This Is Pizza

Impressions: Hotlips

2012-01-03T23:02:00.000-08:00

Hotlips

Various Locations

[Photographs by Adam Lindsley]

Frankly, I don't have a lot to say about Hotlips. Their strawberry soda is one of the best nonalcoholic beverages I've ever quaffed, but their pizza is, much like fellow Portland chain Pizzicato, aiming low and hitting the target dead center.

Let's quickly run through the components of the recent half-cheese/half-pepperoni I ordered, one by one:

Crust: Thin, little-to-no rise on the outer rim (thanks to sauce and toppings that go right to the edge of the dough), dusted heavily with semolina on the underside, with not much discernable flavor. Surprisingly, not all that crispy, although I imagine that will change once these slices are reheated.

Sauce: More a tomato paste than sauce, with that dull canned-tomato flavor to it. Not nearly as salty as the Pizzicato sauce, though. Liberally applied.

Cheese: Again, not as salty as whatever Pizzicato is using. The cheese-only slices were almost bland, which surprised me. This aged mozzarella doesn't have much pull to it, either.

Pepperoni: Pretty decent pork/beef flavor, but limp and uncrisped by Hotlips's oven. Again, reheating these slices should rectify that.

Price: Outrageous! An 18-inch cheese pizza here is $21.75. Compare that to the indescribably superior 18-inch Margherita at Apizza Scholls, which comes in at $21, and you'll be left scratching your head at the disparity in quality. The flipside to this coin is that you can get your pizza quickly at Hotlips no matter the hour, which makes it good primarily for children's or office parties, or for a quick (but, notably, not cheap) dinner. It's totally fine New York-style knockoff pizza, but completely unmemorable.

Thankfully, Hotlips does sell individual slices, and I think that's the way to go here. Even their small pizzas are grossly overpriced (they start at $15.50 and just go up and up from there). None of the ingredients are particularly noteworthy, so what is it you're paying for? According to the Hotlips website, it's sustainability and community. Commendable, to be sure, but I only have so much cash budgeted for eating out, and sustainability and community aren't enough to get me to open my wallet for them again.

OVEN: Convection

Impressions: Pizza Depokos (ala Will Fain)

2011-10-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

Pizza Depokos (ala Will Fain)

2730 N Killingsworth St.

Portland, OR 97217

(503) 247-7499

[Photographs by Adam Lindsley]

Oh how things can change in a year and a half. Pizza Depokos, one of the city's bright and shining beacons of quality (and sometimes Greek-themed) wood-fired pizza, recently underwent a change of ownership. Dough guru and all-around nice guy Ethan Welt is out, and Will Fain, formerly of Portobello and a bona fide Pizza Obsessive, is in. And lucky for us, it's still a bright and shining beacon of quality (but not really Greek-themed) wood-fired pizza.

Fain's take on the pizza itself isn't an enormous departure from Welt's, but there are some key differences. The Greek-inspired pies are off the menu, with the za'atar (a Middle Eastern blend of thyme, oregano, and other herbs) relegated to a garlic herb flatbread. The menu now consists of six basic pies: marinara, Margherita, cheese, pepperoni, the Rico Suave (with ricotta, aged mozz, garlic, olive oil, oregano, and cracked pepper), and the Sausage y Fromage (aged mozz, fennel sausage, hot peppers, and roasted onions). He also offers a specialty pie or two, which changes daily.

I was curious to see how close Fain's pizzas hewed to the excellent vegan ones he put out at Portobello, and quite rightly I expected the quality to surpass even those with the addition of real cheese and meat. My expectations were certainly met (and exceeded) in the second regard, but in their current form the pizzas have taken a striking shift in identity that will most likely change and change again over the next year.

The current pies are Neapolitan in style. That's certainly due to the drastic switch from Portobello's gas-fired oven to the wood-devouring monster at Depokos. The Portobello pizzas were more of a Neapolitan-New York hybrid, a larger-sliced and crispier-crusted version of an otherwise classic Naples pie. Fain's still learning his new oven and experimenting with the types of wood used to heat it, so the pies coming out of it right now have that traditionally soft Neapolitan crust. Easily foldable for quick consumption, but lacking the crunch imparted by the gas oven, which ran at a much lower temperature than this wood-burning oven and therefore dried out the dough more as it cooked longer.

Which isn't to say the lack of crunch means this isn't great pizza, because it absolutely is. In fact, it's pretty much perfect Neapolitan pizza. So if that's what you want, get to Pizza Depokos ASAP, because Fain's continued tinkering could mean a new style in a day, a week, a month...who knows? Crunchy or soft, Fain knows how to make a good, simple crust from a good, simple dough. The oven blisters and chars the crust beautifully, making for one of the prettiest undercarriage shots I've seen in a while. Look at that thing. Gorgeous, isn't it?

His sauce is chunkier than most, almost salsa-like in texture, though certainly not in flavor. Nay, it tastes of bright, crisp tomatoes and lots of wonderful garlic. And Fain doesn't skimp on it, judging by the particularly saucy Margherita ($12) I ordered. He doesn't skimp on the basil, either, a concept many more-renowned pizzerias across the country seem to be fighting tooth and nail against. The result was a balanced, sterling example of the Margherita, but with a pronounced garlic element. I loved it. Eat it as fast as you can once it emerges from the oven for maximum pleasure.

Since Fain makes his own sausage, I had to try the Fennel Sausage y Fromage ($14). That sausage came out ground a little finer than most, and even though it was studded with fennel seeds, it tasted more strongly of pepper. Fain wasn't particularly pleased with this particular batch, but I liked that it lacked the gristly texture of many a homemade sausage. The softer nature of the sausage contrasted nicely with the sweet, crisp onions, which yielded an audible snap between the teeth. The fiery red and yellow banana peppers packed a quick wallop of heat in every other bite, which paired splendidly with the richness of the meat and islands of milky mozzarella.

Fain stressed that the pizzas are still a work-in-progress, but even so, they're of high quality and absolutely worth a visit. They cook ridiculously fast in that oven, so you can satiate your pizza cravings however quickly you can get yourself to the Killingsworth & Greeley North Station cart pod. The best part about it this particular pod? Depokos (name change eventually to come) is housed in an old garage heated not only by the wood-burning oven but by overhead heat lamps, so rain, sleet, or snow, you'll never find yourself shivering as you eating your pizza. Shivering with pleasure, maybe, but not from the cold.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Margherita, Fennel Sausage y Fromage (probably the others as well, but I haven't tried them yet)

Impressions: Sunshine Tavern

2011-09-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

Sunshine Tavern

3111 SE Division St.

Portland, OR 97202

(503) 688-1750

[Photo: Portland Mercury]

While much talk has been made in the early reviews about howmuch Sunshine Tavern isn't much of a tavern at all (true), virtually noattention has been paid to the pizzas. And while they're not like to swearanyone off Ken's or Scholls, I have to say that they're quite fine, and betterthan expected for a place that doesn't even specialize in pizza.

[All remaining photos by Adam Lindsley]

Let's start with the crust. It hits the table hot from thegas deck oven with a crisp, bubbly shell that crackles nicely when bitten intoor folded, yielding to a somewhat dense, bready center. Co-owner Jenn Louis experimentedwith the dough until settling on a version using high-gluten flour, salt, water,yeast, and a little olive oil. It's not the absolute most flavorful crust you'llever eat, but it's far from bland, and that alone puts Sunshine Tavern above 75%of everyone else slinging pies in this town.

The tomato sauce on the pepperonipizza ($14) wasn't memorable, and spread pretty thin. Thankfully the creamyfior di latte (that's fresh cow's milk mozzarella to you) has plenty of rich milkyflavor, and the pepperoni from MolinariSalame is cut paper thin, crisping up in the oven and offering a bothcrunch and a little kick of spice. The sliced red onions are a nice littletouch, imparting even more crunch and, occasionally, that unmistakable onionflavor into the cheese and sauce. Altogether it's far from a blow-your-mindpepperoni pizza, but it's a wholly solid one.

I liked the NY whitepie ($14) even more. The ricotta isn't spread on too heavily, as is oftenthe case with many white pies, and the same great fresh mozz makes areappearance. But the best thing about this pizza? The sprinkling of freshthyme. It really cuts through the richness of the cheeses and balances out thefats. Pair it with a pint of UprightBrewing Four and you are set, my friend.

Sunshine Tavern features two other pizzas on their currentmenu: one topped with parmesan, wild oregano, olive oil, and a hen egg, and onetopped with zucchini, oil-cured olives, red onion, tomato, and fontina. Bothsound good, and on my inevitable return to this establishment, I willabsolutely order them. Unless of course they've been replaced by somethingelse, in which case I won't, now will I?

Proprietors David Welch and Jenn Louis have a great littleplace here with Sunshine Tavern. They make a good burger, and the soft servehoney ice cream from Fifty Licksthey're serving right now is out-of-this-world delicious (I would avoid thehousemade chocolate "magic shell," though, which tastes strongly of chemicalsto my palate). Service was spot on and very friendly. And they haveshuffleboard! A welcome addition to the neighborhood (as if you didn't havereason enough to dine out on Division).

OVEN: Gas

RECOMMENDED: NYWhite Pie (and don't forget that ice cream!)

Impressions: Sizzle Pie

2011-08-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

Sizzle Pie

624 E Burnside

Portland, OR 97214

(503) 234-7437

[Photographs by Adam Lindsley]

With so many good pizza options in Portland, it's rare for me to go out of my way for a New York-style slice. Finding a good example of the form outside NYC itself is like rooting for treasure in a piranha tank: you might strike gold, but more often than not, you're just going to get bit. (Wow, my analogies are really getting rusty.) So far I've found one, count it, one great slice joint in the Pacific Northwest (Giannoni's in West Seattle) and a lot of totally fine if unremarkable ones serving completely acceptable pizza. Sizzle Pie is one of the latter.

For hangover food, it's prime. Greasy crust, salty cheese, and processed meats; it gets the job done. The crust itself has good flavor. Early reports found it lacking salt, but based on my recent meal there, they solved that little problem.

Sizzle Pie sells whole pizzas, as well as pizza by the slice. As an added bonus, they also sell half-slices (called cuts), making it a ridiculously inexpensive prospect to sample several types of pizza on any given visit. Tonight I ordered cuts of the D-Beat (cheese), Ace of Spades (pepperoni), and Francesca (jalapeños, pineapple, and smoked mozzarella).

I've thought long and hard about how to describe the D-Beat ($1.50/cut) and Ace of Spades ($1.75/cut), and after hours (okay, seconds) of contemplation the only word that comes to mind is fine. The pizza is just fine. It's good for what it is, which is cheap thin-crust pizza with minimal sauce and cheese. Surprisingly, the flavor of the pizza could almost be described as slightly muted, which is why I highly recommend dousing your slices in Aardvark sauce.

I do wish the slices hadn't been so limp, though if I had ordered whole slices instead of my half-slices, I could have folded them (will have to remember that next time). And I wish the cheese element would have been stronger. But the crust itself is pretty tasty, which is a huge hurdle Sizzle Pie has overcome. It gets some nice char in their deck oven, though char really isn't what you're tasting. It's just a well-salted, crunchy-rimmed wedge of salt and flour. And it's good like that.

The Francesca ($1.75/cut) was a little more interesting. The jalapeños come with plenty of seeds intact, so they go off like firecrackers in your mouth. For those who laugh at the thought of food being too spicy, by all means give this one a shot. Me, I had to ditch some of my peppers to keep my entire jaw from going numb. The downside to the steel-toed kick of the jalapeños is that they completely overpowers any subtlety in the smoked mozzarella; you could have told me it was Daiya and I would have believed you.

Speaking of Daiya, Sizzle Pie does offer vegan options for those of that persuasion. On this matter I will speak no more.

Is Sizzle Pie the Great Portland Hope for New York-style slices? No, unfortunately it's not. But if you're in the neighborhood it's a no-brainer, and they're open until 4 a.m. on the weekends (!) for the hardcore night owls. If I lived within short walking distance I'd hit it up all the time for the bargain aspect alone. As it stands, I'm much closer to Straight from New York Pizza, which is actually a bit better.

OVEN: Gas

RECOMMENDED: Ace of Spades and a squeeze bottle of Aardvark sauce

Impressions: Pritty Boys Family Pizzeria

2011-06-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

Pritty Boys Family Pizzeria
1430 34th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 257-1319

[Photographs by Adam Lindsley]

If you don't mind eating with a bunch of rug rats turning plastic toys into percussion instruments in the dining room playpen, Pritty Boys Family Pizzeria is a good spot for anyone in the neighborhood to grab some well-executed pies thanks to pizzaiolo Byron Hummel, formerly of Phoenecia.

You can read my impressions of their meatiest option, The Craver, over on Slice.

What you won't find there is a quick word about the other pizza I tried there, the Aloha.

This is Pritty Boys' version of the Hawaiian, with the addition of sun-dried tomato. Unfortunately, neither I nor my dining companions could find any trace of sun-dried tomato on the pizza. It's possible it was ground into the sauce, but it tasted so similar to the red sauce on The Craver that I doubt that's the case (and if it is, there's no point in having it in there in the first place). Probably just an oversight. A pity, because some extra flavor would have been nice here. The Aloha was just flat-out bland, especially in comparison to the salty goodness of The Craver.

Conclusion: Stick with The Craver. With its crispy pepperoni and crunchy (yes, crunchy) sausage, it'll leave you with a smile on your face. Especially if it's in a box on your way out the door.

Impressions: Filiberto's

2011-06-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

Filiberto's Cucina Italiana
653 SW 152nd St
Burien, WA 98166
(206) 248-1944

[Photograph by Adam Lindsley]

There are long-venerated establishments that manage to live up to their colossal reputations, and there are those that do not. Filiberto's in Burien falls somewhere in the middle, with adequate pizza that could really use a hotter oven and about half the cheese.

To find out how to make the pizza here ten times better by ordering one specific side dish, read the full review on Slice.

Impressions: Tico's Pizza

2011-05-06T02:06:00.000-07:00

Tico's Pizza

Colonia Vicente Guerrero

[Photographs by Adam Lindsley]

In the dust-choked town of Colonia Vicente Guerrero, about 180 miles south of the border, there aren't a whole lot of options available when it comes to varied cuisine. Typically, the entire peninsula, let alone this poverty-stricken village, wouldn't even register as a blip on my radar of food destinations (Michoacán is really the place I want to eat my way across). But when you have a girlfriend you love and adore working and living there, well...you look at things in a different light.

I've gotten to try a lot of the food in the area (feel free to check out the Portlandfood.org forums for a complete rundown of my culinary exploits there). And since there happens to be pizza served in Vicente Guerrero, and this is first and foremost a pizza blog, my curiosity had to be satisfied. For you, dear readers. I do it all for you.

No, I didn't really expect to find good pizza in Baja, but the locals liked this place enough to recommend I try it. And you know what? Despite being pretty mediocre, it's better than a lot of pizza I've eaten in the States. Not most, but a lot. Certainly better than the last pizza I had in San Diego and the crap slices I had at Safeco Field.

That said, there's nothing particularly special about it. It's dough from a mix (Bay State), it rises uniformly across the pie, making it very close to thick-crust pizza, and the toppings aren't high quality. But I liked it well enough.

The Mexicana was surprisingly agreeable. It's topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, bacon, chorizo, pinto beans, and jalapeños. Couldn't really taste the sauce; it was applied in too thin a layer. But the bacon and chorizo was salty enough to make up for the fairly bland dough. I wasn't sure I'd like beans on pizza, but they weren't distracting at all, and they actually worked well with the other toppings.

Didn't care for the Mixta. It's topped with pepperoni, ham, olives, onions, jalapeños, mushrooms, green peppers, and canned pineapple. Too many toppings, and they fell off too easily when you picked up a slice. Not horrible, though. Just a veggie explosion.

When you live in a town this poor, you take your dinner options where you can get them, and as a pizzeria, Tico's is far from the worst you'll find. I'd still take it over Domino's any day of the week. While it won't impress you, it acquits itself nicely as a passable example of the highly Americanized version of this staple. And it may make you a pinto-beans-as-toppings believer, as it did me.

First Impressions: Apizza @ Safeco Field

2011-04-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

Apizza @ Safeco Field

1250 1st Ave S

Seattle, WA 98134

[Photograph by Adam Lindsley]

Modern Apizza is well known to pizza fanatics. The New Haven institution goes head-to-head with the two "big guns" in town: Pepe's and Sally's, and often comes out ahead. Its owner, Bill Pustari, recently opened a pizza concession stand in Seattle's Safeco Field, dropped the "Modern" and just called it Apizza. Last week I slipped in to try it.

The verdict? Pretty terrible. Still, it's early (they just opened a few weeks ago), so I've got my fingers crossed that Pustari will turn it around (please, please turn it around).

You can read my full write-up over on Slice.

Impressions: Mioposto Caffe e Pizzeria

2011-04-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

Mioposto Caffe e Pizzeria
3601 S McClellan St
Seattle, WA 98144
(206) 760-3400

[Photograph by Adam Lindsley]

Breakfast pizza. Sounds crazy, right? Well it happens to be the best thing on the menu at Mioposto Caffe e Pizzeria in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle. Thanks to the pureed Calabrian chiles serving as the sauce, this thing is a kick in the mouth. What makes it breakfast pizza? Pancetta and eggs, of course! Oh, and the crust tastes like Wonder Bread toast.

