Mabel's Gourmet Pizza

Most beach-town pizzerias lead with pepperoni. Mabel's Gourmet Pizza leads with a white pie — olive oil and garlic where the tomato sauce usually goes, then spinach, bacon, asiago, and old white cheddar built across the top. That is Mabel's Original White, and it tells you the kitchen has a point of view about pizza rather than just a section for it. This is a thin-crust, stone-baked, New York-style pizzeria in Crystal Beach, the lakeside neighbourhood of Fort Erie, and the menu is organized around house sauces and signature pies instead of the cheese-and-pepperoni default most counters settle for.

The signature families are where that identity holds. Mighty Buffalo Chicken runs the kitchen's own Buffalo wing sauce under roasted chicken and orange cheddar. Steak & Mushroom layers roasted garlic aioli, shaved steak, mushrooms, and Gorgonzola toward the richer end of the list. Memphis BBQ Chicken leans on a Jack Daniels barbecue sauce, and the Something Different lineup pushes further still, down to a Dill Pickle and Bacon pie built on that same garlic aioli base. Pesto pizzas and white pies like the feta-and-olive Mykonos fill in around them, in a list long enough that the tomato-sauce classics — the Traditional Pepperoni, the Meat Lover — read as one lane among many rather than the whole road.

The rest of the menu is built for a full table. House-made lasagnas come in a three-cheese version and a meat build; there are calzones, hot toasted steak and meatball subs, Homestyle Meatballs in tomato sauce, an artichoke dip for the dining room, and kids pasta for the youngest orders. The subs travel especially well — a toasted steak-and-mushroom or a meatball roll in Mabel's tomato sauce with melted mozzarella — for orders headed out the door. Vegetarian diners have real choices in the Goat Cheese, the Gorgonzola Garden, the Mykonos, and the three-cheese lasagna, and the build-your-own format extends to a cauliflower gluten-free and vegan crust with dairy-free cheese. Strict allergy diners are pointed to confirm preparation, since the kitchen does not claim a dedicated facility.

Taken together, the menu is built to be used more than once, and the weekly-specials board sets the rhythm. Tuesday pairs medium pizzas; Wednesday breaks the price on the lasagna; Thursday runs a pizza-and-Caesar combo; Friday sends takeout orders out with a couple of pops; Saturday discounts the meatball and steak subs; Sunday is the large build-your-own. That is not occasion pricing. It is a standing reason to fold Mabel's into an ordinary week instead of saving it for one.

Mabel's has been part of Crystal Beach longer than the current build suggests. It was established in 2005 and brought to the beach in 2008, and for years read more like a cottage pizza stop than a sit-down restaurant. A 2022 reconstruction changed that, adding a twenty-eight-seat dining room and a twenty-four-seat seasonal patio. Ownership changed hands in 2025: by the restaurant's own account, Terry and Casey Marzec retired and Eric Hitchcock Jr. became the third owner that September. The pizza style, the name, and the beach-town role carried through the handoff intact.

What the rebuild bought is optionality. Mabel's still works as a pizza-night pickup on the way to the water, but it now holds a seated dinner too, with a short list of domestic and local craft beer and Niagara wine to round out a table. Reservations run through the restaurant's own request page, the safer move than a walk-in when the patio is the plan. On a warm evening the patio is the better version of the visit — a steak-and-mushroom pie and a local pint carried out onto the boards while the beach town eases into dusk.