I had been seeing Eastside Pizza House online for a while, and there was one thing that kept stopping my thumb.
The pizza was black.
Not burnt black. Not “somebody edited the photo too hard” black. The actual crust is jet black, which is the kind of thing that makes you either suspicious or immediately hungry. I was both.
So I finally made it over to Eastside Pizza House inside The Collective Kitchens + Cocktails in Midtown Oklahoma City, at NW 10th and Harvey. I went in mostly because I wanted to see the crust in person.
The crust got me there. The pizza is why I’d go back.
Eastside Pizza House is the pizza concept from Jabee Williams, the Oklahoma City rapper, entrepreneur and community activist who grew up on the east side. The original restaurant opened in 2022 on NE 23rd Street, then closed in 2024 after a hard stretch of slow sales and reduced traffic. Now Eastside has a new life inside The Collective, serving slices and whole pies from a counter in the food hall.
That move makes sense to me. A food hall is exactly where a place like this can catch both the people who came looking for it and the people who had no idea they were about to order black-crust pizza for lunch.
The black crust is not just a stunt
I had heard squid ink might be involved. That would have been dramatic, but the real answer is more interesting. Eastside’s signature black crust has been tied to activated charcoal made from carbonized coconut shells.
Flavor-wise, I expected something stranger. Maybe smoky. Maybe earthy. Maybe one of those novelty-food situations where the photo does all the work and the eating part feels like an obligation.
That is not what happened.
The black crust looks dramatic, but it does not take over the pizza. It eats like a good crust should: sturdy enough to hold the slice, soft where it needs to be, and not fighting the sauce, cheese or pepperoni for attention.
A pepperoni slice is currently listed at $5, a cheese slice at $4.50, and a rotating specialty black-crust slice at $5.50. In 2026 Oklahoma City lunch math, that is hard to argue with.
And I’ll just say it plainly: the pizza was really damn good. Pretty much perfect pizza, at least for the kind of slice I want from a counter in a busy food hall.
Oklahoma City history, baked into the menu
The black crust is the thing people notice first, but Eastside Pizza House has always had more going on than the visual hook.
Jabee built the original restaurant around the east side community that raised him, and the menu has carried that with it. Over the years, Eastside pizzas have been named for people and places tied to Black Oklahoma City history, including Clara Luper, Ralph Ellison, Jimmy Rushing, Deep Deuce and Garden Oaks.
That is the part I like most.
You can walk up because you saw a weird-looking black pizza online, order a slice, and accidentally learn something about Oklahoma City. That is a better trick than just making food that photographs well.
The Collective also helps this version work. It opened in 2019 as Oklahoma City’s first food hall and has multiple kitchens, a 40-foot bar, indoor seating, a dog-friendly patio and a rooftop patio looking toward downtown. If one person wants pizza and somebody else wants tacos, wings or something completely different, nobody has to hold a dinner summit in the parking lot.
Families understand this. Friend groups understand this. Anyone who has tried to get five Oklahomans to agree on one restaurant understands this deep in their bones.
Eastside fits that setup because it is easy to try without committing to a whole pie. Walk up, grab a slice, sit wherever the group landed, and you still get a piece of a bigger Oklahoma City story.
The unusual crust got me through the door.
The pizza itself is why I’d go back.