Want to learn more about the rest of the pizzas they serve? Check out the full review on Slice.

Impressions: Operacaffe

2011-04-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Operacaffe
835 4th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 234-6538

[Photographs by Adam Lindsley]

I recently took a trip to Mexico to see my girlfriend, Meghan, and on the way back to the airport in San Diego we stopped into a quaint little downtown Italian eatery called Operacaffe. As there was pizza on the menu, I naturally had to try some.

I'm not sure exactly where this Margherita ($10.95) is supposed to hail from, but Italy isn't it. It's cooked in a gas oven so that the rim of the crust gets some nice char, but the top and undercarriage are left merely golden brown. No matter if the crust tastes good, right? Well, unfortunately it was flavorless. It had a decently open crumb, so just a bit of salt in the dough would cure this problem in a jiffy.

Moving inward, the tomato sauce is a tad sweet, but more than that, barely detectable under the landfill of aged mozzarella. There was so much cheese weighing everything down that it was nigh impossible to extract a slice without three dozen strands of gooey, greasy mozzarella tethering it to the rest of the pizza. As it was aged mozzarella, and sodium-rich, it nearly made up for the blandness of the crust being squashed beneath it.

This is gut-bomb pizza, plain and simple, a bizarre, over-topped hybrid of Neapolitan and New York-style. It's not awful (I mean, how wrong can you go with lots of cheese?), but it's not strictly good, either. I won't write this place off completely, though, because my girlfriend's ziti was pretty tasty. Just don't order the pizza unless you want a little crust with your melted cheese.

Or bring along an extremely attractive woman to distract you from the food, as I did.

Impressions: Pulcinella

2011-03-07T17:46:00.000-08:00

Pulcinella Pizzeria
10003 Rainier Ave S
Seattle, WA 98178
(206) 772-6861

[Photograph: Adam Lindsley]

VPN-certified pizza is almost always guaranteed to be good, though probably not great. Nowhere is this more true than at Pulcinella, which serves a fine pie, albeit a rather unexciting one. But hey, see that "For Sale" sign in the second-story window? If you ever wanted to live above a wood-fired pizzeria, now's your chance! Full review up on Slice now.

Impressions: The Independent Pizzeria

2011-02-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

The Independent Pizzeria
4235 E Madison St
Seattle, WA 98112
(206) 860-6110

[Photograph: Adam Lindsley]

New review for Independent Pizzeria is up on Slice. Don't worry, it's not nearly as pretentious or ostentatious as the surrounding neighborhood, and the pizza is worth putting up with the rich schmucks strolling outside.

Opening: Nicli Antica Pizzeria

2011-02-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

[Photo courtesy Scout Magazine]

When I visited Vancouver, B.C. last year, I went to the food boards and asked locals where to find the best pizza. Most of the posts directed me to Marcello, which was a crushing disappointment. But then I heard about a place that was going to open soon that was going to be Vancouver's first authentic Neapolitan pizzeria. That place was Nicli Antica Pizzeria in Gastown.

Well, I just received an email from owner Bill McCraig that Nicli opened today, Tuesday, February 7, 2011. They'll be open from 5pm to close, no reservations (even though there's a reservation form on their website, oddly enough). An early review from Scout Magazine is very positive, so now I can't wait to get back up there to try it!

Nicli Antica Pizzeria
62 East Cordova
Vancouver, B.C.

ADDED 2/15/2011 - TIP Reader "Lindsay" sent these photos along. She noted that they still have a few kinks to iron out.

Delancey Slice Review

2011-02-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

Delancey

1415 NW 70th St

Seattle, WA 98117

(206) 838-1960

[Photo by Adam Lindsley]

The "official" review for Delancey is up on Slice. Go read it now while it's hot off the presses!

Impressions: Phoenecia

2011-01-26T15:50:00.000-08:00

Phoenecia
2716 Alki Avenue SW
Seattle, WA 98116
(206) 935-6550

[Photograph: Adam Lindsley]

Not far from Pegasus is Phoenecia, which serves considerably better pizza. You'd better like end crusts, though, because Phoenecia serves the fattest crust I've ever seen on a pizza. Read the full review on Slice.

Impressions: Pegasus Pizza & Pasta

2011-01-26T15:36:00.000-08:00

Pegasus Pizza & Pasta
2770 Alki Avenue SW
Seattle, WA 98116
(206) 932-4849

[Photograph: Adam Lindsley]

Tried the very heavy, very meaty, very cheesy Hercules pizza at Pegasus recently. Check out my impressions on Slice. Fair warning: this stuff is best eaten under the influence of a substance that changes the way the mind or body works.

Impressions: Casanova Pizzeria

2010-12-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

Casanova
1204 South Vista Ave.
Boise, ID 83705
(208) 331-3535

Somehow I found myself in Boise last week amidst temperatures cold enough to make me seriously consider purchasing a Hummer on the remotest chance it might contribute to global warming. My former Idahoan friends Kevin and Sarah Wilson recommended Casanova Pizzeria to me, and their recommendation was spot-on. You can read more about my visit over on Slice, but below you'll see a few more shots of the pizza than you'll see there. I apologize for the level of noise and general lack of quality in these photos, as Casanova has some of the dimmest lighting in any restaurant I've visited!

From top to bottom, these are shots of the Margherita, the Don Ho (essentially a Hawaiian with black olives), the Comet (pepperoni with garlic and tomatoes, easily the best pie of the lot, and that's a slice of it above), and the Mondo (their version of the Supreme).

All photographs by Adam Lindsley.

Impressions: Acropolis

2010-12-15T17:27:00.000-08:00

Acropolis
500 Central Way
Kirkland, WA 98003
(425) 827-2727

(Photograph: Adam Lindsley)

Wrote a brief impression on the sausage and green peppers pizza over at Acropolis in Kirkland. Check it out on Slice!

Impressions: Giannoni's

2010-11-26T12:49:00.000-08:00

Giannoni's
2600 SW Barton St. #C3
Seattle, WA 98126
(206) 935-1800

My review of Giannoni's in West Seattle is up! Head on over to Slice to check it out.

[Photo: Adam Lindsley]

The Return to Serious Pie

2010-11-11T19:59:00.000-08:00

Finally made it back to Serious Pie to give it a second chance after the first underwhelming visit. My brother joined me despite the pouring rain, and together we tackled six of the eight mini-pizzas available on the Happy Hour menu. My overall reaction? More positive than the first visit, absolutely. I still don't hesitate to say this is not great pizza, though. Not yet.

Some thoughts:

1.) The crust still bugs me. It tasted a lot better this time around than it did before, but the underside is still caked with a thick layer of flour and cornmeal, so that when it enters your mouth, it flakes off and forms a kind of mush on your tongue. So bizarre, and not pleasant.

2.) The Margherita this time was a hundred times better than the one I ate on my first visit. There was an ample amount of shredded parmesan on top to provide the saltiness that was missing from the first Margherita, and the sauce was heavily herbed, whereas the first Margherita's was a flavorless red paste.

3.) I enjoyed the sausage and peppers pie on my first visit, and once again, it was the pizza of the night. Great fennel-spiked sausage and peppers that deliver just a hint of heat.

4.) Pumpkin and squash are not idea pizza toppings. Both aren't particularly strong in the flavor department, and the mushy texture just felt wrong in my mouth. We tried two pizzas with these gourds, the pumpkin with pork belly and the delicate squash with roasted garlic. Both needed the addition of the second topping.

5.) The truffle cheese and roasted mushroom pizza was surprisingly sweet, and light on flavor. The sweetness came from the cheese, overpowering the mushrooms. Nothing memorable.

6.) The most interesting pizza of the evening was the guanciale, soft egg, and Beacon Hill arugula pie. The egg was cooked through, which I appreciated, as I don't particularly enjoy runny whites. Tasted great, too. Nice fresh arugula, slightly peppery. The pizzaiolo was pretty stingy with the guanciale, though. It really needed that pork flavor to tie the other two toppings together.

In conclusion, it appears that Serious Pie is like many other pizzerias, in that consistency varies greatly from one day to the next. My first visit here was a massive disappointment. My second visit...not totally redeeming, but a vast improvement. If they could cut down on the pantry-full of flour and cornmeal inundating the bottom of the crust, they'd be taking another huge step in the right direction.

I apologize in advance for the quality of the photographs below; they weren't taken with my usual camera, and we were seated in the very back corner of the restaurant, which was darker than a black steer's tookus on a moonless prairie night.

Truffle Cheese & Roasted Mushrooms; Margherita

Delicata Squash & Roasted Garlic; Pumpkin, Pistachios, & Pork Belly

Sausage & Roasted Peppers; Soft Egg, Arugula, & Guanciale

Ristorante Picolinos - The Photos

2010-11-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

Ristorante Picolinos

6415 32nd Ave NW
Seattle, WA 98107
(206) 781-8000

Hot off the presses: I am now the Seattle correspondent for Slice, the #1 pizza blog in the world and a site I often refer to here on This Is Pizza. I'll still contribute here from time to time (and I'll let you know via Twitter when I do), but the majority of my reviews will appear on Slice for the foreseeable future.

My first "professional" review? Ristorante Picolinos in the Ballard neighborhood. You can read the entire review over on Slice, but since they weren't able to use all of the photos I took, I'll display them for you right here.

All photographs by Adam Lindsley

Impressions: Mia's Pizzas

2010-10-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

Mia's Pizzas

4926 Cordell Avenue

Bethesda, MD 20814

(301) 718-6427

(Photographs: Adam Lindsley)

After a nasty 24-hour battle with a debilitating virus sheared the schedule of my final days on the East Coast and pushed my available time to a minimum, my friend Christa and I made a mad dash toward Washington D.C. to check out as many sights as possible--and eat some pizza, naturally. I had hoped to cajole fellow pizza blogger, er, Pizzablogger, into joining us on the excursion, but time further slipped through my fingers at the conspiratorial hands of both Google Maps and the Maryland Department of Transportation.

This wasn't the first time Google Maps had failed me (see my recent trip to San Francisco), but trying to find my way to Mia's Pizzas in Bethesda with incomplete directions and the added frustration of MDOT's deplorable freeway signage meant the battle was over before it even began. At one point Christa and I encountered a split in the road and two signs indicating the highway continued down both offshoots, though we soon discovered this was completely false. We got off at the next exit--in Virginia--was forced to pay an exit toll, then got on the nearest onramp, paid another toll, and eventually navigated the convoluted route to Mia's.

Fuming, famished, we found the restaurant nearly empty at three in the afternoon and felt our spirits lighten a little at the welcome sight of the goldenrod-tiled wood-fired oven in the kitchen at the back. I dug into their Margherita ($12.95) hoping it would help me forget the mediocre pizza at Coal Fire I'd eaten a couple days prior, and while it didn't blow me away like I hoped it would, it still proved an overall step up. The sauce is a simple blend of crushed tomatoes spiced up with what I would guess to be ground red pepper, but it didn't have that punch of freshness that sauces from places like Delfina or Pizzeria Bianco deliver. In fact, it tasted quite similar to the ho-hum tomato sauce I make at home, a fact I mostly attribute to not finding good quality tomatoes. The mozzarella, fresh, didn't make much of an impression on me; it could have been better salted.

What managed to stand out, though, was the crust. On one hand, it's thick (about 1cm) and dense, quite doughy, without much airiness or spring to the crumb. On the other hand, it's very flavorful, yeasty, perfectly salted, and decently charred on the undercarriage. While I found the rest of the pizza just slightly above average, I came back to that crust again and again. Probably too bready for some, but I thought it made a great snack, even hours later. Think of a chewy, moist bagel smashed flat and you won't be far off. They even offer a Pizza Bone Dipping Sauce to dunk your end crusts into for a mere 95 cents, though I thought they were plenty flavorful on their own.

Also gracing our table was the Alsace ($12.95), which eschews the disappointing red sauce and mozzarella in favor of gruyere, parmesan, pancetta, caramelized onions, and thyme. It sounds rich--and it is--but those four ingredients are smartly chosen. The saltiness and fat of the smoky pancetta plays off the sugars in the soft caramelized onions like a symphony, offering a mature sweet/savory contrast. The gruyere, perhaps my favorite cheese, was not skimped on; its thickness rivaled that of the crust. Nutty and full-bodied, it provided an irresistible base for the other toppings to sink into. I'd like see it used more on pizzas. Our server offered to grate more parmesan over the finished pie, and we accepted. The additional sharpness was a welcome supplement to the already bold flavors on the Alsace, and I wish we had done the same for the Margherita.

Mia's is definitely onto something here in Bethesda. Certain aspects of the pies could be improved--the tomato sauce and mozzarella, namely--but the crust is delicious, and if they come up with a way to make the dough a little lighter and airier, they'll have something few will find fault with.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Alsace pizza

Impressions: Coal Fire

2010-10-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Coal Fire

5725 Richards Valley Road

Ellicott City, MD 21043

(410) 480-2625

(Photographs: Adam Lindsley)

I first heard about Coal Fire from its inclusion on the 2010 Pizza Madness bracket, composed by the editors of Slice. The place didn't get very far in the matchups, but it was near where I was staying in Westminster, Maryland at the end of my most recent cross-country road trip, so that was enough incentive for me to try it.

Coal Fire's oven does indeed utilize coal to impart heat onto its pizzas and other baked items, but the coal's heat is augmented by gas-fueled flames on the opposite side of the oven. So I guess it's possible that the pies closest to the gas flames won't have nearly as much coal-fired flavor and char as those farthest from it. The oven's third component (and this information was garnered from Pizzablogger's in-depth review) involves an infrared heating element in the oven floor, which keeps the floor at a minimum of 619°F.

The pizzas served at Coal Fire are thin, the crust crispy on the outside and chewy inside, and can come with one of three sauces: Classic, Signature, and Spicy. The Classic, in their words, "follows along Italian tradition with a delicious plum tomato taste," and this is what comes on the Margherita ($12.95). Unfortunately, the description of the sauce has nothing to do with what it actually tastes like. A true classic Italian plum tomato sauce consists of crushed plum tomatoes and a little salt, that's it. The Classic sauce at Coal Fire is peppery and extremely tangy, as if some lemon juice or vinegar has been added, and it's thick, the consistency of tomato paste and the deep color of an open wound. I've tasted sauce like this in many small-town American pizza parlors, but not in any place that really takes its pizza seriously.

For whatever reason, the triple heat-source oven mentioned earlier did not do much to char the pizza's cornicione or underside beyond a little blistering, quite the opposite of what Pizzablogger experienced during his 2009 visit (just look at the photos he snapped and you'll see the difference at once). Pizzablogger interviewed Coal Fire's co-owner, Steven Santos, and he claims the dough is allowed a 48-hour cold rise in their walk-in, in order to allow the fermentation to develop and deepen its flavor. That may very well be, but the crust on this Margherita had no more taste to it than a saltine cracker. There's also not much rise to this dough, so the outer rim is only slightly higher than the crust under the toppings, and the crumb is dry and hollow. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing here at Coal Fire, which I'll soon explain.

Thankfully, the house-made mozzarella picks up some of the slack, as it's salty and flavorful. It's placed on the pies in thin, round slices that melt perfectly over the sauce in the oven. The basil chiffonade also brings a bit of freshness to the Margherita that the sauce fails to deliver. As you may have guessed, the unevenness of the Margherita's components results in an uneven pie. It's tasty enough, but not anything you'll be dreaming about two weeks later.

As middling as the Margherita might be, it is far more in balance than the Sausage and Sweet Peppers pizza ($14.95), at least in the form my party ordered it. This time, instead of the Classic sauce, we opted to try the Signature sauce, which is a blend of the Spicy sauce and honey. Interesting in theory, but from the moment I first tasted that sauce, I knew we had made a mistake. It is achingly sweet, completely engulfing the flavors of the cheese, sausage, and peppers resting on top of it. That said, I tried a chunk of the sausage on its own, and while the bits of fennel in it were welcome, they were few and far between, leaving the gristly little pieces of pork underseasoned and timid. Had I known how sweet the Signature sauce would be, I would have ordered the spicy peppers instead of the sweet peppers; they had good flavor, but coupled with that sauce, they were a sugary sock to the gut of even a notorious sweet tooth as myself. This is where the bland crust actually became desirable: it offered a necessary reprieve from the sauce-and-pepper combo, which started to make the inside of my mouth sore after only a few bites. Take my advice and stay far, far away from that Signature sauce; you may as well be eating honey out of the jar.

As it happens, the real star at Coal Fire isn't the pizza, but their Grilled Caesar Salad ($7.95), which was absolutely the best of its kind I've ever had. Their spin on this classic salad--grilling the romaine--is so simple, but it rockets it into the stratosphere of salad greatness, if such an accolade exists. One bite into the still-crunchy lettuce immediately took me back to the summer barbecues of my youth; it tasted as if the romaine had been plucked off Dad's trusty old Weber and deposited right onto my plate. The romaine stalk is blackened from the grill and then tossed with the perfect amount of dressing and grated parmesan. The dressing also managed to skirt two problems I have with most Caesar dressings in that it wasn't too salty and didn't overwhelm my mouth with the taste of garlic. Really, really well done salad, and a must-order if you eat here.

