Capri Pizzeria

The Super Pizza is the one to order first at Capri: mozzarella laid under sausage, bacon, mushroom and green peppers, a Windsor-style pie hearty enough to explain in a single order what the kitchen means by a good slice. It is the house baseline, the combination the rest of the signature list gets measured against, and the safest first move for anyone learning the menu. Capri's original counter sits on Dougall Avenue in South Windsor, the headquarters of a pizza name that has since spread across Windsor-Essex — and the Dougall menu is where that name still reads as a full pizzeria rather than a line on a sign.

Past the Super, the signature pies start taking turns. The Sopranos Pizza leans sweeter and deeper, caramelized onions and sun-dried tomatoes set against Italian sausage and roasted garlic; the Galati Pizza is the boldest combination on the list, feta, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted garlic, artichokes and hot peppers pushed toward the Mediterranean end of the menu. Neither is meant to be ordered alone. The way Capri's menu wants to be used is in pairs — a familiar pie beside a sharper one — so a single order carries both the crowd-pleaser and the combination with something to prove. The Super still does the heavy lifting on a first visit; the Sopranos and the Galati are what bring a repeat order back.

Around the pies runs the supporting order a pizzeria this established is expected to keep. Panzerotti, chicken parmigiana, lasagna and focaccia hold down the Italian-American middle; a pizza burger and wings by the plate cover the table that wants more than dough; and garden, Greek and Caesar salads sit alongside for anyone building a fuller meal. Vegetarians are not an afterthought — the Veggie and Bocconcini pies and the Galati all skip the meat. Chicken fingers and individual cakes bracket the order at either end, from a quick appetizer to a dessert sized for one. Sizes run from a small pizza to a party pie, the single detail that decides how a Capri order actually comes together for one person or for a dozen.

What all of it describes is a kitchen that never strays far from the familiar and has no interest in doing so. The comfort-food core — pizza, wings, pasta, chicken parmigiana — is the point rather than a compromise, and the signature pies add contrast without walking away from it. That balance is what lets one order serve a family with a table of different appetites and the group that cannot agree on a single pie: a recognizable favourite goes down beside the Sopranos or the Galati, and everyone at the table finds a plate.

That kind of default standing takes decades to build, and Capri has had them. The pizzeria opened in Windsor in 1972 and grew from one storefront into a multi-location Windsor-Essex operation, with the Dougall Avenue store keeping its role as the headquarters address. The clearest measure of how far the name travelled into local life is not on any menu: the city's Capri Pizzeria Recreation Complex carries it on a public building, a civic marker most pizzerias never earn. Ownership and kitchen credits stay out of the telling — the continuity here is carried by the name itself and the neighbourhood that keeps ordering under it.

Most of Capri's orders leave the building anyway. Online ordering, delivery, takeout and a separate catering menu make the Dougall location as useful for a Tuesday dinner as for a party that outgrows a single pizza, and the one thing worth checking at checkout is the address, since the other Windsor-Essex shops run their own menus and phone numbers. There is no online reservation to book and no need for one: a Capri night starts with a size, a couple of pies and a plate of wings, and ends with the box open on the kitchen counter at home.