1520 Clipper Road
Baltimore
We
really liked Birroteca. We like what they're doing. But Birroteca is
bigger than pizza. In what follows I will try to review Birroteca's
pizza while also conveying a broader sense of how this new venue fits
or does not fit into the densely-woven, shimmering fabric of Your
Baltimore Life.
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| Your Baltimore Life |
This
place opened in September and is probably in the running for best low-key-but-conspicuously-tasteful restaurant in the city. Many people on the Tuesday night
that we visited appeared to be on dates, kind-of-dates, or after-work
drinks that could potentially turn into a date (I inferred this from
body language). Like the couple who we sat next to and whose
conversation we interrupted throughout their meal to talk about
pizza. Their date seemed to be going pretty well, but they looked
like a seasoned couple, accustomed to having their nice evenings
crashed by large groups of pizza fanatics.
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| Nice on the inside |
Here's
how this works for a first date situation: you, if you happen to be the date asker,
explain that the restaurant is in Hampden, which is a known quantity
for most people even if they're afraid of Baltimore (which you
haven't determined yet because it's the first date). The address,
the Baltimore Sun reassures us, shows
up on GPS. However, after driving the winding, unlit stretch of
Falls and Clipper Mill roads leading to Birroteca, your date is a bit
apprehensive and wondering if you have terrible taste or are crazy.
The address is a squat former industrial building on a gravel lot
under the highway. Then the date walks inside – and lo! - it is a
carefully-designed upscale bistro with salvaged fixtures and
chalkboard art and a retro bar and the acoustic ceiling tiles
have been replaced with acoustic ceiling tiles designed to look like
an antique tin ceiling. So this is a great way to impress your love
interest who doesn't get around Baltimore much or is new to the city
with your knowledge of the restaurant scene (which is apparently
cooler than knowing about bands, food is the new rock, etc.). I'm
not trying to run your life for you or anything, but Birroteca is
definitely a good date place.
Incidentally,
I used to think that when people talked about whether a city is
“good” or “bad” to live in they were talking about access to
amenities – art, music, museums, transportation, parks, Whole
Foods, etc. Now I think they're referring to the number of good date
restaurants. Baltimore is no better off by some measures than it was
three years ago, but now we have so many good date restaurants that
people will start moving here and spawn families and fill the proposed youth
prison site with daffodils and rainbows.
Pizza
is definitely part of this picture, since people who are not
lactose-intolerant really like it (Birroteca is not equipped to
provide fake-cheese substitutions). Once you've made it into
Birroteca (and this is a challenge – it's so buzzy at the moment
that they were booked up on a Tuesday and turning people away), you
will have a specialty pizza selection as well as the option to choose
your own toppings. There is also an infinite selection of local craft
beers. Your knowledge of these beers and their local provenance will
further impress your date, or make you look like an asshole. This
isn't under your control – your manner of conveying craft beer
knowledge is an indicator of deeper, underlying personality issues.
Pizza
Club ordered the Locavore, Duck Duck Goose, Pesto, and Spicy Sausage
Fennel pizzas. The waitstaff of Birroteca are very nice; they
Facebook-messaged me to make sure we could get seats, because they
thought that Pizza Club was pretty important (this remains for
history to judge).
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| "Locavore" |
The
Locavore pizza was billed as having “roasted market vegetables,”
mozzarella, and olive oil, but the vegetables turned out to be mostly
arugula and sauteed onions, with possibly some squash underneath.
This was not a bad thing; the crunchy bitter greens balanced the
sweetness of the cheese, and it worked well texture-wise. I'd like to
underline that their mozzarella was pretty good. The crust was a bit
charred, and Adrian suggested that feta cheese and some kind of sauce
would make good additions to the pie. Some found the salad-on-a-pie
arrangement unwieldy, but others were comforted by the presence of
vegetables.
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| Paul Giamatti: Friend of Ducks |
Another
thing that makes your casual dinner date tasteful and classy is the
addition of small bits of duck meat to whatever you're eating. After
seeing this Nature
documentary about ducks, narrated by Paul Giamatti (who loves
ducks), I can no longer support the killing of ducks for food.
However, the Duck Duck Goose pizza was apparently very, very
delicious. Chris's response to the first bite was “I would eat this
pizza every day of my life.” The pie came with duck confit, fig and
onion jam, a balsamic vinegar reduction, fontina and asagio cheeses,
and a duck egg cracked on top and baked. It was that end of the slice
with duck egg on it that people were really into. Everyone around me
was closing their eyes to savor this duck egg on a pizza, at which
point I began to wonder about my life and what I am doing.
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| Tasty duck |
The
Spicy Sausage Fennel pizza was less of a blockbuster – described as
“underwhelming” and “non-threatening”. Some complained that
there wasn't enough going on. Sauce and toppings were sparse, leaving
mostly bread and cheese that, for some reason, wasn't as good as the
other cheese on the first pizzas. This lack of other stuff led us to
meditate on the crust. Birroteca is doing something with its crust
that is more interesting than the typical gourmet-pizza-boom
restaurant that installs a brick oven and assumes that whatever crust
they put in it will come out delicious. Birroteca's crust was kind of
pretzel-y and buttery, crisp on the outside and able to hold up its
toppings despite being rolled thin. This is a special thing, and
makes their pizza worth ordering even though they have many other
authentic locally-sourced type menu items that are obviously quite
good. It was great that we had the opportunity to notice this, but
the sausage pizza was deemed “hollow and unsatisfying.”
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| We didn't like the sausage that much but obviously we ate it all anyway |
Finally,
we ordered a Pesto pizza, which contained a lot of pesto. The crust
on this one struck us as doughier, more flatbread-ish and less
crispy. One would assume that all the dough in a restaurant is made
from the same recipe, but we inferred that perhaps the baking times
are different for different pies, leading to textural variation. We
enjoyed the pesto and tomato combination, and the understated
presence of mozzarella and ricotta. This would make a very solid
appetizer pizza, as there's not too much going on – it's clean and
each ingredient is there for a reason.
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| Pesto |
By
the end of this Pizza Club meeting, we had all gone on a lovely date
with each other and with the other people on dates around us whose
dates we interrupted. Who says that dating is dead? Perhaps society
is ready to move beyond a rigidly dyadic relationship concept.
We are all in a relationship with pizza, and with each other, and as
this relationship deepens and evolves, we will sometimes need to jazz
things up by going to fancy restaurants and spending a lot of money.
This may ultimately make the world a better place, but also the world
may not last long enough for it to work.
6/8 slices