Obviously I'd need to make a couple more visits to confirm this, but based on my one dinner here, I can't recommend the pizza. If you're coming to Coal Fire specifically for that, you're going to be disappointed, at least if your standards are high. But the Caesar salad was so good that I'd be willing to try some of the other items on the menu (the roasted wings sounded particularly enticing). If you're a fan of Coal Fire or you end up visiting, be sure to write in and tell us about your experience there; I'd be curious to know if it differed from mine.

OVEN: Coal/Gas

RECOMMENDED: Grilled Caesar salad

Impressions: Marco's Coal Fired Pizza

2010-10-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

Marco's Coal Fired Pizza

2129 Larimar Street

Denver, CO 80205

(303) 296-7000

(all photos by Adam Lindsley)

I'm on a cross-country road trip right now, and since I was passing through Denver, I knew I wanted to take Paulie Gee's son's suggestion to stop by Marco's Coal Fired Pizza downtown.

Let's get one thing out of the way right now, in case you hadn't heard: the pizza served here is not baked in a coal-fired oven. Marco's has two ovens, one coal-fired and one wood-fired, and the pizza is baked the wood-fired one. The coal-fired oven is used to cook most of the other items on the menu. So the name of the joint is a total misnomer, which probably won't matter to most customers, but to those who actually pay attention to these things, it's baffling.

Semantics aside, the pizza here is very good, and very much in the Neapolitan tradition (it's even VPN certified). Let's take a look at the Margherita ($11). The crust is made with Italian 00 flour, paper thin in the center with a puffy cornicione. The intensely hot wood-burning oven imparts fantastic leopard spotting on the crust's outer rim and excellent charring on the underside.

The tomato sauce, made from crushed canned San Marzanos, is slightly sweet and tastes fresh off the vine. The mozzarella is creamy (at least while it's still piping hot from the oven) and salted well. The basil is sparse, but what's there is plenty flavorful. It's a delicious Margherita that tastes almost exactly like every other VPN-certified pizzeria's Margherita (such as those from Tutta Bella or Ristorante Picolinos in Seattle). Everything's in balance. Do take note that the Margherita served in the $9 lunch special is smaller than the full-size pizzas.

The Margherita lunch special also comes with this simple green salad. The fresh mozzarella that comes on it is fantastic. Saltier and more like cheese curds than any other fresh mozzarella I've tried.

Also in perfect harmony are the many toppings on the Sicilia ($17). This behemoth is stacked with genoa salame, thin-sliced ham, artichokes, mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, and ricotta. So many toppings, and yet somehow they all work perfectly together. I had feared the ham might taste a little too much like Easter dinner, but it's light and sliced thinly enough that you can still taste the artichokes and mushrooms. The ricotta has a slight grain to it, but it's still pretty creamy overall. All of that together sounds very heavy, but it really isn't. It's hard to explain; you'll just have to try it for yourself to see what I mean. It was easy to down four or five slices of this pie in a short time.

I also tried an Italian Sausage and Red Onion pizza ($16), and unfortunately the balance wasn't here. I've ordered this combination of toppings before and had it come out divine, but this version tipped the scales of sweetness. The diced fennel sausage is surprisingly sweet, the red onions are very sweet, and the red sauce, as previously mentioned, is also sweet. Nothing really all that savory going on here. They were also heavy-handed with the mozzarella, so much so that its thickness surpassed the width of the crust beneath it. It wasn't terrible, and it's a damn sight better than a majority of the pizza in this country, but it fell short of the other pies I tried here.

Denver should be proud to have a place like Marco's within its midst. They really ought to change their name to Marco's Wood Fired Pizza to avoid false advertising, but if you can get past that little annoyance, you'll find some great authentic Neapolitan pizza here.

Impressions: Portobello

2010-09-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

Portobello

1125 SE Division St

Portland, OR 97202

(503) 754-5993

(photo: veganinbellingham.com)

UPDATE: Will Fain is no longer the pizzaiolo here at Portobello. Instead, he can now be found slinging pies at Pizza Depokos at the N. Killingsworth & Greeley cart pod.

Let's get this out of the way right now: I like meat. Strike that, I love meat. Beef, lamb, pork, chicken, platypus, whatever. They are all my tasty, tasty friends, and I try to make new acquaintances as often as possible. Conversely, I tend to treat vegan food as an infectious disease that will inflict upon my esophagus a flesh-eating virus so gnarly it will spread throughout my entire nervous system and leave me a twitching mess on the floor. It's unfair, but then, so is life.

(all other photos by Adam Lindsley)

Part of the problem with vegan food (or rather, food that is explicitly denoted "vegan") is that it is so often prepared by people whose philosophical ideals are perhaps stronger than any prowess they might exhibit in the kitchen. They believe in the cause first and foremost, and so many vegans end up eating vegan food simply because it doesn't contain animal products, not because it tastes good. This is exactly the opposite of how I approach food, and it is for this reason that I almost never frequent "vegan" restaurants. Yet it was no accident that, last Thursday, I found myself sitting at the bar in Portobello, Portland's premier vegan trattoria (though I did wear my leather jacket to preserve my sense of self).

Portobello's pizzaiolo, Will Fain, is a pizza obsessive (even Slice thinks so). At a pizza party at his home in April earlier this year, I had the great pleasure of sampling a number of his pies, all of which were vegetarian and some of which were full-on vegan. I enjoyed those pizzas, and figured I would experience something similar from him now that he was manning the oven at Portobello. What I didn't expect was just how much better his pizza has gotten in the past five months.

Let's start with the Portobello take on the Margherita ($9). Now, Portobello's typical version of this pie includes Daiya cheese, a dairy-free cheese alternative, in addition to the tomato sauce and basil. But at Will's suggestion, I substituted the Daiya for a house-made cashew cream. I'm very happy I did. The cashew cream doesn't so much replicate the texture of mozzarella as it does provide a nice contrast to the bright, garlicky tomato sauce. Whereas the crushed tomatoes deliver a tangy acidity, the cashew cream evens things out on the palate, keeping the whole slice in balance. As far as I know, the cashew cream is not on the menu, so you'll have to request it (and you should).

Will's crust has taken several enormous steps forward from his home experiments. Part of that is undoubtedly due to the Baker's Pride gas oven now at his disposal, which bakes his pizzas at a much hotter temperature than anything he could achieve in his home oven. The oven chars the crust perfectly, particularly on the underside, without risk of burning it. Biting into it produces a satisfying crunch that gives way to a springy, chewy interior. Will mixes the dough entirely by hand nightly; no mixer here.

The other pie I tried was the Chili-Fennel ($12), which tops the same garlic-tinged tomato sauce with shaved fennel, hot red and green chili peppers, chili oil, Daiya cheese, and thin slices of field roast "sausage," which is actually comprised of wheat gluten but seasoned like the real stuff. The field roast sausage is far from an exact replica of its true pork namesake, but it does adequately give you the sensation of eating a meaty substance, which is as good as it's going to get for vegan establishments like Portobello. I actually rather liked it, but the field roast Italian fennel sausage I tried back in their kitchen was even better, and closer to the real thing.

What I liked best about the Chili-Fennel pie was the crunch. You get crunch from the crust, crunch from the peppers (spicy, but not too hot), and crunch from the fennel (pleasantly sweet). The one aspect I could do without (and next time will substitute for the cashew cream again) was the Daiya cheese. It isn't the flavor (it really doesn't taste like anything) so much as it is the texture. It's gummy and sticky and clings to your teeth long after you've finished the slice on which it was placed. Be smart and swap it out for the cashew cream.

As a starter my dining companion and I ordered the Pepadew Peppers ($7), which are stuffed with cashew cheese. You actually get more than three of them in an order, but we had devoured a few of them before realizing I hadn't yet photographed them. Again, the peppers have some kick to them, but they're not so spicy that more timid eaters should be afraid to try them. The cashew cheese, which has the texture and flavor of creamy crushed nuts, is nothing like any real cheese I have eaten, but it's still tasty, and compliments the piquant peppers admirably. They went well with a glass of Malbec, which had been recommended to me by Portobello's outgoing and knowledgeable bartender, Lauren.

As I was leaving the restaurant, Will told me he looked forward to reading my reaction to the food on TIP and asked for some constructive criticism. Problem is, Will, I think you've taken vegan pizza about as far as it will go. The food at Portobello bucks the trend of vegan food having to suck; it's actually quite delicious. If you pointed a gun to my head and demanded one suggestion, maybe...a pinch more salt to the crust? But that's pushing it. Honestly--and owners Aaron Adams and Dinae Horne are going to kill me for saying this--I think the only thing that would improve Will's pies would be to put real cheese and real meat on them, instead of their animal-free versions. But then he wouldn't be at Portobello, and that would be a serious blow to the owners, the kitchen, and the customers, vegan or not.

OVEN: Gas

RECOMMENDED: Margherita w/cashew cheese (instead of Daiya)

Impressions: La Pizza Pela

2010-09-08T00:55:00.000-07:00

La Pizza Pela

Hillsboro & Lake Oswego Farmers Markets

(503) 913-6892

(photos by Adam Lindsley)

As pizza madness continues its unprecedented sweep across the country, the number of mobile kitchens offering product as good as what's being served in brick-and-mortar establishments has increased exponentially, most notably so in northern Oregon. Joining the ranks of colleagues such as Pyro Pizza and Wy'east, La Pizza Pela is a welcome addition to Portland's ever-expanding list of micro-pizzerias.

(click on any photo to enlarge)

Owner/pizzaiolo Bill Jensen is based out of Wilsonville, but those of us who don't always feel like making the half-hour drive down I-5 can count ourselves lucky, because he's slinging his pies at two farmers markets in the metropolitan area: Saturdays at the Lake Oswego market and Wednesdays at the Hillsboro/Tanasbourne one. His freestanding wood-burning oven is a Mario Batali-designed model from Chicago Brick Oven, and reaches temperatures in the high 700s.

That heat does a fine job of blistering the blistering the pizza's cornicione, as seen in the photo above of the Margherita ($10 whole pie/$6 half). While it doesn't offer much in the way of char on the bottom of the pizza, it by no means leaves it undercooked. Rather, it has a nice crispness to it, as does the outer rim, which gives way to a soft, springy crumb.

Jensen's dough uses a cold-rise fermentation that gives it more complexity of flavor than one made on the spot, though he adjusts the rise time based on the current weather and temperature (weather forecasts be damned). His crust is the first I've tasted in quite a while that was properly salted. The rest of the pie is also generously salted, which shows real care on the part of the pizzaiolo. The fresh mozzarella in particular is very good, creamy and gooey and far from bland.

If there was a weak aspect to the Margherita, it was the simple tomato sauce, made from California-grown tomatoes. It just wasn't all that bright. My half-pizza could have used more of it, too, though that's really a personal preference. That said, it's not a bad sauce, and I've tasted much worse, and much blander (see my impressions of Marcello, for instance). Flavor is made up in the liberal application of torn basil leaves to the pie after it has been removed from the oven. This was the most prominent basil flavor I think I have ever tasted on a Margherita. Somehow, the oils on the basil leaves managed to spread throughout the entire half of my pizza, so much so that I even tasted it on the bites on which no basil was present. So few pizzaioli put much effort into even basil distribution, but on this particular Margherita, it was perfect. Or maybe it's just magic basil.

The second half-pie I tried was the Spinach & Ricotta pizza ($12 whole/$7 half). On the Margherita's same base of tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella, crunchy spinach (fresh, thank God, not the nasty canned stuff) and large chunks of ricotta are piled on in abundance, along with thin slivers of garlic that bring a pleasurable sweetness to the pizza. The ricotta deserves special mention. It boasts a marvelous milky flavor with a smooth mouthfeel, lacking the grittiness of the ricotta that usually ends up on pizzas.

Bill Jensen & Co. are putting out very fine pies here at their La Pizza Pela stands, so I suggest tasting their wares if you happen to be at one of the aforementioned farmers markets or find yourself in Wilsonville. This is a guy who really, really loves pizza, and his pies are exemplary. Cart pizza done right.

...Though I suppose La Pizza Pela isn't technically a cart. Mobile pizza done right. There we go.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Margherita

Magic basil???

Impressions: Marcello Pizzeria & Ristorante

2010-08-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

Marcello Pizzeria & Ristorante
1404 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, BC V5L 3X9
(604) 215-7760

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)

Of the several mediocre and overpriced meals I ate on a recent visit to Vancouver, BC (thanks for the crappy recommendations, Chowhounders), the Margherita pizza I ate at Marcello Pizzeria & Ristorante was unquestionably the low point.

(all other photos by Adam Lindsley)

Things started out promising, at least in my head. The building is the lone piece of welcoming architecture on a rather ugly block in dingy east Vancouver, and stands out pretty prominently as a respite from the unchecked seediness around it. The area directly in front of the building was also the only space on a Vancouver sidewalk that didn't assault my nose with a mélange of urine, feces, or garbage.

The wood-burning oven at Marcello's is probably the coolest I've ever seen. Don't ask me to identify the cultural significance of it, whether it's tribal or completely the product of someone's imagination. I just don't know, and neither did our server. Whatever it is, that towering head in whose mouth the burning fire cooks the pies is a sight worth seeing. And probably bowing down to. Note the fire extinguisher placed nearby in case the Pizza God spews flames in anger.

My friend and I started with the Margherita Fresca ($16.95). The "Fresca" indicates that the mozzarella on the pizza is fresh, not aged, which is what is served on their "normal" Margherita. I decided that if the Margherita was good, I would order a second pie, but if not, I wouldn't bother.

Several visual clues made my heart sink right off the bat. The crust wasn't charred, the cornicione (outer crust) was unrisen, and there was no basil at all on the pie. In place of the basil they had sprinkled a mix of dried herbs, and I suppose there could very well have been some dried basil in there, though that's not really the point, is it? I don't know how a pizzeria can call something a Margherita and not include its most basic components.

Biting into this "Margherita" was like chomping down on solid air. There is little to no salt in the crisp, crackerlike crust, little to no salt in the insipid tomato sauce, and no salt whatsoever in the fresh mozzarella added in thick, rubbery dollops across the pizza. Yes, sometimes fresh mozz can be a little on the bland side, but this took bland to a whole new level. It was so utterly devoid of flavor that I swear it actually leeched some of the precious life force from my tastebuds. Only by shaking a blizzard of salt and parmesan onto the slices could I extract any flavor from the wedge-shaped objects I with increasing unwillingness inserted into my mouth.

One flavor did manage to rear it head three or four times, though I wish it hadn't. These rare bites would result in the taste of burnt garlic flooding my mouth, though I don't know if the inclusion of garlic in the sauce was an accident or a conscious decision by the chef. Regardless, those particularly astringent bites made me grasp for my water glass to wash them down away from my tongue as quickly as I was capable.

My dining companion ordered the Ai Quattro Formaggi Gnocchi ($13.95, small), and it was fine. Nicely cheesy without being inundated by sauce, and I enjoyed the shell of crisped-up cheese on the outer layer of the pasta. The problem with this dish was the inclusion of chopped parsley. I despise the flavor of fresh parsley on pasta, and since it was chopped, it was very difficult trying to remove the little slivers from the cheese, making some bites overly bitter. But if you like parsley on your gnocchi, hey, you won't have a problem with this dish.

It was hard extracting pizza recommendations for Vancouver, BC, and now I understand why. Marcello's was far and away the one most suggested, indicating to me that most Vancouverites know little about pizza, simply because they have no frame of reference. A pizzaiolo wishing to craft true, flavorful Neapolitan pizza up there would make a killing. But if Marcello is any indication of the current scene, Vancouver, BC is a pizza wasteland.

OVEN: Wood

Impressions: Nostrana

2010-07-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

Nostrana

1401 SE Morrison St

Portland, OR 97214

(503) 234-2427

(photo: rommelarch.com)

For the longest time, I didn't give Nostrana a fair shake. My one and only visit there transpired eight months ago after a long evening of revelry and gluttony at Apizza Scholls with Slice Editor-in-Chief Adam Kuban. Kuban was doing research for the colossal Pizza Madness project he was undertaking for Rachael Ray Magazine, and in the interest of being thorough decided to squeeze in Nostrana after our sublime meal at Brian Spangler's ~~den of iniquity~~ restaurant. My words then were not particularly kind: bland crust and thick mozzarella, but decent sauce.

(photo: nostrana.com)

Convinced by others that Nostrana needed a second look, I finally caved to the pressure and brought along three friends to what would ultimately become an enjoyable dinner, in which we would be served two good pizzas, one very good pizza, and one terrible pizza. But I'll get to that in a moment.

(all other photographs by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)
While waiting for the pies, we were served complimentary bread and focaccia with olive oil, and a salad. The bread is baked in-house by baker Giana Bernardini and has a nice yeasty flavor and open crumb. The focaccia was springy and nicely seasoned with sea salt and herbs. Both just begged for a swim with the accompanying olive oil.

(photo: Christa Engelskirch)
Our salad, the Insalata mista ($9), was a bit of a joke. Served in a small glass mixing bowl, it consisted of lettuces (mainly radicchio), carrots, red onion, jicama, and cherry tomatoes. Well, one-and-a-half cherry tomatoes. Extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar is served on the side, so you have to toss the salad yourself. The whole thing felt slapped together, and at nine dollars is overpriced.

