Original Eagle Pizza: Go for the Supreme & the Souvlaki

If you spend any time in Manhattan you'll chance upon dozens of pizza joints called "Ray's Pizza," in various iterations: Famous Ray's, Original Ray's, Ray's Original, Famous Original Ray's.

Pizza shops have a hard time, it seems, finding an original moniker—to the point where the word "original" in a name has become staid. And sure enough, Original Eagle Pizza has its namesakes around the country. But there's only one in the Philly area, and its in Ardmore. And its good enough to go by a single word. To wit: Let's order some Eagle.

I got mine to go, ordering a small Eagle Supreme, with a small tossed salad and grilled chicken souvlaki.

The pizza had everything but the kitchen sink—not always a great thing, even with a "supreme" or its variants. Eagle's was covered with pepperoni, sausage, olives, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, broccoli, red bell peppers and cheese. The tomato sauce is mild but gets the job done. The thicker Greek style crust provided a nice crunch along the edges, but the pizza itself proved to be too difficult to eat without a fork and knife—Trump style.

See, this is the problem with everything-supremo-duluxe pizzas. In theory, they scream heavenly. In practice, the abundant toppings weigh down the pizza and tend to fall about the place, into the crevices of sofa cushions, never to been seen again.

But I didn't mind, and loved every dense, satisfying bite. The small could feed two or three people.

The salad came with a packet of Ken's dressing, a bit disappointing, but then many fine pizza places don't make their own dressing. The iceberg lettuce, green and red bell peppers and onions were fresh, and the croutons (on the side, thank you very much) tasted homemade and were well seasoned.

The grilled chicken souvlaki was delicious, wrapped in a pillowy soft warm pita with plenty of extra finely shredded lettuce, onions and tomatoes with yogurt sauce and a sprinkle of oregano. It was still good the next day, cold.

Eagle is take-out only, with no seating. There are numerous meal deals, so be sure to ask—though it was extremely thoughtful of one of the employees to tell me about a bunch of the specials the day I was there.

The last time I had Eagle pizza was ages ago, before the new management. I'm happy to report that everything is just as good as I remember.