bit of kick to it.

We both ate more than we should have, and got good and full. We got the leftovers in a to-go box, paid and headed out into the super blinding sun. I will definitely go back to Red Savoy. I was extremely happy with it and I might even try to smuggle some of their pizza over to M. and Trash Giant’s house soon (since they hate St. Paul).

Top 5 things about Red Savoy Inn and Pizza
1. Hanging with Callous-un on my home turf
2. Perfect amount of topping
3. Pizza sauce had some zip to it
4. Crust
5. Food served directly on trays

Bottom 5 things
1. There’s no inn to take a nap in after you eat too much
2. PWT family yelling at their kid
3. It took a long time to get our pizza and it wasn’t terribly busy
4. It was incredibly dark inside. INCREDIBLY
5. I have a long drive to keep this pizza hot to make it to M. and Trash Giant’s house

Red’s Savoy Inn & Pizza
421 E 7th St
Saint Paul, MN 55101