Click any photo to enlarge
The first pizza I tried happened to be the "one terrible pizza" I mentioned earlier: the Margherita ($11). Certain aspects of it were exactly the same as the Margherita I had tried with Adam Kuban the previous year: the crust was still bland and the sauce was still good, the classic crushed plum tomatoes unadorned by unnecessary seasoning. The basil was actually very well distributed and had a strong presence, which I appreciated, as basil is so often an afterthought to pizzaioli. The oven's flames had licked the crust judiciously, leaving plenty of raised blisters on the cornicione and char on the underside. The dough had been stretched paper thin, as is the custom with these very Neapolitan-style pies.

But something was different about the pie from the one I ate on my previous visit, and it was the fresh mozzarella. At some point in the oven the cheese broke down and formed ricotta, which is what often happens when the curd is too wet. This actually happened on three of the four pies served to us that night, to varying degrees, but the Margherita got the worst of it. The texture was all wrong, and actually had a very similar mouthfeel to the early Margheritas being served at Lovely's Fifty Fifty (before they sorted out their curd problem). We just couldn't get past the grainy texture of the disintegrated cheese, and it totally ruined the pizza.

Considerably better was the Diavola ($15), the most expensive pie on the menu (take that, Serious Pie). Here the sausage and Mama Lil's peppers pack a kick that isn't anything close to spicy, but provide just enough oomph to make the flavors tingle on the tongue without burning your mouth. These two components worked so well together (as Mama Lil's peppers always seem to do when paired with some kind of meat) that I didn't mind the fact that the mozzarella resting beneath them was in the early stages of ricotta degeneration.

Also tasty was the Sofia ($11), a sauceless pizza topped with potatoes, shaved pecorino sardo, a very light sprinkling of chopped rosemary, and a generous drizzle of olive oil. The potatoes on the Sofia are sliced potato chip-thin, but stay soft and don't get tough or crispy in Nostrana's wood-burning Mugnaini oven. It feels like a lighter rendition of the potato pizza sold at Mozza in Los Angeles, probably due to the fact that there is no gorgonzola dolce on the Nostrana version. I liked it; it was a pleasant respite from the meat and red sauce of the other three pizzas.

My favorite pie of the evening, by a mile, was the Affumicato ($14). On a base of tomato sauce, the pie is topped with smoked mozzarella, red onion, rosemary, and prosciutto di San Daniele. I loved two things about this pizza: the strong rosemary flavor, and the fact that the prosciutto had been placed on the pie before it entered the oven, rather than afterward, as is the standard way of serving prosciutto on pizza. The prosciutto shriveled into little nuggets in the oven and gave way to a very pleasing crunch when bitten into. I didn't taste the smoked mozzarella at all, but the rosemary and prosciutto were so delicious that I didn't really care.

(photo: Christa Engelskirch)
When the dessert menus were passed around, there was only one choice: Pizzeria Mozza's Butterscotch Budino ($7). I have no idea if Nostrana owner and chef Cathy Whims knows Nancy Silverton or Mario Batali, but my guess is that she either does or has such tremendous respect for their sinfully delicious Italian pudding that she decided to name her version after their restaurant. And indeed, the Nostrana budino is just about as good as Mozza's. Thick, creamy butterscotch pudding is blended with coarse sea salt and topped with a dark caramel so irresistible that I took two or three bites before realizing I hadn't photographed it yet. The salt really is the key to this dessert's greatness. It accentuates the core flavor of the butterscotch and keeps the dish from succumbing to sugar overload. Portion size is pretty small, though, so make sure you order your own if you're dining with a group.

A few aspects of the meal could have been improved. Three of the four pizzas had spent too much time in the oven, pushing the needle well past "charred" to the "full-on burnt" end of the gauge (see the shot of the Affumicato three pics up). Those ominous charcoal blisters looked like the husks of torched biodomes and crumbled to dust at the slightest touch. I didn't get a photograph of it, but a large section of the bottom of the Diavola was completely black, with a layer of carbon that tasted like burnt toast. These pies are also very wet, so even though scissors are provided (which makes slice division a relatively easy task), I recommend you eat Nostrana's pizzas as the Italians would: with a knife and fork. The crust is just too thin to hold up as a slice, but if you insist on eating your pizza this way, prepare for major tip sag.

(photo: Christa Engelskirch)
The meal exceeded my expectations for the most part, and on a different night--perhaps when the restaurant wasn't getting as slammed as it was tonight--the mishaps might have been avoided and the food could have come out of the kitchen even closer to perfect. I'd like to go back and try a few of their non-pizza dishes, which looked mouthwateringly good when carried past our table. In the meantime, though, I'll have to concede that Nostrana makes a solid pie, and with proper mozzarella curd, a very good one.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Affumicato pizza

Impressions: SubRosa

2010-06-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

SubRosa

2601 SE Clinton St

Portland, OR 97202
(503) 233-1955

(all photos by Adam Lindsley except where noted)

Sometimes it's hard to be mean. For whatever reason, I felt no qualms about being ruthlessly blunt about the mediocre pizza at Tom Douglas's Serious Pie in Seattle. Domino's...well, they're just asking for it. But a place like SubRosa, a local favorite which isn't a franchise and isn't run by a celebrity chef, is not my ideal recipient of scathe.

Unfortunately, the food absolutely deserves it.
(Photo: kirkdeford.com)

The restaurant itself is adorable, situated on that quaintest of intersections in the Clinton neighborhood. The space is small, but doesn't feel overly cramped, and the large windows offer a great view to the bite-sized commercial district, a stone's throw from Broder and Savoy. Service is also very attentive and willing to work to please you. One of my dining companions cannot eat gluten, so our waiter provided her the meatball sub minus the bread (or the spaghetti and meatballs minus the spaghetti, if you will). The chef even came out from the kitchen to ask her if she'd care for some mushrooms and spinach with the dish, which I thought was very thoughtful. This isn't a place that just cranks out food to get your money out of your pocket as quickly as possible, and they proved it to us tonight many times over.

But that's where my praises must come to an end. We ordered three pizzas this evening, and all three would leave my party shaking its collective head. We really wanted to like this place. But we couldn't.

First pie was the "Margherita" ($16, quotations mine). Now, in order for a pizza to be called a Margherita, it must consist of no more than the crust, a sauce of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and olive oil (and maybe a sprinkling of oregano, though some Italians will beg to differ). SubRosa's Margherita, on the other hand, consisted of crust, sliced roma tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, and fresh herbs (which was just chopped parsley). The menu says it's "olive oil infused," but I don't really know what that means. There was olive oil on it, though, so maybe they mean it infuses in the oven?

The pizza reminded me somewhat of the pies at the aforementioned Serious Pie: oval-shaped instead of round, cut into strips instead of wedges (except at the corners), with an enormous, puffy cornicione (outer crust). And like the Margherita at Serious Pie, this pizza was very, very bland.

Every component of the pie is culpable for this crime. The crust is bready with a dense crumb, lacking in salt and character. The roma tomatoes, subbing for the sauce that should be on this pie, had a hint of sweetness which became utterly lost when eaten with the mass of bread beneath them. The mozzarella may as well not have been there at all for how undetectable it was. Same goes for the parmesan. The sprinkling of parsley provided a nice green color and zero flavor. Basil this is not.

After the miserable Margherita, I had high hopes for the Chicago ($18). The red sauce that should have been on the previous pizza made an appearance here, along with mushrooms, caramelized onions, and sausage. Sounds good, doesn't it? I thought so, too. Then I tried it. How is it possible for a pizza to have those toppings and be completely flavorless? SubRosa has found a way.

I can say with conviction that this was the blandest tomato sauce I've ever eaten on a pizza. Even crappy, overseasoned "pizza parlor" pizzas have more flavor than what SubRosa served us. This was echoed in the marinara sauce that accompanied my friend's meatballs: a thick liquid, nothing more. I don't know enough about mushrooms to say whether these were canned or not, but they tasted like air. The sausage was sliced and looked like it had some nice seasonings within the casing, but after tasting it you could have told me it was tofu and I would have absolutely believed you. The onions were pleasantly sweet and caramelized perfectly to the point that they melted on the tongue. They were the one saving grace of this pizza, but they weren't enough to counter everything else working against them.

The final pie of the evening probably had the most flavor of the three, but even that was more muted than I ever would have guessed, given the ingredients involved. The Spinach, Bacon, & Blue Cheese ($18), in addition to those three enticing elements, comes with roasted garlic cloves on an olive oil base. Again, that sounds pretty great, right? Yet once more, I was left perplexed. How can you have bacon, blue cheese, and roasted garlic cloves on a pizza and have it turn out to be anything but delicious, or at the very least a noticeable presence in the mouth? No flavor whatsoever could be wrought from this spinach or bacon. I could taste the very mild blue cheese in certain bites, but it was absent from many others (as one of my dining companions confirmed). The roasted garlic had a wonderful texture--like the caramelized onions, it literally melted in your mouth--but it was like someone had come along with a syringe and drew out all that distinctive flavor like blood from a vein. Try to ward off a vampire with this stuff and you'll end up with two holes in your neck.

None of us could be bothered to finish the pizza, so we ordered dessert: butterscotch pudding and a coffee ice cream cake. The butterscotch pudding was far and away the most flavorful thing I had eaten all night, and was made even better by a sprinkling of salt to counter the intense sweetness of the butterscotch. It was served with some crumbly pecan cookies that were impossible not to dunk in the pudding. The cake reminded me of the rest of the meal: boring and restrained to a fault.

The big problem at SubRosa is a deplorable lack of salt. How deplorable? I actually had to apply a liberal dusting of salt to all of my final slices to bring out any flavor at all. That's how badly in need of seasoning this food is; it's like it's being sabotaged before it even leaves the kitchen. I wanted to pick up the salt shaker and march it back there so I could familiarize the chef with it.

As I said at the beginning of this write-up, I wanted to like SubRosa, and I don't mean to sound overly vicious, but there's no way I would ever return here based on this meal. There are too many good places to get pizza in Portland to spend your money on it here. And spend you will: these are not cheap pizzas, and they're greatly overcharging for them. Every chef can have a bad night. I recognize that. I hope they learn to season their food. A little salt never hurt anybody. No salt hurts everybody.

OVEN: Gas

Impressions: The New Domino's

2010-06-01T22:05:00.001-07:00

"Sweet Moses, what did I eat?"

As my neighbors and I gathered two Sundays ago to watch the infuriating series finale of ABC's Lost (which proved once and for all that not only have the writers been flying by the seat of their pants since Season 1, but that they've been making it up as they went along from episode to episode), we put into action a plan long in the making:

We would finally try the newly revamped Domino's.

You lose.

As previously reported, Domino's recently gave their "pizza" an overhaul from the bottom up, redesigning their crust, devising a new sauce recipe, and using real cheese instead of, well, whatever godforsaken substance was on their pizzas before.

I was never a fan of the old Domino's. To me they were always the absolute bottom of the barrel when it came to chain pizza, far, far below Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Round Table...all of 'em. So the idea of a Domino's pizza that didn't taste like the original was one I could certainly back. That is, until I tried it.

Somehow--I don't know how they did it--but somehow they managed to create a product that is even worse than the garbage they were originally shilling, a pizza so unfathomably awful that it defies the rational mind and enters Caligula-like levels of sadism.

There it is. Waiting to consume your soul.

Let's start with the Pepperoni and Olive pizza, the memory of which makes me queasy to this day. As soon as I opened the box I knew something was off. Something smelled...fishy. Literally fishy, as in fish. After my first bite, I realized what it was: the olives. Now, I don't know what these olives had been sitting in, how they were processed and packaged, or what they tasted like off the tree, but these were, bar none, the worst I had ever eaten. I suppose I shouldn't pluralize it: I had one of these nasty little black rings and immediately spat it back out, then proceeded to pick off the rest from my slice. It tasted like a cross between an anchovy and bile, and that's no exaggeration.

The egregious "olives." Like tiny portals to Hell.

I don't have enough experience with the old Domino's to tell you if the cheese and sauce were much different than their previous iterations, but I will say that they were forgettable. I didn't taste any red pepper flakes in the sauce, and the cheese was rubbery, as expected. The crust, on the other hand...now that was obviously a new concoction.

Just look at the grease on this thing. Bring a sponge.

My memory of the old Domino's crust consists of a single word: cardboard. The new Domino's crust can be described with just two more: salty, garlicky cardboard. The crust is basted with some kind of garlic butter and sprinkled with herbs that leave your fingertips greasy and smelly. It is a sodium explosion.

As a kid (or an adult, hey, no one's judging here), did you ever eat a bag of pretzels, then upend the empty bag so that all the salt poured into your mouth? Remember how much your tongue hurt afterward? Well, that was my mouth's reaction to just a few bites of this crust. Pain. Eating pizza shouldn't be painful. Domino's says otherwise.

So much grease it's spilling into the box.

I won't mention the Hawaiian except to say it too boasted eminently forgettable toppings on a salt-and-garlic-infused disc. We'd be back to 49 states if the actual Hawaiians caught wind of this atrocity.

Anyone up for some Ultimate Frisbee?

Never in my life would I have guessed Domino's could actually make their pizza worse, but they have succeeded admirably. A half hour after eating just two slices left me feeling as though I had swallowed a brick that was now snugly lodged somewhere in my large intestine. I implore you, from the bottom of my heart, never to order this abomination Domino's deigns to call pizza, for I would not wish it upon my worst enemy. If you're jonesing for some fake pizza, buy some Lil' Caesar's, Pizza Hut, Godfather's, even frozen pizza, anything but this. Their pizza boxes should come with giant green Mr. Yuk stickers on them.

You have been warned.

Impressions: Mozza2Go

2010-05-18T00:04:00.000-07:00

Mozza2Go

6610 Melrose Av

Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 297-1130

(Photo: Jo Stougaard/My Last Bite)

I lived in Los Angeles, on and off, for eight years. During those 2,900 days I ate almost zero great pizzas. They just didn't exist there at the time. Sure, I had a lot of perfectly decent pizza, but who wants "decent"? As my time in LA was coming to a close, two culinary masters were hatching something Los Angeles hitherto had been woefully unfamiliar with: a truly great pizzeria, in Hollywood no less.
(Photos: clionline.org/superchefblog.com)

Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton need little introduction to food geeks. He's a world-class Italian chef with numerous restaurants and a force to be reckoned with on the Food Network's Iron Chef. She makes outstanding bread at her La Brea Bakery and has written several books on the subject of baking. Their collaboration, Mozza, is a fantastic pizzeria, the best in LA as far as I'm concerned.
(Photo: Clay Williams/ultraclay.com)

But I'm not discussing Mozza right now. I'm reviewing Mozza2Go, the spin-off that resulted from the mass popularity of that restaurant and its inability to meet the relentless demands of Angelinos craving top-notch pizza. In order to even get into Mozza you need a reservation, and that can usually only be obtained a month in advance (longer for a Friday or Saturday night). The place is so trendy that any thoughts of grabbing a Mozza pie on the whim are like that day in high school when you tripped in the hall and crashed to the floor in front of the really cute girls: best left repressed.
(all remaining photos by Adam Lindsley)

Mozza2Go solves that problem by offering the same pies on the Mozza menu (at the same price) in convenient, to go-only form via their shop around the corner on Melrose. They also offer plenty of high quality Italian ingredients along one wall, though most of these products come at a pretty substantial markup. There are no tables, chairs, or benches in or outside the tiny space, so you're pretty much forced to take the hot pizzas back home to eat (or, if you're like me, back to your rental car).

I tore into the Margherita ($13) first. The 10-inch pie has all the trappings of its full-restaurant counterpart, with its very wide and astoundingly puffy cornicione, bright red tomato sauce, patches of yellowing mozzarella, and tiny on-the-stem basil leaves (though I seem to remember a basil chiffonade last time instead of the whole-leaves-and-stem thing).

While the pie may bear a physical resemblance to its fancier brother, it in no way tastes like it, and every change is for the worse. The sauce is the biggest offender here. It's thick, pasty, and totally devoid of a tomato's natural brightness. The sauce had been spread on the pizza with a heavy hand, and it overpowered everything else despite its blandness.

The mozzarella didn't fare much better. It's flavorless, and unlike the mozz served in Pizzeria Mozza, it isn't soft at all. In fact, I'm not even sure whether it was fresh or aged. It lacked the texture of fresh and the saltiness of aged. It was just sort of...there. And the basil? Couldn't taste it.

I suspect the reason this pizza fell so flat is because the same people aren't making both restaurants' pies. There was just an amateurish air about it, from the sloppiness of the toppings to the undercooked underside of the crust. Thankfully, though, the flavor of that crust is just as superlative as I remembered. This is one of the great pizza crusts, echoing Silverton's award-winning bread in its excellence. It's so good that it you really could eat it on its own, sans toppings, and be completely satisfied. Every inch is dotted with raised fermentation blisters that release an audible snap when bitten into, giving way to a light, cavernous crumb that pushes the cornice as high as I've ever seen one go. It is, essentially, an Italian bread shaped into a saucer, and I could use those end crusts for sandwich bread and be happier with that than the bread at 95% of the bakeries in this country. It's that good.

My second pie was the Pizza alla Benno ($16), Silverton's son Ben's take on the Hawaiian pizza and one of the best you'll ever eat. The same oddly bland tomato sauce and mozzarella was bolstered by discs of pineapple sliced as thin as paper, arranged like sunbursts around the jalapenos, which pop in the mouth with a quick rupture of heat. Once the pie is removed from the oven, speck (a prosciutto-like, juniper-flavored, thinly sliced European ham) is draped over the pizza, allowing it to absorb some heat from the still-steaming toppings beneath it. The whole thing is then given a sprinkling of finely chopped chives.

