On June 10, someone called in an order to Third Proof Pizzeria on Changebridge Road using a name nobody at the counter recognized. Owner Tanner Andican filled it like any other, then decided to throw in an extra pie, a New Haven-style, just in case the customer wanted to see what else the shop could do. The customer turned out to be Dave "El Presidente" Portnoy, the Barstool Sports founder whose pizza reviews can make or break a shop's summer. Within hours, Third Proof had two scores that most pizzerias never see in a lifetime: an 8.2 for its regular cheese pie and an 8.3 for the New Haven, according to TAPinto Montville's account of the visit.
That would be a good story on its own for a shop that, per TAPinto's reporting, had been open less than eight months at the time. What made it a Montville story, and not just a Pine Brook one, is who showed up next.
The math Anthony Pizzi couldn't ignore
Anthony Pizzi runs the NJ Pizza Alliance, a network connecting shop owners and pizza influencers across the state, and he spent two decades living in Montville before the Portnoy visit put his old town back on his radar. When he heard Portnoy had landed at Third Proof, he drove over to support Andican in person. Standing in the shop, Pizzi did the math out loud for TAPinto: Montville now had two Barstool Pizza Review scores above 8.0, something he said no other town in New Jersey could claim.
The second score belongs to The Columbia Inn, a longtime Montville restaurant that Portnoy rated 8.7 back in 2020.
| Shop | What was reviewed | Score | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Third Proof Pizzeria (Pine Brook) | Regular cheese pie | 8.2 | 2026 |
| Third Proof Pizzeria (Pine Brook) | New Haven-style pie | 8.3 | 2026 |
| The Columbia Inn | Pizza | 8.7 | 2020 |
Pizzi's line, that this makes Montville "the pizza capital of New Jersey," is his opinion and not a state ranking. But the underlying fact holds up: three separate scores, six years apart, all clearing 8.0, all from the same handful of square miles.
Same town, two generations of dough
What's easy to miss in the headline is how differently these two places get to the same result. TAPinto describes The Columbia Inn as a longstanding Montville fixture, the kind of place that built its reputation over years rather than one viral visit. Third Proof is the opposite kind of story, a shop that was still counting its first year in business when the Barstool review landed.
Andican learned the trade at his father's Tabor Pizzeria over six years before setting out on his own. His approach leans modern: a sourdough base built from organic flour and organic tomatoes, avocado oil in the fryer instead of seed oil, and extra virgin olive oil worked into the dough itself. The shop's name comes directly from that process. Andican has explained it as three distinct stages: an initial bulk ferment, a 48-hour cold ferment, and a final shaping stage right before the pizza goes in the oven, which he calls the third proof.
The menu stays tight on purpose, ten specialized pies rather than an exhaustive list, with combinations like a mushroom and onion pie finished with garlic and parmesan rather than the usual toppings rotation.
The address on Changebridge Road has seen this before
Here's the part that turns two good pizza scores into an actual pattern. The storefront Third Proof occupies at 263 Changebridge Road didn't sit empty waiting for a new build. It previously operated as Montville Pizzeria & Restaurant. A new operator walked into an old pizza address and pushed the ceiling higher, rather than the town simply adding a new pizza shop to its count.
That's not an isolated case in Montville. It's closer to how the town's best-known food spots keep getting made.
The same story on Main Road
A few miles away on Route 202, chef Michael Cetrulo runs Scalini Fedeli out of 167 Main Road, a building that spent years as the Montville Inn before it became a restaurant at all. Cetrulo first opened the space as Locanda Vecchia, then rebranded it to Scalini Fedeli, joining a small family of restaurants that includes Scalini Fedeli in Chatham, Il Mondo Vecchio in Madison, and Scala del Nonna in Montclair. The rebrand carried over roughly 90 percent of the Chatham and Tribeca-style menu, according to TAPinto's coverage of the change, and settled into a six-course, prix fixe format that guests had apparently been requesting since the Locanda days.
Put the two stories side by side and a pattern emerges that's easy to miss if you only ever hear about Montville's food scene one opening at a time. The town's most talked-about restaurants aren't showing up in new construction along Route 287. They're taking over addresses that already had a restaurant in them, sometimes the same type of restaurant, and getting a better result out of the same four walls. A pizzeria replaced a pizzeria and hit a higher score. A historic inn became an Italian restaurant, closed that concept, and reopened as a different Italian restaurant from the same chef. Montville's food identity is less about growth and more about turnover done well.
What else fills out a Montville food night
The pizza scores get the headlines, but they're not the whole plate. A look at what residents actually list as their regular stops shows a wider mix than the Portnoy story suggests:
- Black Rabbit Saloon for a casual night out with a bar-forward menu
- Olivo Mediterranean Fare in Pine Brook for hummus, grilled seafood, and house-made pita
- Harrigan's Family Restaurant, a mainstay for residents who've been coming for years
- Bosphorus and Yanni's Taverna for Mediterranean and Greek options
- Kenko Sushi, frequently mentioned by reviewers as a byob favorite
- Don Chicken in Pine Brook, another regular on local best-of lists
None of these carry a Barstool score. That's fine. They're the places that make a Tuesday night easy, not the places that make the local news.
The town already knows how to feed a crowd
Montville's own July 4th celebration this year, a three-day run from Wednesday, June 24 through Friday, June 26, leaned on a food truck lineup that read like a highlight reel of small operators: the Columbia Inn's own beer and pizza trucks parked alongside Kona Ice of NW Passaic Co., The Mozzarella God, and Eddie Dees Global Eats, according to the event's own vendor listing. Seeing The Columbia Inn show up at its own hometown festival, not just at its dining room, says something about how tightly the town's food scene loops back on itself.
The Township Committee has also confirmed that Montville Day returns to the calendar this October, per minutes from a May meeting covered by TAPinto. No exact date has been announced yet, but given how the rest of the year has gone for Montville's food scene, it's a safe bet the town's own names will be well represented.
Worth remembering next time you're deciding where to eat
None of this required a single new restaurant to open. Montville's food reputation this year was built almost entirely by operators who took over spaces that already existed and made them better than what came before. That's a harder thing to manufacture than a grand opening, and it's a better sign for a town's food scene long term than any single review score.
If you already live in Montville, you probably have your own opinion about whether Third Proof or The Columbia Inn deserves the higher number. If you're the kind of person who forwards restaurant reviews to a friend thinking about a move, that friend might eventually have questions that go beyond pizza. Anne Henderson has spent years walking buyers and sellers through Montville Township and the towns around it, and she's always glad to talk through what a neighborhood is really like, slice included. If a Montville address is ever part of that conversation, a complimentary home valuation is a good place to start.
