4039 N Mississippi Ave
Portland, OR 97217
(503) 281-4060
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| [Photographs by Adam Lindsley] |
(NOTE: This is an update of a previous review; see the original here.)
You may or may not know it, depending on how obsessively
you follow restaurant news, but longtime Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty (and prior to
that, Lovely Hula Hands) chef Jimmy Albee left his heralded post last year,
much to dismay of those who, like me, considered the restaurant one of the
finest pizzerias in the city. The big question on my mind: Would the quality of
the pizza at Lovely’s suffer in his absence?
Early reports from friends and colleagues answered with a
resounding YES. I’ll spare the specific invectives, but suffice it to say that
my hopes for keeping Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty on the list of can’t-miss pizzerias
in Portland were on life support at best, and six feet under at worst.
A few months later, I started hearing a different tune on
the wind. “The pizza’s good. Real good,” a friend assured me. “You’ve gotta go
try it again.” Through Handsome Pizza owner Will Fain, I met a young chef named
Matt Kedzie, who has been manning the oven at Lovely’s for quite a while. Matt
informed me that Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty co-owner Sarah Minnick was heading up the
kitchen now and that the crust had undergone a major transformation: it was now
100% naturally leavened. Specifically, Minnick was using a sourdough starter
(also known as a “levain”) in place of commercial yeast. True sourdough crusts
in Portland are a rarity, so I knew it was time to take the Lovely’s
Fifty-Fifty Mark II plunge.
What a relief, then, that the pizza actually turned out
to be great. While quite different from Albee’s (both the crust and sauce have noticeably changed), Minnick’s pizza is still very much worthy of your time
and money.
Take the crust, the biggest step in evolution from the Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty
of old. By the end of his tenure at the restaurant, Albee’s crust had evolved
into an enormously puffy thing around the rim, filled with gaping caverns and
tenuous strands of gluten stretching from top to bottom like stalactites and
stalagmites meeting in the middle. Minnick’s crust, by contrast, is far less
airy, though by no means flat or dense. Break it open, hold it up to your nose,
and inhale, and you’ll catch the faintly sour scent of the levain; it’s quite
wonderful. Bite into it and the sourdough makes itself known without slamming
your tongue with a vinegar freight train like, say, a loaf from any bakery
along San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. Profoundly different from their
previous crust, but just as good, for separate reasons.
While the crust has increased in complexity, the tomato
sauce has been simplified. The previous iteration was a blend of San Marzanos
and California 6-in-1s, along with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Minnick scaled
back to just the San Marzanos, olive oil, and salt, resulting in a brighter and
lighter sauce overall that pairs better with the new sourdough crust.
Were I a bottomless pit of cash I would have tried every
pie on the new menu, but because I’m still waiting for a financial windfall I
only tried the housemade fennel sausage pizza with braising greens and rosemary
($16). It was excellent. World-class sausage spiked with pepper and fennel
seems to be a particular strength of Portland pizzerias (see Apizza Scholls and
Kindle Kart for just two phenomenal examples), and Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty’s
version maintains this high standard. I’ve had rosemary on plenty of white pies
before, but never to my knowledge on a red sauce pizza, and I
thought it was a splendid foil for the rich, porky hunks of sausage.
The big surprise of this pie came from the braising
greens, a mix of various leafy vegetables such as collard and mustard greens.
Collard greens from most barbecue joints are a good comparison, as certain bites
were dominated by the flavors of that classic Southern dish. Again, not a
flavor I would have expected to find on a sausage pie with red sauce, but one
that made me wish more pizzerias would give it a chance.
Minnick’s creativity with toppings and her desire to
branch out from the norm has sparked some controversy in the decision whether
or not to include a Margherita on the menu. In an interview with Eater PDX last
May, she stated, “We have an ongoing debate about the Margherita, and I’m so
tempted to take it off the menu. It’s one of the most ordered pizzas, but I
feel bad when people order two Margheritas because it’s so sad, I want them to
get a different one, there are so many other delicious pizzas to get.” In the
absence of Albee, the presumed dissenter here, the kitchen has gone ahead and
cut the Margherita from the menu.
While I fully sympathize with Minnick’s frustration
toward diners who order two of the same pizza, I do wish the Margherita hadn’t
been stricken from the menu entirely. The Margherita is the benchmark pizza
many pizza geeks like me measure against other pizzerias’ versions, and I’m
sure I’m not the only one who’ll be disappointed to see that it’s been banished
here. That said, I’ll wager the kitchen will make you one if you ask nicely for
it.
I worried Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty would forever falter with
former pizzaiolo Albee’s departure, but based on this meal, the kitchen is in
very good hands. If you’ve been putting off a return visit here, or even a
first visit, wait no longer. Lovely’s is great once again.
OVEN: Wood
RECOMMENDED: Housemade fennel sausage with braising greens and rosemary