This pizza really works. The fresh pineapples are very sweet but sliced thinly enough that they don't dominate the pie as canned pineapple so often does in American pizza parlors. The jalapenos deliver spikes of spiciness in small enough doses that your taste buds are stimulated but not set ablaze. And the speck brings a pleasantly light ham flavor to the pizza in substitution for the usual Canadian bacon, although you usually end up pulling off an entire strip with one bite. Thankfully they're not stingy with it.

I saved the best for last: the Meat Lover's ($18) is sensational. And sensationally greasy. But with all the meat on this pizza, it's inevitable. Bacon, salami, fennel sausage, and pancetta join forces to create something only a loveless, black hearted soul could find fault with: a veritable tapestry of meaty goodness. Coupled with that amazing crust, it's one of this world's great pizzas.

The standout is unquestionably the sausage. It's placed on the pizza in large walnut-sized chunks which are so soft and lightly constructed that they fall apart to the touch. They remind me more of fennel-laced meatballs than sausage; I recommend you break them apart with a fork and evenly distribute them across the pie for maximum enjoyment.

Mozza2Go is a great choice for those who don't feel like reserving your table weeks in advance or dealing with the full restaurant's snooty service. It's not perfect, and the pies are just a notch below those in the original Mozza (in the case of the Margherita, several notches below), but not so much that you're taking a drastic hit in quality. If you're in LA on an impromptu visit and love pizza, you absolutely cannot pass it up.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Pizza alla Benno, Meat Lover's

A Few Shots of My Pizzas

2010-04-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

All right, Will, this is for you. Here are a few photos taken of the pizzas I made last night. I was actually really happy with these, and that's the only reason you're getting to see them! The dough was made with a sourdough starter and contains no commercial yeast. Sauce is a blend of San Marzanos and 6-in-1's.

All photos by my neighbor, Austin Haas, unless otherwise noted.

(photo by Adam Lindsley)

Events: Will Fain's Pizza Party

2010-04-26T00:54:00.001-07:00

Host: Will Fain

Website: egadman.blogspot.com

(all photos by Adam Lindsley)

Will Fain is the only other person I've met in Portland who's as big of a pizza fanatic (read: total pizza geek) as I am. He's been providing pizza intel to Adam Kuban of Slice for a few years now, and was even interviewed for the weekly Pizza Obsessive feature on that site. We connected via this blog (you'll know him as Flushy McBucketpants in the comments here on TIP), and when he emailed me to let me know he'd be throwing a pizza party at his house, I jumped at the opportunity. Hey, I'm always willing to try someone else's pizza recipe, if for no other reason than to look for ways to improve my own experiments in the kitchen (i.e. outright steal any tricks they know that I don't). Plus, free pizza is free pizza.

Will's oven setup is probably a bit more complicated than yours at home. On the center rack is a sheet of aluminum foil, topped by a layer of bricks that acts to prevent massive heat loss whenever the oven door is opened. On the shelf above that is another sheet of foil, with the pizza stone placed on top of it. Will says the extra sheet of foil directly under the stone helps to bounce back some of the heat onto the pizza, creating a more evenly cooked pie.

The dough is homemade, naturally, which is a non-sourdough starter variation on Jeff Varasano's famous recipe. Will breaks away from Varasano further by allowing the dough a warm rise before the refrigerator ferment. This gives the dough a bubbly texture that's just itching to rise in the oven.

First up was Will's take on the Margherita. It boasts a sauce that's been cooked briefly to prevent soupiness, but not so much that it loses the brightness of the tomatoes (a process I too am beginning to find preferable to the uncooked variety, at least when it pertains to my homemade pies). The mozzarella melted wonderfully and didn't burn despite several minutes under the heat of broiler eight inches above it. The crust puffed up nicely around the cornicione. As I had predicted, the dough couldn't wait to start rising in the heat of the oven, and even grew some yummy black blisters toward the center of the pie. The crust had a nice saltiness to it, far more flavorful than some of the professionally made pizzas I've had elsewhere. Just a solid, solid Marg all round.

The pies that followed were just as or nearly as good as that, with a wide array of all-vegetarian toppings. One of the most interesting (but also very mildly flavored) toppings was a cashew cream, inspired by the offerings of his friends Aaron and Dinae's vegan restaurant, Portobello. But the standout, for me, was the stinging nettles. Boiled to remove their sting, then baked on the pizza, they made every bite in which they were present better.
Garlic, basil, leek, and cashew cream pie.

Between pizzas, I got to chat a bit with Will about his history and plans for the future. I learned he spent some time in New York, as well as New Zealand, working as a live-in caretaker there. He's also had experience working at a pizzeria, so he's quite familiar with the fast-paced kitchen environment.
As for the future, he's already designing his own wood-burning oven, and the supplies have been ordered (you better believe you're having me back once that's up and running, Will). He mentioned the possibility of opening a pizza cart, and perhaps creating some vegan pizzas for Portobello. Who knows--maybe you'll be plunking down some cash for Will's pizzas one day soon! If the pies he served us today were any indication, they'll be well worth it.
MORE PHOTOS:
Will prepping the leek & asparagus pie...

And here it is out of the oven. Look at that monster
blister on the cornicione!

Stinging nettles and hedgehog mushroom pie.

The Vegan: garlic, pine nuts, pesto, basil.

Will rocking the cutter. I gotta get me one a' those.

News: New Wood-Fired Pizza on Alberta?

2010-04-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

So says the sign hung on the enclosed space next door to the Grilled Cheese Grill at NE 11th and Alberta. See for yourself:

(photo by Adam Lindsley)

I asked the guys at GCG about the new establishment, but they knew nothing of the goings-on taking place behind the red-and-white tarps.

If any of you out there know anything about it, please write in and let us know!

Impressions: Emilia's

2010-04-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

Emilia's

2995 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94705
(510) 704-1794

(all photos by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)

With my all-too-brief stay in San Francisco rapidly coming to a close, I had time to squeeze in one more pizzeria before having to say goodbye. Given the amount of praise I'd heard about the place, the choice was simple: Emilia's, the labor of love of owner and pizzaiolo Keith Freilich.

When we showed up about an hour after Emilia's opened, Freilich (doing everything--taking orders, prepping the pies, and cooking them--himself) told us there was an hour-and-a-half wait for pizza (had I read their website more closely, I would have seen that Keith recommends calling ahead well in advance). Hardly discouraged, we placed our order for a half plain/half sausage pie (yes...finally got my meat on this trip!), then spent the next ninety minutes driving around the UC Berkeley campus (Christa's alma mater) and picking up some beverages at the Whole Foods on Telegraph & Ashby. We returned, snagged one of the three tables inside, then waited patiently for the pizza to arrive. Noting the juxtaposition of Frank Sinatra with a stack of pizza boxes helped pass the time.

Once the huge 18-inch pie hit the table, I quickly snapped some photos, then dug into the plain (i.e. Margherita) half first, picking up a large New York-style slice. The crust was crisp and held up nicely under the toppings, which have an interesting placement scheme: instead of adding a layer of sauce and then a layer of cheese, Freilich spreads both fresh and aged mozzarella around the crust, then adds the sauce in dollops around the cheese, creating distinct boundaries between the two.

That cheese combination is great, very flavorful. The fresh mozz in particular melted perfectly in Freilich's high-heat gas oven until it was almost as flat as paper. The weak link on this pie, though was the sauce. It just wasn't my thing. Christa's either. It's very, very tangy, like a spaghetti sauce, and it totally dominates every bite in which it is present. It's pretty distracting, actually, and I found myself wishing there wasn't so much of it. The basil was good, but placed in such a small quantity that it didn't really have the ability to impart much flavor to the rest of the pizza.

Thankfully, I could almost...almost forget the sauce on the sausage half of the pie, which was much, much tastier than the plain half. The sausage was excellent (though Christa found a couple pieces to be a little gristly), seasoned perfectly, and it made me smile. If only I hadn't ordered the plain half of the pie, I'd have had an even wider smile. As it was, the pieces of delicious sausage that had the unfortunate fate of ending up in the sauce portions of the pie tasted more like meatballs in marinara than a sausage pizza.

The crust really is nothing spectacular. The outer rim is so wide and flavorless that I found myself for the first time on this trip discarding the end crusts. By the end of the evening Christa and I had a big pile of what Adam Kuban calls "pizza bones" on the tray.

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)
I really don't mean to sound too harsh with my first impressions of Emilia's, but I won't sugarcoat my experience there, either. I enjoyed the pizza--really enjoyed the sausage half--but it is a definite step down from the four other places I hit on this culinary journey. It's also a different beast than those four; whereas they all serve Neapolitan-style pies, Emilia's is much closer to the pizzas served in New York City. Even so, the sauce and crust at Emilia's doesn't come close to the best sauce and crust I had in New York (Artichoke Basille's and Di Fara, respectively).

But would I order it again? Absolutely. With lots and lots of sausage.

OVEN: Gas

RECOMMENDED: Plain Pie w/Sausage
~

So to wrap things up, here's how I'd rank the five pizzerias I tried in San Francisco:

1.) Pizzeria Delfina

2.) Pizzeria Picco

3.) Pizzaiolo

4.) Tony's Pizza Napoletana

5.) Emilia's

All offer good-to-great pies for the burgeoning SF pizza scene. Individual criticisms aside (most crusts needed more salt, Tony's charges far too much), I'd eat at any of these places on a return trip. Gladly. Well, I'd only go back to Tony's if someone else was footing the bill.

So a big Thank You to San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Larkspur, and San Carlos (where we stayed with our good friend Erik Meriwether, God Bless him). We'll be seeing you again real soon.

No, we didn't leave by way of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it makes for a more dramatic ending to everything, doesn't it?

Impressions: Tony's Pizza Napoletana

2010-04-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

Tony's Pizza Napoletana

1570 Stockton St
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 835-9888

(all photos by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)

I had fully planned to do a two-part lunch today, starting with Pizzetta 211 in the Richmond district, but those plans were dashed soundly to the floor by Google Maps, which dropped us off not in northwest San Francisco, but the northeast corner of town. As we had had a late start, a trip back across the city eliminated any possibility of trying Pizzetta 211 for lunch, so we scrapped those plans and just hit Tony's Pizza Napoletana in the North Beach district.

What's neat about Tony's is that the place boasts no less than four different ovens, each used for different types of pizza. The Margherita and Marinara pies are cooked in a domed wood-burning oven. "Classic Italian" pizzas are cooked in a gas-fired domed brick oven. "Classic American" pizzas are cooked in a New York flat-top gas-fired brick oven. Sicilian pizzas are cooked in an Italian brick oven.

One look at Tony's menu and I was hit with a severe case of sticker shock. The 12-inch Margherita sets you back a whopping $18, the highest price I've yet seen for a Marg of that size. This pizza won the 2007 World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy, and pizzaiolo Tony Gemignani makes only 73 of these a day. Well, I thought, this better be worth it. The menu makes sure you know this is "authentic" Neapolitan pizza, describing the Margherita thusly: "Dough mixed by hand using San Felice flour, then proofed in Neapolitan Wood Boxes, San Marzano tomatoes DOP, sea salt, mozzarella fior di latte, fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil from Campania."

It's kind of annoying how much they hit you over the head with this stuff as if no one else in the country makes this kind of pizza, but whatever, I figured if the pizza was good enough, they could write an entire novel on the menu and I wouldn't really care.

When the Margherita hit the table steaming hot from the wood-burning oven, it certainly had the visual of a Neapolitan pie down pat. The crust had a nice puffy cornicione and mild charring all around. Fresh from the oven, the chassis was still crisp and didn't flop when I picked up a slice (though that crispness soon faded). White islands of mozzarella floated in the bright red sea of tomato sauce and dark green leaves of fresh basil.

What I love best about Tony's Margherita is that it is properly salted. The sauce, cheese, and crust all have more salt than just about any Neapolitan-style pizza I've eaten, and I was grateful for it. The salt brought out the milky flavor of the cheese, the brightness of the tomatoes, and the rustic bread flavor in the crust. The cheese is a tad on the rubbery side, but as I said, the flavor is good enough that it doesn't really hurt the pizza as a whole.

Unfortunately, it is in no way an $18 pie. I don't know what reasoning Tony has for charging so much for it. Is it the ingredients? The location of the restaurant? Whatever it is, it's just too much to charge for this kind of pie. If it really is because Tony insists on importing all these Italian ingredients, well, the fact is I've had pies that are just as good (and better) made with cheaper domestic products.

The second pie of the afternoon was the Truffle pie (market price today: $28). Normally this white pie is topped with mozzarella, burrata, Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam Triple Cream cheese, wild mushrooms, arugula, parmigiano, and Italian shaved truffles. Today, though, they were out of truffles (more would arrive in 3 weeks, we were told), and so they would be substituting them with truffle oil. We accepted that because Christa and I were both excited to see the Mt. Tam cheese on the pizza, and could not pass up an opportunity to try it.
(Mt. Tam cheese - Photo: cowgirlcreamery.com)

The finished product fell far short of our expectations. Don't misunderstand me: it was good, but it lacked certain elements that made it irresistible during the ordering process. The Mt. Tam cheese, which is so beautifully creamy, became completely lost in the other ingredients, and we could neither taste it nor detect any creamy presence amidst the mozz, parmigiano, or burrata. There's a great cheesiness to the pie, but in the end I'm sad to say the addition of the Mt. Tam only served to jack up the price of the pie. The wild mushrooms weren't rubbery at all, but they also didn't impart much flavor to the pizza. The truffle oil certainly brought a light truffle flavor to every slice, but it was hardly a replacement for the real thing. $28 is asking too much for this pizza, especially since there are no real truffles to be found on it. Considering that almost all truffle oil is synthetic, I really don't know where the majority of our money went.

Is the pizza at Tony's good? Yeah, you bet. It's great, actually. But for the outrageous prices they're charging, I'm finding the idea of recommending it hard to swallow.

Tonight: Emilia's.

OVENS: Wood & Gas

RECOMMENDED: Margherita

Impressions: Pizzeria Picco

2010-04-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Pizzeria Picco

316 Magnolia Ave

Larkspur, CA 94939
(415) 945-8900

(all photos by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)
Our bellies full from the excellent lunch at Pizzeria Delfina, Christa and I hopped in the rental car, swung by Dynamo (for what would turn out to be exotically spiced by very mediocre doughnuts), and made tracks across the Golden Gate Bridge for a lovely drive to the quaint burg of Larkspur. This is a small town bursting at the seams with charm, and many of the buildings have been standing since the late 1800s.

But on to the pizza. Both Adam Kuban of Slice and my new friend Jason (who I had just met at Pizzeria Delfina) had raved about the pizza at Picco, and I admit this kind of worked me into a bit of a frenzy. Adam Kuban called it "Neapolitan-style pizza taken to the next level," and with praise like that, how could you not get excited?

Walking to our table, we passed the wood-burning oven, whose flames were roaring and ready to gets its molten hands on some lovely fermented dough. The model was the ubiquitous Mugnaini, which I have seen in pizzerias anywhere from Nostrana and Firehouse in Portland, Oregon to Pizzaiolo in San Francisco the day prior.

We started with the Margherita ($10.95), of course. It arrived piping hot and well-charred around the cornicione, though not so much on what I like to call the chassis, or underside. The dough had been spread to a nice thinness, but somehow hadn't crisped in the oven, and didn't boast more than the occasional browned bit; obviously, the oven's floor hadn't reached the proper temperature yet. No matter: floppy as it was, it was still cooked through.

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)
Oddly enough, the pie looked didn't much resemble the one Adam Kuban had on his trip here in late 2009, and that was due entirely to the cheese. Take a look at the photo of the Margherita on his Slice posting for Pizzeria Picco, then look at the photo of our Margherita. See the difference?

Adam's pie was clearly made with fresh mozzarella. Ours? Aged. And if it wasn't aged, it must have come from the same mozzarella batch as the original mozz curd they used at Lovely's Fifty-Fifty in Portland before they revamped the recipe, because it had melted into a large yellow pool.

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)
I'm complaining about the look, but the cheese was good. It just tasted like a New York slice, not a Neapolitan pizza whatsoever. Salty and sharp (especially with the grated parmesan), which made up for the slight lack of salt in the cornice. The sauce was a little uneven: very sweet in places, but closer to unseasoned tomatoes in others. The disparity didn't really affect my opinion of the pizza: it was undeniably great. Sure, the crust was very dense, but the pie as a whole was delicious. It just wasn't what I had been expecting, not by a long shot.

For our second pizza, we ordered the J.Klein ($14.50), a sauceless pie topped with California asparagus, roasted garlic, basil, mozzarella, crescenza (a soft cow's milk cheese from northern Italy), and parmesan. This pie was made by the asparagus and roasted garlic. The asparagus, sliced into thin rounds, had been cooked perfectly, not too chewy, not rubbery, but wonderfully crisp. Even better was the roasted garlic, which literally melted on the tongue; there wasn't much of it on the pizza, but every bite that included it was heavenly. It must be said, though, that the bites without the roasted garlic or asparagus were extremely bland. Somehow that trio of cheeses tasted like absolutely nothing, in stark contrast with the cheese on the Margherita. Not sure what happened there.

