BPC COLORING BOOK 2012: PIZZA, SAFETY, AND YOU!

Dear friends, pizza-lovers, and club affiliates: now is your chance to obtain the official Baltimore Pizza Club coloring book of the year 2012. It is a fine specimen of educational fun. It will teach you about clean, wholesome living, safe outdoor recreation, and how to avoid vehicular manslaughter while enjoying pizza. You may color it in any way you like - submit scanned images of your very good coloring for us to display on this blog!

To obtain a copy please email: theusualblunders@gmail.com
You will receive further instructions about how to send us $4 and we'll send you this book.
OR
approach a pizza club member and ask for a copy. I carry a few wherever I go, in case I get bored and need to color something, but I'll sell you one if you have a few bucks. We would like to spread the joy of pizza for free, but the nominal cost just covers the price of printing.

Club Charles

February 24 2012
Club Charles
1724 North Charles

The Lost City Diner recently (temporarily?) closed and the kitchen is back open at Club Charles. They have a new menu and new pizza. Having had pizza from the Zodiac long ago we came into this expecting tasty, but small pizzas. They used to be personal pan size, but now they are much larger, yet cost the same as the old ones. They also offer pizza by the slice! We couldn't decide between the Florentine and the White pizza and Jeremy the bartender suggested something we never considered; do it half and half! I thought it would be impossible, but after sipping on some beer, there in front of us was a pizza with distinct halves.




There was good crunch to the crust, yet it still remained soft and chewy. There were a lot of ingredients, but the dough did not crack under the weight. Both of the pizzas that we tried were white, so we are still unsure about how their sauce is. We learned that Paul who made the made the pizza, grew up in New Jersey and had been tossing pizzas since his youth.


Considering the pizza was technically bar food, it was really exceptional. They take the time to actually make the pizza as opposed to microwaving a box of frozen pizza. If not, we were totally fooled.

Hersh's Pizza

February 23 2012
Hersh's Pizza
1843 Light Street

People had been suggesting that we check out Hersh's, the relatively new pizza place in Federal Hill. We finally got the opportunity to try them and were very glad we did. The atmosphere inside is very charming. It was pretty crowded for a Thursday night. The host was super nice and attentive. We started off ordering three pizzas: the Margherita, a tomato pie with fried eggplant, and the kale and pistachio. The bowl of red pepper on the table was a nice touch.



The Kale & Pistachio pizza - Fontina/Garlic/Pecorino Romano.


The pistachios gave it a subtle nutty roasted flavor. This pizza was pretty garlicky, but we are definitely fans of garlic. The crust was nice and sturdy. It was bubbly with visible air pockets. This pizza was a bit spicy, but flavorful. This was by far our favorite pizza.

Tomato with fried eggplant.


We added the eggplant to this pizza to make it a little more exciting. This pizza was very thin and reminded one attendee of "Philly pizza"; it was her dream pizza. The eggplant was deliciously caramelized, though we would have liked to have seen more of it. This pizza was a little gooey in the middle. The sauce was very fresh and light with some sweetness to it.

The Margherita.

This was chewy and delicious. It was extremely thin. We were expecting to see big circles of fresh mozzarella, but that wasn't the case. We found the crust on this pizza to be a bit limp and resulted in a floppy slice. Because of the structural instability one was forced to roll up the pizza in order to eat it. The sauce on this was comprised of crushed tomatoes.

At this point we were not yet satisfied with our pizza intake and ordered a fourth pizza. We ordered a cheese pizza with mushrooms.



The sauce on this was a marinara, which was different from the pizzas we had already consumed. The mushrooms on it were crimini. When the pizza arrived at our table, it looked molten and gooey. We were expecting it to be a little cheesier than it actually was. They were a little light on the cheese, but it worked. Anymore would have been too much.

