A halal brick oven on the corner of Getty and Crooks.

Alaeddin's opened in 1998 with a brick oven, a tomato-sauce recipe handed down from a grandmother in the Levant, and a stubborn belief that a halal pizza could taste better than every non-halal pie in town. The corner of Getty and Crooks was quieter back then — a row of small storefronts, a hardware store, a barber. The halal beef pepperoni had to come up from Brooklyn once a week. The dough was mixed in a 30-quart Hobart that we still keep in the back as a backup.

Two and a half decades later, the brick oven runs from 11 in the morning until the last call, six days a week. The dough still cold-ferments for 24 hours, the sauce still gets cooked down with garlic and a hand of oregano in a 20-gallon stockpot, and the halal pepperoni now arrives weekly from a certified supplier in Paterson — five minutes away. The buffalo-chicken pizza and crispy chicken-ranch became the calling card; the 28" party pie became the catering staple.

What we mean by “halal”

Every cut of meat we serve — pepperoni, beef, chicken, deli turkey, salami, ground beef, sausage, gyro — comes from a supplier with current halal certification. We don't do “halal options” on a non-halal line. The kitchen is halal-only. Our fryer is halal-only. Our slicer is halal-only. Our utensils, our bins, our prep tables — same. A Muslim family runs the shop and the standard isn't negotiable.

The dough, the sauce, the cheese

The dough is high-gluten flour, water, salt, and a touch of sugar. We mix in the morning, let it bulk-ferment, ball it out, then retard it in a walk-in for 18–24 hours. The slow ferment is why the cornicione (the edge) blisters and the crumb tastes like bread. The sauce is San-Marzano-style crushed tomatoes, lightly cooked with garlic, salt, and oregano — that's it. The cheese is low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella from a Wisconsin producer; we've tried fifteen brands over the years and this one melts the way we want it to.

Why we stayed in Clifton

Clifton is the right town for this. South Paterson is a five-minute drive — a corridor of halal butchers and Levantine bakeries that taught half the neighborhood what good Middle-Eastern food tastes like. Passaic, Garfield, Lyndhurst, and Nutley pull regulars from every direction. The pizza-and-Italian audience is here; the halal audience is here; the families with kids and the Friday-night soccer teams and the Eastside High School lunch crowd are all here. We never had a reason to move.

Catering and the 28" pizza

About a third of our orders are catering: a tray of baked ziti and a stack of party pies for an office lunch, a long table of salads and chicken parmigiana for a graduation, a wall of 28" rectangular pies for a soccer team after-party. If you've never seen a 28" pizza, it's big enough to feed twelve adults from a single pie. Call us 24 hours ahead for orders over six trays — we'll bake them fresh and time the run to your event.

Free birthday pizza

On your actual birthday, walk in with a valid photo ID and we'll bake you a personal cheese pie on the house. Pickup only, same day, no purchase required. It's one of the original promises from 1998 and we've never stopped.