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)
Dessert was exquisite: Straus Dairy vanilla soft serve with sea salt and DaVero extra virgin olive oil. Less adventurous eaters may find that combination off-putting (and before I had tried the butterscotch budino at Mozza in L.A., I may have been inclined to agree), but trust me when I tell you it was simply delightful. The soft serve had been made expertly, with a very fine ice crystallization that was almost undetectable, bringing considerable creaminess to the dish. The sea salt emphasized the sweetness of the ice cream, and the olive oil, added in small dollops on the vanilla mountain, married perfectly with the other two components to form a dish that wasn't cloyingly sweet, but restrained and sophisticated. If you make it out to Larkspur and swing by Picco for dinner (and you really should), I suggest you order this after your meal. You won't be disappointed.

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)
Pizzeria Picco delivered a great meal, though one very different from the one I had been expecting. If any of you dine there in the near future, do report on the Margherita for me!
Tomorrow: Tony's Pizza Napoletana and Emilia's.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Margherita

Impressions: Pizzeria Delfina

2010-04-13T23:51:00.000-07:00

Pizzeria Delfina

3611 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 437-6800

Day 2 of my San Francisco Pizza Bonanza begins with Pizzeria Delfina in the Mission District.

(all photos by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)
The place was packed when my dining companion Christa and I arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon. In attendance at the bar was actor Tom McGowan; if you don't know the name, then you must surely know his face:

(Photo: theatermania.com)
Anyway, on with the food.

Ordered two pies here. First up, naturally, was the Margherita ($12.50), the litmus test for any high-end pizzeria. And Pizzeria Delfina's was awesome.
Delfina uses a gas oven, but somehow they manage to char their crusts better than any gas oven I've ever seen. The perfect thinness at the center of the pie becomes supremely puffy on the outer rim, with big tasty black blisters popping up everywhere. You'd swear this pie was cooked in a wood oven, but miraculously, it wasn't. Go figure.

(photo by Christa Engelskirch)
I loved the sauce on this pizza. It has a slight sweetness to it, more so than a tomato's natural sweetness, and I enjoyed that. It also feels light, and pairs well with the airy crust. The smooth, soft mozzarella (which, incidentally, the also sell in 4-ounce quantities for eight bucks) was easy to bite into and clearly of a high quality; it had a nice high-fat-content-milk flavor to it.

One of the day's specials was the Purgatorio ($15), which swapped out the Margherita's tomato sauce for one with a light spiciness to it, and added several large shavings of pecorino-romano and two farm eggs cracked over the pie halfway through its time in the oven. The flavor of the runny yellow yolks dominated the flavor palate of this pizza, and made for an interesting combination with the mild spice of the sauce; it almost tasted like huevos rancheros. I enjoyed the pie, but I couldn't eat it every day (as opposed to the Delfina Margherita, which I could eat every day).

Special note must also be made of the service here. As in Pizzaiolo over in Oakland, the staff at Delfina knows how to attend to their patrons, and not once did I feel like we had been forgotten in the sea of other diners. They were also very accommodating with Christa's request for an unsweetened iced tea: since they had none, they brewed her a pot of fresh tea and provided her with a tall glass of ice. Problem solved. (They charged her five bucks for that tea, but that's beside the point).

Apart from the bill (which was pricier than I thought it would be), I really enjoyed my Pizzeria Delfina experience, particularly their Margherita. I also got to meet two fellow pizza fanatics by the names of Jason and Alicia from Santa Cruz. Jason, a New York native, sang praises for the pies at Grimaldi's, as well as those at Lombardi's (when they're having a good day). They too were on a bit of a San Francisco pizza adventure, and had made plans to hit Emilia's in Berkeley that night (which I'll be trying tomorrow). Good luck, guys!

Coming later: Pizzeria Picco.

OVEN: Gas

RECOMMENDED: Margherita

Impressions: Pizzaiolo

2010-04-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

Pizzaiolo

5008 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 652-4888

Four days in San Francisco means one thing in my mind: pizza crawl*.

(all photos by Adam Lindsley)
First stop was Pizzaiolo across the bay in Oakland. The restaurant is tough to spot, tucked between a Mexican restaurant and a craft shop with only a small, hand-carved wooden sign indicating the pizzeria's presence on the block. My friend Christa and I showed up ten minutes before they opened and we weren't even first in line (an increasingly common experience with the new wave of upscale pizzerias).

We selected a table in the far corner of the restaurant's back room, a cozy brick-lined area lined with small tables dimly lit from candles and the rustic, sparse light fixtures dangling from overhead. It's a nice space away from the pizzeria's main crowd, and were it not for the Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits playing back to back over the house speakers--rather loudly I might add--it could be considered for a romantic evening with a significant other.

Christa and I started with a simple Caesar Salad ($8). I almost never order Caesar salads, so I'm hardly one to judge, but I found this one quite palatable. The lettuce was fresh and crunchy, bathed lightly in sharp shaved grana padano and a creamy dressing that was thankfully mild on the garlic. It was served with very, very salty croutons that would have been overpowering on their own, but broken into smaller pieces they suited the rest of the dish admirably.

Our Margherita ($13) arrived shortly thereafter. As you can see by the photos, the crust was cooked and charred to perfection (I'd expect no less from such an establishment by this point), with a pleasantly airy cornicione. The crust was good, though it would have benefited from a touch more salt. Then again, after those croutons, nothing could seem half as salty.

The copious amount of tomato sauce on this pie delivers a swift, spicy kick to your mouth, which you usually don't get in a traditional red sauce, and I guessed some sort of chili powder had been mixed in. A quick check with our server confirmed this: each pie, after the dough is spread but before the other toppings are added, is given a light dousing of olive oil and freshly ground calabrian chilies, which becomes infused in the heat of the wood-burning oven. It gives the sauce a smoky bite that sets it apart from other, simpler blends.

Best of all is the cheese. The mozzarella is very creamy and very soft, almost like butter. I don't know how Pizzaiolo gets the cheese this soft, but I want the secret. It's nutty and flavorful, and every bite fortunate enough to include it is ten times better than one that does not. Frankly, I'd be happy if they covered the whole pie in this cheese rather than just the occasional pool.

We wanted a cool, crisp dessert to follow the surprising spiciness of the Margherita, so we opted for the Tangelo Sorbet & Vanilla Ice Cream ($7). The sorbet was far too icy and tough to break apart with the spoon, but the vanilla ice cream...wow. Incredible. Maybe the richest and most full-flavored vanilla ice cream I've ever had. Vanilla can often be ordinary and forgettable in the wake of other, more inventive flavors, but that simply was not the case here. Simple puff pastry sticks were served with it, but these were improved by the ice cream, not the other way around.

A very satisfying meal all around, fantastic service from the attentive staff, and a very good pizza I can heartily recommend. Just one suggestion: show up early, or make a reservation. Their reservation book was filled that night, and this was a Monday. Just imagine how slammed they get on a Saturday. Better yet, don't. Just call ahead. The food's worth it.

The indulgence continues tomorrow with Pizzeria Delfina and Pizzeria Picco.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Margherita (anything with red sauce, really)

*Okay, maybe "pizza crawl" isn't quite accurate. I'm hitting five (maybe six) pizzerias, but over the course of three days, not one. I guess technically that isn't a "crawl," per se, but it's still manly, right?

Impressions: Gladstone Coffee & Pizza

2010-03-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

Gladstone Coffee & Pizza

3813 SE Gladstone St
Portland, OR 97202
(503) 775-1537

(all photos by Adam Lindsley)

The 2010 edition of the Willamette Week's Cheap Eats guide asserts that Gladstone Coffee & Pizza slings the only good pies south of Powell. After my visit this afternoon, I'm inclined to agree with that statement.
For whatever reason, I wasn't able to convince any of my friends to join me on this pizza excursion (traitors!), so I approached the charming blue-and-salmon storefront at the stroke of noon a lone gunman. Stepping inside, I was struck by the sheer quiet of the place. Music drifted from the overhead speakers at such an inoffensive volume it may as well have been leaking from someone's iPod buds. Not a soul was speaking. I'll be honest, it was a little unsettling.
I strode to the counter to peruse the pleasantly lean menu and met one of the co-owners, Grace Emanuel. Gladstone C&P serves two types of pizza in two varieties: a 10-inch small ($9) and an 18-inch large ($19) cheese, and a small ($10) and large ($19) pesto & pecorino. Toppings are $1.50 - $2.50, depending on the type and size of pie. As I was alone, I opted for the small cheese pizza with half andouille sausage. Now, I have no idea what prompted me to order andouille sausage on my pizza instead of the Italian variety (which is what I really wanted). My mind must have decided to take a momentary leave of absence, prompting the mistaken order. That, or I was temporarily possessed by the spirit of Emeril Lagasse, God bless his still-beating heart.
Though the café wasn't at capacity, there was nowhere to sit inside. Every table had been claimed by a single patron, either sipping coffee or tapping away on a laptop, leaving me no choice but to journey outside to the surprisingly large backyard patio.
Although a cloudburst brought the showers down in full force, it wasn't particularly chilly out, so I settled into a chair beneath the wide canopy (bedecked with chandeliers, no less) to enjoy the fresh air and the pattering of the raindrops on the canvas above.
My pie arrived quickly, piping hot from the gas oven. A ring of bright red tomato sauce peeked out between the edge of the sea of aged mozzarella and the well-risen, perfectly cooked crust. Thick slices of andouille sausage had been strewn generously on its designated half. I dug into the cheese half first, noting the excellent charring on the chassis.
The combination of the sauce (tangy and garlicky), the aged mozz (salty), and the crust (wonderfully crisp) made the first slice very agreeable. In particular, the cornicione (end crust) is worth noting: fantastically crunchy on the outside yet soft on the inside. Its crumb (hole structure) was dense in places and spectacularly airy in others, with the largest of the air pockets forming delicious, charred blisters.
As I had feared, the andouille sausage didn't work. It was delightful on its own--peppery and meaty--but on the pie it was just too overpowering for me. I plucked each hunk off with my fork and ate them separately as if they were an appetizer.
Aside from that, I enjoyed the pizza. If one were forced to categorize it, I suppose New York-style is close enough, though it also has much in common with American "pizza parlor" pies. They're pretty heavy-handed with the sauce and cheese, with both liberally applied to my pizza. The mozzarella in particular was laid on especially thick, so much so that its depth actually exceeded that of the crust beneath it (see the above photo). I suppose that would be my one suggestion to the owners of Gladstone Coffee & Pizza: go easy on the toppings! Co-owner (and pizza fanatic--it's his dough recipe) John Mitchell wasn't present that early afternoon (he'd be working later in the evening, I was informed), so perhaps this isn't a problem with the pizzas he constructs personally. Indeed, some of you may not even find extra sauce and cheese a problem at all!
Gladstone Coffee & Pizza is well worth a visit (don't be fooled by the name: it's not in Gladstone, thank God). It's cheap, tasty, and the portions are substantial (I'd guess one slice of the 18-inch pie is probably the perfect amount of food). Just skip the indoor tables and their introverted occupants: the patio's where it's at.
OVEN: Gas
RECOMMENDED: Cheese Pizza

Impressions: Pizza Depokos

2010-03-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

Pizza Depokos

2730 N Killingsworth St.
Portland, OR 97217
(503) 247-7499

(all photos by Adam Lindsley unless otherwise noted)

If you've been reading Nick Zukin's great food blog over at ExtraMSG.com (and if not, why haven't you?), then you already know that he and I embarked upon a Portland pizza crawl last Wednesday, in which we stuffed our faces with no less than six different pies. I got the chance to revisit a couple great local carts (Pyro and Wy'east) as well as a brand new one: Pizza Depokos up on North Killingsworth.

Perhaps "cart" is a misnomer. In owner Ethan Welt's mind, Pizza Depokos was always meant to be a food cart, but after the county told him he couldn't leave his wood-burning oven on a trailer outside year round, he moved into the old garage in the Refuel North Station food pod. So technically, Depokos isn't a cart. That said, the food comes out just as quickly as it does at most carts, so if you're looking to satisfy your pizza craving on the go, don't let the fact that this place isn't on wheels prevent you from swinging by.

Depokos was the first stop on our crawl, so my belly was empty and my spirits were high. Browsing the menu, I discovered that in addition to the more traditional Neapolitan-style pies, Ethan is also serving up Lebanese pies on his house-made pita dough. Naturally, we had to try one of each. Nick and I ordered a Margherita with fresh mozzarella and a half 3-cheese/za'atar pie. Ethan was working with a new employee that evening, and because of this our Margherita with fresh mozz ended up with fresh chopped tomatoes instead of sauce and aged mozz instead of fresh. I did eventually get to try the "normal" Marg, but I'll get to that later.

As our pies cooked, Nick and I got a chance to chat up Ethan about his dough (a several-day refrigerated ferment) and the oven, which he built himself (he used to be in construction before diving into the pizza biz). Talking with Ethan, you quickly realize what an immense passion he has for pizza. He spent months perfecting his dough, and mixes it entirely by hand (see the above photo for proof). He's familiar with the stories of pizza legends Jeff Varasano and Anthony Mangieri. He carefully monitors the oven's temperature, noting the differentiation between the front and the rear and how they gradually cool as the night progresses. There is no pretension here whatsoever; he is a genuine human being, as easy to talk to as a friend you've known for years.

Before long our two pizzas arrived piping hot from that wondrous wood-burning oven, and after the requisite photo shoot, Nick and I dug in. I started with our altered Margherita ($10). The first thing that hit me about this pizza was the crust: just delicious. It's got a great saltiness to it, and a nice yeasty bread flavor permeating its soft, chewy body. The oven had charred the bottom nicely. While I was disappointed about the mix-up with the new employee, I actually rather enjoyed the pie.

I agree with Nick's assessment that, out of season, freshly chopped tomatoes may not be an optimal choice (especially compared with the sweet punch of cherry tomatoes), but I didn't dislike them either. They cut the salt in the aged mozzarella just enough to maintain a nice balance of flavor throughout. The fantastic crust, with its puffy cornicione and slightly dense hole structure, was a little thick in the center of the pizza. I learned later that this was because the new employee wasn't quite stretching the pies enough, but to be totally honest I didn't mind at all; Ethan's dough recipe is so good that, thick or thin, it's going to taste great no matter what.

The second pie, the 3-Cheese/Za'atar ($8) threw me for a loop. On one hand, the 3-cheese half of the pie was outstanding. The aged mozz, feta, and Lebanese Akkawi blend together as smoothly as the voices of Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras, a perfect equilibrium of the salty and creamy. I loved it. Curiously, the "house-made pita dough" used for this pie was exactly the same as the dough used on our Neapolitan pie. Either I am unable to detect the subtle differences between these two doughs, or the new employee's first-day jitters struck again and caused him to prepare both pies on the same type of dough.

(photo by Nick Zukin)

On the other hand, the za'atar half of the pie confounded my taste buds. Za'atar is a Middle Eastern blend of sesame seeds, salt, thyme, oregano, marjoram, and other dried spices. I have very little experience with Lebanese cuisine, so I can't speak firsthand on what za'atar is supposed to taste like; all I can do is convey to you my reaction to this version. I'll be honest: I didn't love it. The dense layer of herbs and seeds, so dry and crusty, wasn't getting into my palate's panties, so to speak. I'd be very curious to hear from someone who has eaten a few Lebanese za'atar pies; I'd like to know what to look for in terms of flavor profile, and how they feel Ethan's version stacks up.

Both tremendously satisfied with our meal, Nick and I continued with the pizza crawl, but I couldn't help but be disappointed that I didn't get to try one of Ethan's pies with red sauce. So two nights later, I stopped by Pizza Depokos again with my friend to get the scoop, and ordered the plain Margherita with Fresh Mozz ($12).

The pizza that arrived a few minutes later looked so vastly different than the pies we had been served two nights prior that it was immediately obvious someone else was working the kitchen. Sure enough, new pizzaiolo Jeremy (of Nostrana fame) was slinging the pies that night. He prepared the pizzas alongside a friendly young woman named Ferris (forgive me if misspelled your name...just shoot me a message if this is the case and I'll fix it!) who was working the front-of-house, as it were. Jeremy stretched the dough perfectly, leaving the finished pie with a pleasantly thin crust and a less-puffy-but-still-airy cornice that was given a nice crunchy exterior by the lick of the oven's flames.

I loved the flavor of the fresh mozzarella on this pizza, cheesy and creamy, without the blandness you often encounter when dealing with fresh mozz. The basil tasted fresh and vibrant. What threw me off about this pizza was the tomato sauce. This is a tomato sauce lover's wildest dream, and when I say that I do not mean it resembles anything close to a simple blend of San Marzanos, salt, and olive oil, but literally a sauce of tomatoes. It's chunky, heavily seasoned, and so unbelievably tangy (in an almost spaghetti-sauce kind of way) that, in the few areas on the pizza where it was doled out perhaps a little too heavily, it totally dominated every other flavor on the pie. Personally, I'd prefer it spread much thinner, but I know there are many people out there who are going to love it like it thick like this.

The night ended with Jeremy whipping up a pizza on the fly just as the place was closing, which began with a base of garlic, aged mozz, and feta, topped with basil, arugula, and a fresh egg. The egg was cracked over the center of the pie midway through its brief stint in the heat of the fire, then punctured to spread the scrumptious yolk across the whole pizza. Jeremy and Ferris graciously offered me a slice, and to call it good is an understatement. This was sublime, creative pizza. Normally I don't even like egg on pizza, but I loved this pie. I have my fingers crossed that Jeremy decides to stay on with Pizza Depokos, because he is a major talent and a key component to Ethan's already considerably realized vision.

