Red Sauce Pizza is a beloved Pizza restaurant on NE Fremont that has been open for over a decade now. Not too long ago they started selling their famous “Big Hank’s Hoagies” as a lunch special. Now they have added some other lunch specials like a $9 1-topping small pizza or a 1-topping Tavern pie. Their regular pizza is thin-crust and the Tavern pie is extra thin crust. I enjoy both but ultimately prefer the regular crust best. The flavor of the crust and the light char it gets is perfect. They serve these lunch deals on Thursday-Sunday from 12-3. This is when I go the most often and also when the best deals are. What started as just a single hoagie special has evolved into a nice special menu of two different styles of pizzas and as of this writing four different hoagies: the original Italian, the Jersey Shar, a Turkey and Havarti one, and an unnamed green veggie one. I have tried the original and the Jersey Shar. Hoagies are $14 and are also an excellent deal. With $9 pizzas, this is a deal too good to pass up! This post is about their weekend lunch specials specifically.

The 1-topping small pizza lunch special. I ordered this on Saturday. Just look at it! Visually you can tell this is top-tier pizza. Topping of choice was sausage. So yummy! This and a salad was the perfect lunch for a hungry guy. Their crust is some of my favorite in a city that is known for pizza. They have a perfect amount of char to the bottom and crust and I like how thin it is. This is real classic pizza done well. The sausage was super yummy as well.

Small House salad for $8. Red Sauce makes some of the better salads around, and the price point for a small is great (large is $14). Quality ingredients, delicious flavors and well executed. They changed the salad a few weeks ago, the new one has seasonal greens, pickled fennel, rainbow carrots, red radishes, candied Pepita seeds, blue cheese, oranges in a blood orange vinaigrette. Really yummy. The $9 pizza and $8 salad winds up being one of the best lunch deals in town. One of my favorite meals is pizza and salad, so it’s perfect for me!

The “Jersey Shar”, one of the newer hoagies. This is an absolute banger of a sandwich and rocketed to the top of my sandwich list in a city that is known for excellent sandwiches. It starts with their house made sourdough bread which is insanely delicious. You could eat just the bread and be pretty happy with life. Makes sense that a pizzeria that makes delicious dough also makes killer bread. This hoagie has Calabrese Salami, Pepperoni, Provolone, Turkey Breast, Pepperoncini, Red Onion, Iceberg, Tomato. If you are sandwich lover you must try this! It’s everything you could want in/on a sandwich. So crave-able. I’m still thinking about this two months later. Also the original Italian is insane too. I haven’t had the other two, but I’m sure they rock equally hard. $14 and comes with chips and pickles.

Tavern pie with Canadian Bacon. You can see that it’s cut in squares and that the crust is extra thin. This is a nice alternative to the regular pizza. The flavor, texture and chewiness of the dough on the regular pizza doesn’t come through here, you get a crispy bottom crust. Nice for a change of pace, but I’ll always prefer their regular crust for those qualities mentioned above. But again, for a $9 lunch special it’s a bangin’ deal. Go check out Red Sauce for weekend lunch or regular dinner. Their pizzas and ingredients are great! It’s a bit pricey for the regular pies (as are most places in town) that’s why I like these cheaper lunch deals. Happy Eating!