If you walk into Crozet Pizza without a reservation, even on a weekday afternoon, you might not get a seat. By 8 p.m. on a Wednesday, almost every booth is taken. Students in one booth gossip over pepperoni, tourists study a National Geographic travel guide at a corner table, and a pair of parents try to control their three children scurrying around the dining rooms.
Bob Crun, who gives a friendly holler from the kitchen directly ahead, greets customers entering the cozy, dimly lit restaurant.
Two little girls prop themselves up on an old bench, peering over the counter as Crun personally prepares each pizza order.
A 61-year-old with a long, almost-silver beard, Crun speaks with a deliberate, yet humble air about his business.
"I had never heard of a pizza place that takes reservations, either," said Crun, owner and chef of the celebrated restaurant. "But people were afraid to drive all the way to Crozet and not be seated. So they started calling us to make reservations."
And now the time slots fill up days, sometimes weeks in advance. The staff keeps meticulous track of everyone who calls. "We try to get in as many people as we can," Crun said. "But sometimes we have to turn people away because we don't have room for them."
No one gets preferential treatment. Crun says he has turned away such stars as Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange because they had not called ahead.
Crun, his wife and their four children opened the two-room, eight-table restaurant in June 1977. Everyone had a hand in the business, even his youngest child, who was only 10 years old at the time.
"We wanted to do something as a family," Crun said.
The Cruns originally came from New Jersey, and the self-described hippies spent the '60s and early '70s traveling the country in a yellow school bus.
Constantly searching for ways to help others, the Cruns found a center where they could volunteer to work with mentally disabled adults. The center happened to be in Crozet.
Knowing volunteer work wouldn't pay the bills, though, the family decided to open a business. After considering bookstores and bakeries, they settled on a pizzeria.
"There was no good pizza in the area, and we wanted the kind we'd had when we were kids," said Crun, sprinkling mozzarella, garlic and chopped red peppers on a mouth-watering 14-incher. "We had no idea what we were doing, but we figured it out, and have sent all of our kids to college on pizza."
In the past 25 years, Crun hasn't changed a thing about how the restaurant operates. A frayed rope stretches from the front screen door to the kitchen, ringing an old brass bell to announce every customer's arrival. A giant steel pizza oven that dates back to the '70s still shows no signs of needing replacement.
Once the customers have paid -- cash only -- their money is deposited into a large, rusty cash register reminiscent of an era before credit card machines or computer screens. There is even a small, black wood-burning stove right in the middle of the dining room, declaring defiantly that old-fashioned is what works for this pizza parlor.
The walls evoke a similar affinity for tradition. Scattered throughout the room are dusty, yellowing black-and-whites of grandparents, parents and children, all near and dear to the family in some way. Customers at booth three can inspect a tattered picture of Charles Lindbergh from a New York City ticker-tape parade that sits beside a photograph of Crun's father as a little boy.
Similar artifacts adorn every nook and cranny, each with its own sentimental value.
Over time, the customers have added their own personal flair, to such an extent that the faded brown walls are barely visible. Customers have mailed in pictures of themselves wearing Crozet Pizza T-shirts at vacation spots around the world. Even in Russia, Thailand, Germany and Australia, loyal fans have remembered their favorite pizza in Virginia.
Patrons also began the tradition of pasting their business cards onto the left wall of the main dining room. It started with just a few placed around the cash register. Now, hundreds of them swarm the wall.
The restaurant's reputation has cast a wide net, proven by the presence of cards from IBM, Louisiana State Police, the Northern American Fishing Club and Bloomingdale's, to name a few. One can only imagine the stories behind each card, some whose once white finish has aged to a washed-out coffee color.
"You sort of notice new things on the walls every day," waitress Mary Catherine Richardson said.
Dressed in overalls and sporting beaded dreads, Richardson also noted that the environment is as appealing for the workers as it is for the clientele.
"They treat you like a person here, like an equal," she said. Crun "needs you here."
Crun has no appearance of pretension, and says he was extremely surprised by his success. He never set out to be the best in the business.
"I am not in competition with anybody but myself," he said.
The Cruns' success is particularly remarkable, considering their lack of advertising. Aside from local high school promotions, the name Crozet Pizza has been transported entirely by word of mouth. According to Crun, they haven't needed anything else.
"The pizza speaks for itself," he said.
And apparently it has spoken to people from all walks of life.
"We get everyone in here," Crun said. "Millionaires, movie stars, rednecks, students, illiterates, sports figures. They're all interesting in their own way."
And they are all interested in his pizza.
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