Word about Pizza Depokos is going to spread rapidly. Both evenings I visited there was no wait at all, but I expect that to change once people realize what fantastic pizza they can get here, and how quickly they can get it. It's an asset to the neighborhood and an asset to Portland, and pizza aficionados throughout the city should take advantage of the tremendous food coming out of this tiny kitchen. Best of all, there is some serious love going into Ethan's pies, and you can taste it in every delicious bite.

As I mentioned earlier, Nick Zukin, the "ExtraMSG" of ExtraMSG.com and PortlandFood.org, has also composed a write-up of our journey, with full impressions of the pizzas we ate at Pyro and Wy'east. I highly recommended checking it out. He is extremely knowledgeable about food and knows what he is talking about, and I had a blast hanging out with him and hearing about both his past (growing up around restaurants) and his plans for future endeavors (if you think Kenny & Zuke's is the last you'll see of him, think again). Plus, he loves pizza. Along with Ethan Welt's unbridled enthusiasm for the craft, this made for an unforgettable evening, and I wish you all could have been there.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: 3-Cheese Pizza

(photo by Austin Haas)

Update 2/20/10 -- A return trip today with friends yielded two new pies: the Soppressata, and one of Jeremy's newest creations. The tomato sauce on the Soppressata pie, tangy to a fault the last time I'd tried it on the Margherita, was much more balanced this time around, and perfectly complimented the wide, meaty discs of soppressata.

(photo by Austin Haas)

The second pie consisted of smoked mozzarella, marinated onions, olive oil, Italian parsley, and sardines. Again, balance was spot on. The onions were cooked to perfection, with no sign of stringiness, and the cheese provided just a hint of smoke on the palate. The non-fish ingredients were pleasantly light, which worked quite well in tandem with the salt-bomb sardines. They may be a little too fishy for some, but if you think they're the bee's knees, then count your blessings if this pie makes it onto the Daily Specials board.

Impressions: Lovely's Fifty-Fifty

2010-01-23T15:25:00.000-08:00

Lovely's Fifty-Fifty

4039 N Mississippi Ave, Suite 101
Portland, OR 97227
(503) 281-4060

(all photographs by Adam Lindsley)

Much to the dismay of its most loyal (and vocal) advocates, the esteemed Lovely Hula Hands on North Mississippi closed its doors late last year. Now, just a few weeks later, owners Sarah and Jane Minnick are back in business next door at Lovely's Fifty-Fifty, their wood-fired pizzeria and mini ice cream parlor. Promising to stick with their longstanding belief in buying exclusively from local farmers and keeping the menu on a seasonal rotation, the Minnicks have opened a stylish, modern pizzeria that is, if the crowd Thursday night was any indication, already popular with the locals and culinary bloodhounds.

After a few pleasant starters (a lightly toasted Brussels sprouts plate and a beet & blood orange salad) and some bottled beers (their taps will be ready soon), our three pies hit the table steaming hot and smelling strongly of freshly baked bread. Though I had been hoping to try their hot soppressata pie, it had been removed from the menu prior to our arrival. Disappointing, yes, but I'm sure they had a valid reason for it, and I have a feeling it will make its return again soon. No matter. In its place we ordered the Margherita, the Fennel Sausage & Rapini, and the Bacon, New Potato, & Rosemary pizzas.

The Margherita ($12), sports an alternately puffy and flat cornicione with delicious char all around and on the upskirt. The crust is so puffy in places that it reminded me of the enormous corniciones on the pies at Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton's Mozza in Los Angeles. The dough has a slight sweetness to it, more so than any other crust I've had in Portland. Perhaps there's a bit of sugar or honey in there? Regardless, the crust was excellent, with a crisp crunch on the outside giving way to a chewy, mildly dense interior. The sauce, like all great red sauces, was bright with the flavors of fresh tomatoes, and well seasoned.

The cheese situation on the Margherita is a bit of a conundrum. While the requisite mozzarella is very much present, the pie arrived at the table with a very visible layer of yellow grease covering the cheese, which indicated to me the presence of something oilier, probably cheddar (or the greasiest aged mozz I've ever seen). One bite and the cheddar flavor hits you full-force. The cheese layer is thick with the ricotta-like texture of the melted cheddar (or whatever it is), and overpowers both the sauce and the crust, resulting in major tip sag. I don't know for sure what cheese is accompanying the mozzarella on this pie, but the Margherita is a classic for a reason. If there's room for experimentation, this isn't the pie for it.

(Ed. -- ExtraMSG (Nick Zukin) of Portlandfood.org visited Lovely's a couple days after I did and was served a vastly different Margherita. See his post on the Portlandfood.org forums for pics and a description of what I mean.)

Update 1/25/10 -- Lovely's Fifty-Fifty chef Jimmy Albee contacted me to let me know that they have started making their own mozzarella, which would explain the disparity between the Margherita I had and the one ExtraMSG was served. Albee informs me that the previous curd they were using melted into a pool in the intense flames of the wood-burning oven (as evidenced by the photograph above), but that they are much happier with their homemade mozz now. Thanks for the heads-up, Jimmy!

For all that, though...it still tastes pretty good.

Moving on, the Bacon, New Potato, & Rosemary pie ($14) is exactly what I mean by successfully experimenting with flavor combinations (and again, a comparison to a very similar pie at Mozza must be made here). Sans red sauce, this pizza gets much of its distinctive flavor from the smokiness of the strips of bacon arranged sparingly on the cheesy bed and the abundance (perhaps overabundance) of freshly chopped rosemary sprinkled everywhere like green snowflakes. It's good that these two ingredients were so potent, because the potatoes were flavorless, and almost totally absent from the pie -- a few slices lacked them completely. If the pizzaiolo were to cut back a bit on the rosemary and up the seasoning on the potatoes, this pie would go from good to great.

Finally, the favorite pie of the evening was almost unanimously the Fennel Sausage & Rapini pizza ($15). The superb red sauce makes a triumphant return here, aided by the mouth-watering hunks of sweet-and-salty fennel sausage. The presence of the rapini, however, wasn't a big hit with everyone, myself included. The bitterness of the broccoli doesn't meld successfully with the sausage, and while it was hardly a dealbreaker, this pie would be better served without it. Still, by all means a very fine pizza.

We finished the meal with a sampling of four of the six house-made ice cream flavors, including salted caramel, bourbon vanilla, chocolate, and mint stracciatella. All were satisfying, but I must make special mention of the salted caramel as the standout of the bunch. Its sweet/salty contrast reminded me somewhat of an icier version of the sea-salted butterscotch budino at, yes, Mozza in Los Angeles. By this point of the meal I was positive the chefs had drawn considerable inspiration for their menu from LA's finest pizzeria, and I have no problem with that. And if it's a coincidence, well, it's a pleasant one.

As stated earlier, Lovely's Fifty Fifty is only in its second week of business. They have lots of little kinks to work out on the menu, but I have no doubt they will, and thankfully all of the minor disappointments were just that: minor. The pizzas coming out of the oven here are very good, and I have a feeling they're only going to get better and better. Yet another reason to love this stretch of the mighty Mississippi.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Fennel Sausage & Rapini Pizza (hold the rapini), Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Update 3/11/10 -- Went back (finally) to try the Margherita again with the new mozzarella, and was pleasantly surprised. The mozz is placed in six large dollops around the pie, one for each slice. It looks like it'd be thick and rubbery, but one bite revealed otherwise. This is soft, creamy mozzarella, and it didn't firm up by the time I got around to the last slice, either. Bravo, guys!

Also got to try a few new starters, including a butter lettuce salad with buttermilk blue cheese, sliced pears, and hazelnuts; and a cannellini bean puree with olive oil and pizza bianca. The salad was refreshing but also managed to pack in some nice flavors with just a few ingredients. The bean puree was a simple blend of white beans that tasted great with the lemony olive oil poured judiciously over it. Coupled with the ample amount of freshly baked pizza bianca (just the house pizza dough seasoned well with herbs and salt) that accompanies this dish, you really shouldn't pass it up. It's a ridiculous deal at six bucks.

News: Pizzicato Employees Chase Down Thief

2010-01-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

According to an article on kgw.com, a would-be thief entered the Pizzicato on East Burnside Thursday night, snatched the tip jar off the counter, and bolted into the street.

Well the employees didn't take too kindly to that and decided to chase the bastard down and disable him until the police arrived on the scene for the arrest.

Pizzicato employees, I salute you.

News: Domino's Revamps "Classic" Recipe

2009-12-17T10:57:00.001-08:00

From a story on CBS News:

After nearly 50 years, Domino's Pizza is changing its core recipe. A recent survey placed Domino's at the top of service and delivery among chain pizzerias, and at the bottom for taste. This new recipe changes their "classic" pizza in three ways:

1.) The crust will now be seasoned with garlic and parsley.

2.) The sauce will be sweeter and include red pepper flakes.

3.) The cheese will be a mix of shredded mozzarella and provolone.

Now, I've always found Domino's pizza to be an abomination, an affront to all things good about pizza. It's worse than Papa John's, Pizza Hut, Lil' Caesars...any of the chains, really. And worse than most frozen pizza. I'll still eat it if someone is clueless enough to order it, but probably not more than a slice or two. That crust is just too gummy for me, and the sauce too sweet (which really makes me question whether making it even sweeter is a wise decision).

I'm curious to see how the Domino's-loving public responds to this. In the CBS story, they allowed some random people to try it, and their reaction was quite positive. So were the reactions from the talking heads on the CBS Early Show. I just can't help but recall the disaster that befell Coca-Cola when they decided to change up their classic recipe in the '80s for "New Coke," and sure enough, CBS mentions it in their report.

Can you believe that survey? I for one find it very hard to swallow the idea that the #1 chain pizza people prefer comes from Papa John's. Over Godfather's? Please.

Anyway, there's a less-than-1% chance I'll be trying this new iteration of Domino's in the foreseeable future, so if any of you get your hands on their new pies, do write in and tell us about it.

Impressions: Firehouse

2009-12-14T13:10:00.000-08:00

Firehouse

711 NE Dekum Ave
Portland, OR 97211
(503) 954-1702

(photo courtesy of Firehouse)

For about a year now, I have adamantly believed there to be only two truly sublime pizzerias in the Portland metropolitan area: Ken's Artisan and Apizza Scholls. A few weeks ago, I had the distinct pleasure of being proven utterly wrong when I joined some friends for a fabulous dinner at Firehouse. After a second dinner last night, I can promise you that Firehouse deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as those titans.

(photo courtesy of Firehouse)

As its name implies, Firehouse is in fact built in the remnants of the old Dekum firehouse in northeast Portland. Owners Matthew and Elizabeth Busetto gutted the interior, stripping the walls down to the beautiful red brick, obliterating the ugly popcorn ceilings, and restoring the glorious old wooden beams. Their dreams of owning a restaurant fulfilled, Matthew now works downstairs with his old friend from New Seasons, Eric Rose, and pastry chef Gretchen Glatte, while Elizabeth practices Chiropractic and Naturopathic medicine upstairs. (You can read more about their story here).

Shortly after taking our seats (the restaurant takes reservations, God bless them) our hungry party perused the menu, which changes daily, and ordered a few drinks, appetizers (some very tasty fried cauliflower, so-so roasted beets and walnuts) and a few pizzas, more than we could possibly eat that night but enough to get a good feel for chefs Busetto and Rose's repertoire.

First up: the Margherita ($11). The pizzas coming out of the enormous wood-fired oven at Firehouse are Neapolitan in nature, and the Margherita makes this abundantly clear. The crust is thin, light, and airy, wonderfully charred by the oven, and delicious. The sauce is a simple, very bright concoction of crushed tomatoes (San Marzanos, I'd wager) and light seasoning, the classic flavors you'd expect from the best Neapolitan pies. The mozzarella is fresh and creamy, and its flavor is enhanced by the generous grating of some nicely salty hard cheese atop the whole pie, most likely parmigiano-reggiano, pecorino, or parmesan.

This is a dynamite Margherita, and I think the best in the city. It's not soupy like many Neapolitan Margheritas, and it holds up well even after it's cooled for a time. I couldn't get enough of this pie. It's salty in all the right ways, and the flavor of those tomatoes shines through splendidly in every bite. My one complaint with Firehouse's Margherita: both nights the pizzaiolo seriously stiffed us on the basil. There were perhaps three or four basil leaves on the entire pie, with at least half the slices lacking any basil at all. To capture the true balance of the Margherita, they're going to have to work on this. Still, I've yet to have a better Margherita in the entire city. It's the one to beat.

As much as I love a good Margherita, I get even more excited when we start getting into the realm of meat toppings, so of course we had to order the Spicy House Fennel Sausage & Onion pizza ($12). The sausage is the star of the show here. Juicy, slightly spicy, and made in-house, the sausage has perfect texture, not too tough or too crumbly, with just the right level of fennel flavor to it. It makes this pie absolutely worthwhile, though I was a little put off by the onions. They're placed raw on the pizza just before it enters the oven, coming out steaming hot but still crispy. Others may actually find this a selling point for this pizza (and indeed my friend and neighbor Kevin Wilson loved it), but I would have preferred the onions roasted first before being added to the pizza. The snap of the al dente onions made them feel too raw for my mouth. But I'm just being picky, really. They don't hurt the pie. It's still delicious. (Ed. - On a subsequent visit, the onions were less sharp and thus melded perfectly with the rest of the ingredients).

The first night we dined at Firehouse, the fennel sausage pizza had not cooked in the oven long enough, and as a result the crust hadn't quite solidified enough to withstand the weight of the sizeable chunks of sausage. This, coupled with the sauce soaking into the crust and further weakening it, caused major tip sag. Not disastrous by any means, but the pie could have used another 30 - 60 seconds in the heat of the flames. This seems to have been a one-time issue, because I haven't experience it on any subsequent trip to the restaurant.

After the Margherita, my favorite pizza at Firehouse is their Salami and Green Olives pizza ($12). Sometimes olives on a pizza can be overwhelming, but the green olives used on this pie sang a song of balanced perfection on the palate, with just the right levels of "olive" flavor and saltiness. The salami, too, didn't overstep its boundaries, but played off the boldness of the olives with a mild yet distinctive meatiness. It also managed to avoid becoming overly greasy, a serious problem with many types of salami that never became an issue here. A fantastic pizza.

A fourth pie we tried (but one I sadly did not photograph) was a pizza with Oil-Cured Olives, Garlic, and Chile Oil ($12). Those three ingredients alone made this a pie with robust flavors impossible to ignore. In this case, I thought perhaps the olives were a little overpowering, and we all felt it was our least-favorite pie of the night, but we still enjoyed it.

(photo courtesy of Firehouse)

Before I sign off, I do have to mention one thing I find slightly frustrating: Firehouse does not cut its pies, and leave you to do it with a knife and fork. Now, this is how pizza is traditionally served in Naples, Italy, and I would expect no less -- were I in Naples, Italy. This is Portland, Oregon, and while the pizzas are unequivocally inspired by those in Naples, the rest of the cuisine on the menu is not restricted in origin by that city. Another Portland restaurant, Nostrana, also irritatingly serves its pies uncut, but at least they offer kitchen shears which easily slice through the dough, sauce, and cheese. The knives provided by Firehouse to accomplish this task aren't quite sharp enough to make a very clean job of it. Neapolitans will love it, though.

(photo courtesy of Firehouse)

Does Firehouse have room for improvement? Sure it does. But these minor quibbles aside, I'm thrilled by the pizza coming out of their oven, and even more thrilled that Portland has a great pizzeria for which reservations can be secured. Neither Ken's Artisan nor Apizza Scholls can offer that godsend. This place gets busy, so the next time you want outstanding pizza but don't feel like waiting in line, you can just give Firehouse a call and snag your reservation. I love that. And I love the pizza here. It's undeniably great.

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Margherita, Salami & Green Olives Pizza

Update 7/21/10 -- A recent visit to Firehouse found that nearly all of my previous quibbles with the food had been rectified. The pies coming out of the oven now are cooked perfectly, with plenty of wonderful black char on both the underside of the crust and the cornicione. The food is dynamite, though they're still not cutting their pies...

News: Lovely Hula Hands Owners to Open Pizzeria

2009-12-07T18:27:00.001-08:00

(photo courtesy OregonLive.com)

Well well. It would seem that the owners of Lovely Hula Hands, a highly praised restaurant in North Portland, is closing its doors in January and moving next door to open a wood-fired pizzeria called Lovely's Fifty Fifty. Having never eaten at Lovely Hula Hands (perhaps I should while I still can...), I have no idea what to expect, but news of another wood-fired pizzeria opening in the area always puts a smile on my face. So yeah, I'm looking forward to this.

Here's the press release from Lovely Hula Hands' owners, Sarah and Jane Minnick:

Hello friends and fans of Lovely Hula Hands- Our new wood fired pizza restaurant, Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty, should be open sometime in January. There have been a lot of construction setbacks since the beginning of the project, but we are finally awaiting the arrival of the wood oven, ice cream case and other exciting things.

