Life-changing pizza. 🍕

I'm so serious. My husband has Celiac Disease, so he can have no gluten even through cross contamination. Gluten-free pizzas are notoriously dry, brittle, thin, and just unimpressive and sad, and it's been years since my husband has found one enough like actual pizza to satiate his cravings for something as simple for most people as Papa John's. When planning our New York trip, I came across this place, and I knew from photos of the GF pizzas that we had to go.

I am so glad we went! The environment of the restaurant is incredible and feels SO relaxed. All the servers seem to work in tandem and I rarely saw anyone who didn't look at ease or completely happy to be working there - which is amazing, especially at about 9pm! Emilio was our waiter, and he was so wonderful! Energetic and kind, answered every question we had, and knew immediately what to do when my husband mentioned Celiac Disease, because he has it too. He told us, "This is your second home." And while we are from several states away down in Georgia, he was right! We feel connected to this place.

We had pizza at three different places on our NYC trip - Don Antonio, Carnegie Pizza, and Kesté. They were all good, but Kesté was the absolute clear winner for us, with Don Antonio being a good second that's closer if you're uptown. Carnegie was pretty good, but not at all on their level.

Ohhh, Kesté's food. 🤤 The appetizer and the dessert were incredible, but the pizza was the showstopper. My goodness, it was absolutely unreal. The crust was soft, fluffy, buttery, and tasty in every way. They use an imported flour from Italy which has wheat (be aware, if you have a wheat allergy!🌾) but is gluten-removed and safe even for Celiacs. I think that makes a huge difference in the crust! This is Neapolitan pizza of course, and very different and more upscale than the more Americanized pizzas from places like Domino's or Papa John's, but if you're gluten free and missing pizza, it will more than scratch that itch for you. Plus, if I hadn't looked at the regular, gluten-containing pizza at the next table over, it would've been hard for me to believe it was gluten-free, because it just looked and tasted so much like classic pizza crust. My husband ordered a calzone (something almost nobody even attempts in the gluten-free world), and he literally cried while eating it because it was so incredible.

It was SUCH good food and good service that the next day, we ordered pizza from there for lunch and had it delivered. Then, a few weeks after we got home, we ordered the same pizzas to our home - all the way in Georgia. They arrived perfectly packaged and preserved in dry ice, and everything was so tasty. We will be doing that again.

I truly cannot recommend this place, Emilio, and their amazing, literally life-changing food enough! If you have Celiac, this is a haven for you! I'm also sure they'd be able to help with any other dietary restrictions if you asked, because they were so incredibly kind and helpful. Go in person if you can, for that homey feeling of warmth. If you can't make it all the way here, order it on their website and have deliciousness delivered to your door. Trust me!