Jules Thin Crust: Is it worth your Paw Points?

Nassau Street and the surrounding commercial district have its fair share of pizza options: Proof, Teresa’s, Nomad, Pizza Den — the list goes on. This semester, Jules Thin Crust, located on Witherspoon Street, was added to the University’s list of approved off-campus locations where Dining Points are accepted. This means that students now have the ability to use their $150 in Dining Points at the small, Pennsylvania-based chain specializing in flatbread pizzas and specialty toppings. But at $10+ for a small pizza that is a little over one square foot in size, is it worth it? To determine the answer to this, I decided to have a tasting of their menu last week.

The first thing I noticed was that the restaurant was mostly empty. It was 6:15pm on a Monday, so I was likely a bit early for the dinner rush. Jules has a fast-casual vibe where most probably order takeout, but it’s still comfortable to dine in-person. There is a small but clean seating area, mostly tables for two to four people — nothing that could easily accommodate a large group. Harry Styles and Taylor Swift songs played quietly in the background.

I had ordered my food in advance through the Jules website to avoid a line, but it’s just as convenient to order in-store. All kinds of specialty, borderline-gourmet flatbread pizzas lined a large counter. One side of the counter displayed meat pies, while the other had just as many veggie pies — a promising sight for a vegetarian like me. After patrons select which kind of pizza(s) they want, the slices are heated for a few minutes before being served.

I ordered two types of pizzas: a small Mediterranean with toppings of feta cheese, kalamata olives, sliced red onions, chopped organic tomatoes, crisp romaine, organic tomato sauce, and olive oil drizzle; and a small margherita with gluten-free crust. I also ordered a 32 oz. field salad which consisted of an organic spring mix, organic goat cheese, candied pecans, dried cranberries, and apples, along with a chocolate chip cookie.

With a higher price tag than other pizza parlors in the Princeton locality, I was pleased to see larger portions than expected. The salad was certainly enough to feed two people, and although Jules’s website lists small pizzas as two slices, they cut it into four squares, each about four square inches.

The Mediterranean pizza was especially toppings-heavy — it looked more like a salad on a piece of flatbread than an actual pizza. Given the overwhelming portion of toppings, I was hesitant to try it, but the flavors all worked very well together. The fresh romaine contrasted the salty tanginess of the kalamata olives, and the flatbread lended itself nicely by not becoming too flimsy or too chewy. I did, however, have some difficulty actually eating the slice, since all the stacked-up toppings kept falling off. That issue also stemmed from the fact that it had a very minimal amount of sauce and cheese, which contributed to feeling like I wasn’t exactly eating a slice of pizza in the first place.

The margherita pizza intrigued me even more than the Mediterranean pizza since I ordered it with their gluten-free crust. According to Jules’s website, any small or medium pizza can use the gluten-free crust for just a small up-charge, a mere $0.75 extra for small and $1.50 extra for medium. But would it replicate the taste and texture of their organic white crust? Surprisingly, yes — the alternative flatbread tasted exactly the same as the regular flatbread, and had the same chew.

The toppings were not exactly to my liking, though. Margherita is usually my favorite kind of pizza, but this one did not fit my usual preference. It seemed more like a regular flatbread cheese pizza, with just as much cheese as sauce. Instead of small round slices of mozzarella scattered across like traditional margherita pizzas, this one just had the cheese covering the entire surface area of the slices. The tomato sauce was pleasantly sweet, but I felt as though it was overpowered by the cheese. I enjoyed the tomato chunks near the center of the pie and wished there were more of them across the pizza as a whole.

The standout of my order, shockingly, was the salad. The ratio of mix-ins to spring mix was perfect; usually, restaurants either use too little or too much of the mix-ins. The flavors complemented each other extremely well: the nuttiness of the pecans, the sweetness of the craisins, the acidity of the apples, and best of all, the slightly creamy and salty goat cheese. I didn’t expect the best thing I ordered at a pizza place to be a salad, but I would highly recommend it. I felt as though I got a decent amount of salad for the cost — enough for two people with some left over when eaten as a side — and it contained unique mix-ins that I couldn’t necessarily get at a dining hall or another restaurant.

Finally, I tried the chocolate chip cookie, the only dessert available. Although it wasn’t a perfect cookie — I suspect their pans are too dark, making the bottom and edges of the cookie slightly crusted — it satiated my sweet tooth. I wouldn’t call it a top-notch cookie: the chocolate seemed to be just regular semi-sweet chips, and I thought that it could have used a sprinkling of sea salt to enhance it. Yet the rich, buttery flavor and generous amount of chocolate chips made it feel homemade and fresh-baked. The cookie matches the family-run ambience of Jules as a whole, as if a parent made it for their children’s elementary school bake sale.

It should be noted that in the past, I’ve also tried their Mexican, Brie & Pear, and Bruschetta pizzas, and I actually prefer all three over the two I tried during this most recent visit. The Mexican pizza, which uses a refried bean base and a chipotle mayo drizzle instead of tomato sauce, lends itself well to Jules’s nontraditional pizza style, as does the Brie & Pear pizza, which tastes almost like a dessert pie.

Overall, I enjoyed my time at Jules and would go again if I were in the mood, especially for their salad or to try something unusual. It’s a little expensive, but the price might be justified with the use of Dining Points, especially for gluten-free students. If you have a genuine pizza craving, though, I would recommend skipping Jules and going for something a little more satisfying and classic like Proof Pizza (which is also covered by Dining Points).

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Lulu Pettit is a contributing writer for The Prospect at the ‘Prince’ who enjoys writing about food, movies, and local businesses. She can be reached at lp3153@princeton.edu, or on Instagram @itslulupettit.