Also, at the end of this month, Lovely Hula Hands will be closing. The reasons for this are many, but in the end it comes down to one thing above all. When we first opened the restaurant six years ago, a family member was our chef. As time went on and this changed, we found ourselves in the position of running a restaurant from the front of the house. That is, we relied on someone from outside the family to direct the kitchen. As you know from the loyalty of our customers and the critical reception that Lovely Hula Hands has received, we have always been lucky with the talented people we’ve chosen. But now it just makes sense for us to focus on our new venture 100 % and have more of a hand in the production of the things we serve.

We plan to have a great final month at Lovely Hula Hands and finish strong with the same seasonal menu, cocktails, etc. New Years Eve will be our last night open. We hope to see many of you this month at least one more time and we hope to keep seeing you next door at Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty. It will have a lot of things in common with LHH- a seasonal menu, buying exclusively from local farmers and ranchers, a hefty list of salads and starters, and even one or two wood fired entrees along with the pizza offerings. We will also have six flavors of seasonal homemade ice cream in a big case up front and people can get a scoop or a pint to go. Our current staff will stay with us and work next door, so no one is being put out of work in this economy.

We want to deeply thank all of our loyal customers and staff for the last six years. It has honestly been a pleasure running this restaurant.

Finally, please note that we will be honoring Gift Certificates for Lovely Hula Hands next door at Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty. If you have one and can’t get in this month, please use it there.

Sincerely, Sarah and Jane Minnick

Impressions: Pyro Pizza

2009-11-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

Pyro Pizza

SE 12th and Hawthorne (in Cartopia)
Portland, OR
(503) 929-1404

No city in America is more associated with food carts than Portland, Oregon. Czech, Mexican, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Polish, Turkish, Venezuelan, Southern, Barbecue...you name it, Portland's probably got it in a convenient on-the-go form.

Neapolitan-style pizza, though...now there's a rare commodity in the food cart scene.

Until today, I was aware of only one food cart serving this kind of pizza in the city, and that was Wy'east over on SE 50th. There, proprietor "Squish" cooks his Naples-and-New York-inspired pies one at a time in a tiny gas-fired oven, and does a very fine job with it.

But then a friend of mine alerted me to another food cart in Portland over in SE 12th and Hawthorne's "Cartopia," one that was serving Neapolitan/NY-style pizza from a wood-burning oven. A wood-burning oven. In a cart. My mind was effectively blown.

How could that work? A wood-burning oven in one of those diminutive shacks-on-wheels certainly seems like an accident waiting to happen, at worst a death wish for some suicidal pizzaiolo wishing to submit his body to the conflagration with which his product so desperately communes. Gathering my neighbors from across the street (who with their far superior camera graciously provided some of the photos for this piece), I set out tonight to see just what sort of madness was at play here on this cold autumn's eve.

Pyro Pizza is a more intimidating cart than most of the others clustered in "Cartopia." It sits higher than the others, requiring the use of a deck to reach the service window, through which owner John Eads's surprisingly large domed oven can be viewed plainly. As we approached the cart, Eads was gathering what looked like alder wood for the oven. He brought the wood to the side of the cart, where a chopping block and maul lay waiting. Yes folks, he proceeded to chop the wood then and there, splitting it to a size better suited to the oven. I can think of no better way of measuring Eads's pride in his work, that his love of pizza would permit the necessity of the most primeval means of manual labor: splitting firewood. Not for a brick-and-mortar pizzeria, may I remind you, but for a pizza cart. That's dedication, my friends.

Filled with an immense sense of respect for the man, my friends and I ordered two pizzas off the menu: the traditional Margherita (with mozzarella di bufala!), and the daily special, which was the roasted garlic, plum tomato, spinach, and gorgonzola pizza. Both were ready in five minutes, twelve-inch wonders served simply on wax paper in reusable baskets.

I sampled the Traditional Margherita ($8) first. Eads spreads his dough very, very thin, and this makes for a marvelously crisp crust with light-to-moderate charring on the underside. The cornicione is large, puffy, and chewy, with a nice hole structure. I should note that Eads makes his dough fresh every day with Bob's Red Mill whole wheat flour, but for whatever reason, it doesn't smack of whole wheat like the many other versions I've tried over the years. Eads's crust has the flavor of good bread, and thankfully is neither fibrous of texture nor "healthy" in taste. You know what I mean. I think the crust is pretty great, and with the heavenly black blisters making periodic appearances, worthy of being eaten in its entirety.

The red sauce is not yet perfect. It was alternately too sweet or too salty, depending on the bite, and at times I swear I could taste something akin to aluminum, perhaps from the cans the tomatoes had been packed in? Hard to tell. Sometimes you just get a bad tomato in the can. It's not a bad sauce by any means, but it could stand some improvement. (Ed. -- I just heard from Eads that the sauce contains no sugar. Instead, the sweetness in the sauce comes entirely from the tomatoes and the roasted red onions blended in with them. Fascinating!)

I'm curious to know where Eads gets his buffalo mozzarella, because while it tasted fine on the Margherita, its time spent in the oven disintegrated every ounce of it into ricotta. It's tough to tell by looking at the pictures, but trust me, it was evident on the first bite. Very peculiar.

I'm also curious to know where he gets his gargantuan basil. I mean, just look at the basil in that first shot of the Margherita. It's huge. Took up the whole slice! It tasted great, too. Fresh, vibrant, and full of flavor. Speaking of the basil, I washed down my pizza with Eads's homemade Basil Lime Soda ($1.50). This was an initially strange yet oddly satisfying soda in which you could very much taste the basil of its namesake. I don't know how Eads makes it, whether he uses fresh basil and extracts its essence or achieves it by some other means, but this is a winner.

The second pie, the Daily Special ($8), was much heavier on the toppings, and as such the crust wasn't quite able to support them (though a quick fold remedied that). There are a lot of strong flavors working together here: the gorgonzola is aggressive with a very pleasant bite, the bits of plum tomatoes provide wonderfully sweet explosions of juice, and the huge chunks of roasted garlic ooze their fragrant oils over the entire pie. I couldn't quite taste the spinach, but given those first three ingredients, it's easy to understand why.

I liked the special with its complex, robust flavor set, but it was hard to eat more than a slice of it. It may be too rich for my palate, but others bored of the more basic pies may find just what they're looking for here. It's a great pizza for sharing.

Before we left, I managed to speak to Eads briefly about Pyro Pizza and the fact that it has been open for only two weeks now. We also chatted about his oven, which is comprised of a brick floor and a refractory dome. Eads says he built the oven first on the four-wheel flatbed, then built the trailer around the oven. It's now crammed full with a work counter, coolers in the back to store the various ingredients and sodas, a fully functional sink, shelves, and even a rack of fancy lights (which you can kind of see in the photo above). This was clearly a planned operation, and if it wasn't, then I'm even more amazed. Eads already owns another pizza cart in downtown Portland called Give Pizza a Chance, an establishment I have not yet frequented but certainly will after my experience here.

It's still early in the life of Pyro Pizza. There are some kinks to work out, but so far the pies coming out of John Eads's oven are surprisingly good for pizza from a cart of all places. Next time (and there will definitely be a next time) I'm going to try some of the other items on his menu, including the pepperoni and the Cuattro Formaggi. I've also heard that Eads on occasion makes a bacon-and-egg pizza, which I'd love to sample.

For the prices Eads is selling these pies, you're getting a heck of a deal. If you're not in the mood to wait in line at one of Portland's more popular pizzerias, I highly encourage you to swing by Pyro and get your fix. It's quick, it's good, and Eads's love of pizza comes through in every bite.

And you may as well get some poutine from Potato Champion while you're there, since you're in the neighborhood...

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Margherita, Basil Lime Soda

Impressions: Pizzicato

2009-11-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

Pizzicato

Various Locations

In the realm of local pizza chains, Portland's got a few: Pizza Schmizza, Hot Lips, and Pizzicato spring most readily to mind. I'm naturally inclined to expect pizza below the caliber of Portland's best from them, but considering the franchising and sheer volume these chains put out, I don't think that's unreasonable.

Sometimes, though, you just don't feel like waiting in line for pizza.

This was the case last night when I was craving pizza but really wasn't up to the physical drain that came with waiting for a table at the uber-popular Ken's Artisan. No, last night was all about picking up the phone, calling my local Pizzicato (only a few blocks away!) and ordering a large cheese pizza ($17) which I could pick up in only 20 minutes.

Pizzicato was established in Portland in 1989 (good year for music!) and has since blossomed to 23 locations, including one in Denver, Colorado of all places. Pizzas come in small (10"), medium (12"), and large (16") sizes, and often come with a wide variety of toppings, such as barbecued chicken, artichoke hearts, and garlic-marinated shrimp. Tonight, though, I stuck with the simple plain pie. As soon as I got it home I flipped open the box, snapped a few shots, then dug in while it was still hot.

It becomes pretty clear early on that Pizzicato is striving to replicate a NY slice with their pies. The crust is dense, chewy on the inside but crispy on the outside, and dusted with cornmeal, presumable to slide it into and out of the gas-heated ovens more easily. I don't really walk into places like Pizzicato expecting char, and apart from some browning on the bottom of the pizza, there isn't any. No matter; char is hardly necessary on a NY-style slice.

The tangy, heavily-salted tomato sauce hides beneath a layer of salty aged mozzarella, salty grated parmesan, and what the Pizzicato menu calls "herbs," which as far as I could tell consisted primarily of finely-chopped bits of parsley and maybe some oregano. Tough to say, as the herbs held virtually no flavor as far as I could tell.

So how does it taste? Decent, actually. Nothing amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but a pretty standard NY-style slice nonetheless. I've had better, and I've had worse. As you may have surmised, the pizza is a tad on the salty side, but that's a good thing, because without the salt this pizza probably wouldn't taste like anything. The dough used for the crust is almost completely devoid of flavor, standard for this type of pizza. I had mistakenly presumed it was mass-produced in a Pizzicato warehouse somewhere, but an employee (see the comments below) informed me that it's actually made fresh everyday, which I do appreciate.

That's really all I have to say about it. It's hardly the worst pizza in town, and if you're throwing a party and need some pies to feed the hungry masses, Pizzicato is more than up to the task, though I do think they charge a bit much for what they're offering. Okay, yes, they overcharge. I haven't tried Hot Lips or Pizza Schmizza yet, but once I have, I'll decide which is the best of the local chains. Until then, I have some leftover slices to attend to...

OVEN: Gas

Impressions: Serious Pie

2009-11-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

Serious Pie

316 Virginia Street
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 838-7388

If any chef in Seattle is a household name, it's Tom Douglas. A James Beard award-winner twice over, he owns no less than six restaurants, all of which are located in downtown Seattle. All are known for something specific (seafood at Etta's, pastries at Dahlia Bakery, etc.). At Serious Pie, the name of the game is pizza, though after eating there recently, I can't help but wish Douglas would read Peter Reinhart's book, American Pie, particularly the chapters concerning pizza dough.

I got to Serious Pie around 3:30 p.m. on a Saturday, and the place was just packed. There were people crowding the waiting area, waiting to be seated, and all I could do was stand there and marvel at the popularity of this place (and the meat coolers positioned front and center). I mean, a full house on a Saturday at off-hours? If that's not a very good sign indeed, I don't know what is.

Soon enough I was seated at one of Serious Pie's communal tables, sharing the dining space with several other patrons. Sitting directly next to me was a young couple who eyed my camera and notepad with curious sideways glances, nothing new to us food-blogging geeks who stand out like sore thumbs no matter how diligent we are about blending in. I secretly prayed they wouldn't be irked by my obtrusive dining routine and pretended they just weren't there. Like I do with the monsters in my closet every night.

Serious Pie has a great Happy Hour deal: the pizzas on the menu are served in personal sizes for a mere $5. Unfortunately, this is a Monday through Friday offer, so I was out of luck. Constricted to a single pie, I chose the house Margherita, which, as the menu attests, is made with buffalo mozzarella and San Marzano tomatoes. Another good sign.

While waiting for my pizza, I managed to strike up a conversation with the previously-ignored young couple to my right, who introduced themselves as Chris and Zen. They had ordered one of the other items on the menu I had wanted to try, the fennel sausage and cherry bomb pepper pizza, and after explaining who I was and what I was doing there, they cheerfully offered to share their pie with me in exchange for a few slices of my Margherita. They were so charming and personable and fascinated with the idea of a pizza blog, how could I refuse?

Then the Margherita ($15) arrived. Pizzas at Serious Pie are oval, not round, and are served on a rectangular slab. The pizzas are surprisingly small, especially considering the prices being charged. They're cut into eight fairly square slices, with the slices on the four corners consisting almost entirely of crust.

And here we come to Serious Pie's crushing downfall. Despite hearing assertions to the contrary, I cannot say that this is a good crust.

At first glance, though, it looks like a good crust. Like the pizza at Mozza in Los Angeles, the cornicione here at Serious Pie is enormous. It is impossibly airy, filled with gaping air pockets you could land a jumbo jet in. But this is the sole strength of the crust. A crust can be as airy as helium for all I care, but if it doesn't taste good, then what's the point? And the Serious Pie crust, it must be said, doesn't taste all that great. The base of this surprisingly greasy Margherita was dusted with cornmeal which had soaked up some of the oil, and the cornicione was caked with what looked and tasted like clumps of very buttery flour. It was very unappealing.

The toppings fared no better, and in fact managed to be even less appetizing than the crust. The menu said this sauce was made with San Marzano tomatoes, but to taste them you sure as hell wouldn't know it. I make a basic San Marzano sauce on my homemade pizzas, and it's a thousand times more flavorful than Serious Pie's. Their sauce is also very chunky--large hunks of tomato lay scattered on the pizza like red hills on a Kansan plain at sunset. The so-called buffalo mozzarella used here was completely bland and lacked the creaminess of the buffalo mozz I've had, well, just about anywhere else. And the basil, sliced and minimal, was undetectable on the tongue.

What was going on in that kitchen? I couldn't believe that such mediocrity could garner this ardent praise among the Seattle food community. Staring at my half-eaten Margherita, I wondered what they were seeing that I wasn't. Or rather, what they were eating that I wasn't.

I was just about to write Serious Pie off completely when my new friends Chris and Zen received their Fennel Sausage and Cherry Bomb Pepper pie ($16). Smelling it as it passed by, I knew at once it had to taste better than my Margherita, and this was confirmed the moment I sunk my teeth into it.

Oh the crust was just as disappointing as the one on my Margherita, but the toppings on this pizza more than made up for it. The fennel sausage is sweet, and delivers a robust, meaty punch the Margherita desperately needed. The peppers were even better: sweet, not at all spicy, but peppery enough to add a new dimension of flavor to the pie. These two ingredients rested atop the same bland tomato sauce, but they were so flavorful that I barely noticed anything else. This was a much tastier pizza than the Margherita, so much so that the presence of the Margherita on Serious Pie's menu is actually providing a great disservice to the restaurant's credibility. I mean, these two pizzas were like night and day. Do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to order their Margherita. For $15, it's outright thievery.

But do order that sausage and pepper pie.

Maybe I caught Serious Pie on an off day. Maybe I didn't. Who knows? I do know I'll be back again to try more of their pizzas and find out once and for all whether this is a place I'll recommend to others or shun forevermore. For now, all I can do is quote my wise neighbor, Sarah Wilson: "Serious Pie...Serious Disappointment."

OVEN: Wood

RECOMMENDED: Fennel Sausage and Cherry Bomb Pepper pie

Update 11/11/10 -- Finally made it back to Serious Pie to give it a second chance after the first underwhelming visit. My brother joined me despite the pouring rain, and together we tackled six of the eight mini-pizzas available on the Happy Hour menu. My overall reaction? More positive than the first visit, absolutely. I still don't hesitate to say this is not great pizza, though.

Some thoughts:

1.) The crust still bugs me. It tasted a lot better this time around than it did before, but the underside is still caked with a thick layer of flour and cornmeal, so that when it enters your mouth, it flakes off and forms a kind of mush on your tongue. So bizarre, and not pleasant.

2.) The Margherita this time was a hundred times better than the one I ate on my first visit. There was an ample amount of shredded parmesan on top to provide the saltiness that was missing from the first Margherita, and the sauce was heavily herbed, whereas the first Margherita's was a flavorless red paste.

3.) I enjoyed the sausage and peppers pie on my first visit, and once again, it was the pizza of the night. Great fennel-spiked sausage and peppers that deliver just a hint of heat.

4.) Pumpkin and squash are not idea pizza toppings. We tried two pizzas with these gourds, the pumpkin with pork belly and the delicate squash with roasted garlic. Both needed the addition of the second topping.

5.) The truffle cheese and roasted mushroom pizza was surprisingly sweet, and light on flavor. The sweetness came from the cheese, overpowering the mushrooms. Nothing memorable.

6.) The most interesting pizza of the evening was the guanciale, soft egg, and Beacon Hill arugula pie. The egg was cooked through, which I appreciated, as I don't particularly enjoy runny whites. Tasted great, too. Nice fresh arugula, slightly peppery. The pizzaiolo was pretty stingy with the guanciale, though. It really needed that pork flavor to tie the other two toppings together.

In conclusion, it appears that Serious Pie is like many other pizzerias, in that consistency varies greatly from one day to the next. My first visit here was a massive disappointment. My second visit...not totally redeeming, but a vast improvement. If they could cut down on the pantry-full of flour and cornmeal inundating the bottom of the crust, they'd be taking another huge step in the right direction.