Doing the pizza and wings thing at Dano's

FELTS MILLS — It began as a small mom and pop pizza place just outside Fort Drum about 10 years ago.

It's 2009, and Dano's has grown into Dano's Pizzeria & Restaurant, a family-owned Italian eatery serving not only traditional pizza, but specialty pizzas, calzones, wings, hot and cold subs, deep-fried appetizers, salads and light dinners.

It's a little hard to find. It's on Route 971V, just off Route 3 in Felts Mills. A little blue roadway sign that merely says "Dano's" with an arrow caught our eye.

About a quarter mile down that road, the restaurant is on a knoll on the left.

If it weren't for the neon "open" sign in a window, we might still be driving around.

The entry point is the original restaurant. This is where you do your ordering.

A large, open room has been recently added with cafeteria-style seating — tables for four against the outer walls, tables accommodating eight to 10 in the center.

There are no waitresses or waiters, an advantage when it comes to tip time but a disadvantage for those who feel being served is part of a restaurant experience.

But it's really a family restaurant, a place where you can get lots of food at a reasonable price. And they make good food, utilizing quality ingredients for their homemade sauces, healthier natural ingredients wherever possible, and the finest Italian cheese available to them.

It says right in the menu, "We don't sacrifice quality to save money."

There were five in our party, so we gathered around one of the long tables in the center of the dining room. The menu is an attractive full-colored production with lots of tantalizing photos of the offerings. We sat around chatting for quite some time until we figured out we had to go up to the counter to order.

The woman behind the touch-screen computer cash register was very patient, guiding us through the ordering process. You should have seen five people trying to order as many different items from the menu as possible for this review. She deserves employee-of-the-month status after dealing with us.

Beverages are dispensed fast-food restaurant style. You get your cup at the counter and serve yourself in the dining room. Ordinarily they'd shout out your name from the counter when your food was ready. The night we visited it was relatively quiet, so the friendly staff delivered our food to our table.

There were two self-proclaimed chicken wing experts in our party (whatever that means ...). They know they want 'em crisp and they like 'em excruciatingly hot.

The wings are available in multiples of 10. We got 10 "X-Hot" to appease the wing specialists and 10 "Italian" for the rest of us. The wing connoisseurs specified they be double fried (whatever that means) for extra crispiness.

The "X-Hot" were more like medium, according to the wing specialists, and not as crispy as they would have liked. We liked the Italian wings, with their mild hot sauce and Italian dressing. Ours seemed crispier. Ha ha.

Ten wings cost $7.37, and 20 cost $13.97. The more you buy, the cheaper they get.

There's a small additional charge for celery and blue cheese.

A large antipasto salad ($9.97), enough for four, was plenty for us five.

The iceberg lettuce was fresh, crispy and plentiful, hidden below the toppings of salami, pepperoni, provolone, peppers, sliced onions, black olives and tasteless tomatoes (not their fault — it's January and it's Northern New York).

I'm used to an antipasto being pre-doused with a good Italian dressing. At Dano's, we got to choose our individual dressings from the standard lineup, served on the side in those little plastic cups.

You can custom order your own pizza, 12 inch or 16 inch with "regular toppings" (pepperoni, sausage, peppers, onions, mushrooms, ham, beef, pineapple, bacon, black olives, broccoli, jalapenos, banana pepper rings) or "premium toppings" (meatballs, chicken, extra cheese, tomato slices, and my favorite, anchovies).

Or take the easy way out when five palates are involved — get one of their specialty pizzas. Fewer decisions to make.

We were going to order a small deluxe (pepperoni, sausage, onions, mushrooms, peppers) and a small chicken bacon ranch (ranch dressing instead of pizza sauce, topped with bacon and cheese). But our astute counter lady suggested we make it one large, the toppings divided on each half.

And in conjunction with a combination deal right in the menu, by ordering a large pizza and 20 wings we saved about $7.

Have I lost you yet?

The best part of the meal was the pizza. The "deluxe" half was fine, predictable and non-adventurous. The "chicken" side was pretty amazing with its subtle ranch dressing taste beneath the thick, stringy mozzarella, chicken and crispy bacon all on top of a perfect pizza crust — perfect thickness for crunch, enough chewiness without the doughiness.

One of the four dinners offered is a deep-fried beer-battered haddock with fries and cole slaw for $9.99. The fish is pretty much the same prefrozen product you find in the frozen food section of any supermarket. Nothing special.

Lasagna rollettes ($6.99) weren't great. A lasagna noodle or two were wrapped around ricotta seasoned with a few herbs, doused with a bland tomato sauce and served with garlic bread made from half a sub roll.

There are no desserts available.

Food for five at Dano's came to $58.

They recently began serving breakfast, with doughnuts, muffins and cinnamon buns as well as breakfast sandwiches and breakfast pizza.

You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Dano's Pizzeria & Restaurant

24411 Route 971V

Felts Mills, New York

733-DANO (3266)

www.danospizzeria.com

Open at 11 a.m. seven days a week

Sunday through Thursday till 11 p.m.

Friday and Saturday till midnight

Now serving breakfast from 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Be sure to try the chicken bacon ranch pizza

RATING: 3 FORKS