Buxton’s
Homemade Italian, oven fired pizzas, scratch made desserts. There's one spot in southern New Hampshire that's checking all those boxes and more.
Buxton’s started out as a food truck serving only pizza before expanding into this full service sit down location in Derry. The menu has evolved as well to include more than just the pizzas they were known for, and at the center of it all is owner Josh Buxton.
“Our menu started just as a pizza truck with just pizza, and as we expanded to our brick and mortar, we wanted to give some small plates, some larger plates, just all around clean big portions, kind of what we want to eat. We want people to sit down, disconnect, have a good meal with their family or their friends or whoever comes in and really enjoy it.”
“All the art, all the photos in our restaurant are either my wife's family or my family, or my great grandfather was an artist. All of it's done from family heirlooms and stuff that's been donated to me from my family.”
Buxton's menu starts with small plates, and they're all made from scratch, like the stracciatella dip.
They roll out and cook up their pizza dough until it forms a perfect pillow, served with creamy stracciatella cheese, drizzled with olive oil, sea salt and cracked black pepper.
The pickled peppers feature plump cherry peppers stuffed with provolone and prosciutto for a slightly sweet, slightly spicy, totally delicious bite-sized snack.
But for the one that Josh says tastes most like home, you gotta get the Meatball Supreme. It's Buxton's old family recipe, topped with whipped ricotta and served with toasted bread for contrasting textures and temperatures.
“The goal is to design our meatballs to make it feel like you were having meatballs at Sunday dinner. A lot of our dishes we go off this hot and cold, which is something that I like to have. So you're getting that cold ricotta with that hot meatball so you get a skin, a nice balance, savory, creamy all around, just good balanced bite.”
Onto the thing they're mostly known for here, the pizza.
Every step in the pizza making process is a labor of love. Starting with the homemade dough, which is part art and part science.
“When you bite into our dough, it's going to be a more soft, tender dough where we focus truly on the process of dough. We take consideration of our dough temperatures, our mixer temperature, our humidity, what the room temperature is that day. There's so many variables that go into the dough, so it'll hold its structure, but you're going to get like a tender, soft dough with a slight chew. There's no going to be no big crunch. It's not designed for that.”
It is designed to be delicious.
And the foundation for all their signature pizzas, like the tomato pie that's just homemade red sauce, thinly sliced garlic, oregano and olive oil and no cheese.
But if you're craving a classic, the Margherita pizza has you covered. Made the traditional way with just red sauce, slices of fresh mozzarella, and fresh basil.
If you want to skip the red sauce. They have a variety of white pizzas, including the Bianca featuring a cream garlic sauce base topped with mozzarella, truffle oil and some basil.
And don't forget to parm the rim.
“A parm rim is any pizza you want, we'll parm the rim. You want it on the whole pizza. We'll put it everywhere. But a parm rim is literally just grating around the whole crust.”
And the buck stops here with their Big Buck pizza named after Josh himself.
“I'm the Big Buck.”
“Big Buck is our meatballs that we make in-house. We slice them thin with thinly sliced garlic, pepperoncinis, red onion. We use our other mozzarella we use which is whole milk mozz shredded. So that's going to be a drier mozz, a little bit more meltability kind of like a more melt throughout the pie.”
“So you're getting just a balance of salty, a little sweet from the red onion, a little spicy from the pepper, and then just that clean tomato on the back.”
Buxton's large plates also bring the flavor.
The vodka burrata cutlet features a super thin, perfectly crispy chicken cutlet smothered in creamy vodka sauce, mozzarella and provolone cheese and topped with burrata for even more of that vodka sauce.
The gnocchi vodka boasts fluffy, handmade ricotta gnocchi, along with a heaping scoop of ricotta.
And for a meal that really allows you to taste the time and care that went into it, get their creative spin on lasagna.
“We do pinwheel lasagna. We do a seven hour beef bolognese that we cook down, and then we make a bechamel, bechamel cream. We put mozzarella,, parm, we roll it, slice it and pan it up for service. It kind of eats like a cinnamon bun and everyone wants the middle. Everyone wants the center bite of the pinwheel.”
It's another family recipe from a fun and family friendly restaurant.
“People feel like they're part of us. We know everyone through all the customers that come in. I say ‘hi’ to everyone. I make it a point to go talk to everyone you know, not a lot of restaurants, the chefs can come out and talk to their customers to make them feel like they're actually part of it rather than just eating here.”
“You have to come to Buxton's in Derry, New Hampshire.”