These pizzas are thin, which is both a blessing and a curse. The structural integrity of the kale pizza was far superior than the others, though we are unsure of the why. There was a noticeable saltiness to the dough, though the crust was really fantastic. Everything seemed really fresh. It is a little dark inside, but we decided that it made everyone look really good. Hersh's seems like an ideal date spot. They have a pretty impressive selection of beer and cocktails. They did a really great job with the decor and creating a warm and pleasant atmosphere. We did note that although not pizza, they offer gnocchi on Monday and lasagna on Wednesdays, which they boast is homemade. Save room for dessert because we didn't and now we're just going to have to go back and try some.


Kale and Pistachio - 8/8
Tomato and Eggplant - 7/8
Margherita - 5.5/8
Cheese and Mushroom - 5.5/8

Twilight of the Pizzas

Dionysus Restaurant and Lounge, 8 E. Preston St.

Sometimes when I think about pizza, I think about the dynamic tension between man's darkest desires and the polite necessities of civilized life. Pizza can symbolize our urge to self-destruction, the attraction of the greasy abyss; yet it can also lead us to strive for something higher and better. I'm sad to report that, on the particular day that we visited, Dionysus was slipping towards the abyss. Their pizza was not very good.



Since Pizza Club members had visited Dionysus on many previous occasions and reported delicious pizza experiences, we were surprised by this finding. Unfortunately, our job is to give you an objective account of what happened. We suspect that something may have been amiss on this particular day, and to improve the accuracy of our sample, we will have to make another visit to determine whether the pizza we ate was an outlier. However, we present you here with the the facts as they stand.

Dionysus doesn't have pre-formulated specialty pizzas; you just pick from a list of toppings. Members of our group wanted more guidance, particularly with exotic toppings such as alligator, and perhaps we would have done better with chef's recommendations. The restaurant is Cajun-themed, so in addition to the alligator and seafood options, be aware that the all-purpose red sauce is usually spicy and garlicky (in a good way). On the ill-starred day of our visit, even the sauce lacked zing.

We ordered a large artichoke and mushroom pizza, a small crab and onion pizza, and a small alligator and spinach pizza. The first pie appeared steaming from the kitchen, heavy and lush with toppings. There was a lot of cheese, and a lot of sauce, and a lot of dough. It seemed unusually thick all around, and soon became spongy and unstable – a sloppy pizza. We enjoyed the artichoke and mushroom, but found the sheer quantity of gummy dough unmanageable. The second pizza (crab and onion) was not notable. The tomato sauce overpowered the other ingredients, and it might have been wiser to order crab on a white pie.



The third pizza was a novelty, since most of us had never eaten alligator. “The promise of eating an endangered species was exciting,” Jonah said, “but now I feel like I just wasted a life.” Presumably the alligator's. Some members reported that the enigmatic meat was “taut” in texture, with the consistency of chicken and the flavor of fish, but Tyler felt that “I still don't really know what alligator tastes like.”

Had we not sampled Dionysus' pizza in better times, we would have to write it off based on this experience. There were signs of the pizza that we know and love: the edge crust still had some light, bubbly texture to it, but in the middle of the pie things got gummy and we left feeling stuffed with dough. The cheese was good but laid on indiscriminately, lacking character, and without the nice browning or bubbling that you get with a thinner layer of cheese. The sauce was still faintly spicy, and had some garlic kick, but mostly it was too sweet and overabundant. We actually left multiple slices of pizza on the tray, uneaten. Dionysus is a nice bar and worth visiting to hang out and grab a beer, but at the moment we can't recommend that you go there just for the pizza.



4/8 slices

FROZEN PIZZA CHRONICLES: BABU AND YOU

When in need of a quick pizza fix, you might be attracted to the idea of pizza in a pocket. The gold standard for this form of urgent cheese-delivery is the Hot Pocket™, food of last resort, office lunch of kings; people who didn't know how to feed themselves in college totally made it into three meals a day. The Hot Pocket™ is, by definition, out of place and time. Wrapped in a crispy pastry crust of renunciation, it refuses to acknowledge any and all externalities, particularly the effect that it will have on your body after you eat it. The Hot Pocket™ is a reality unto itself, a thing that doesn't look like food and probably isn't, but that just makes you want to eat it more.

Naturally we at Pizza Club like to explore alternative quick-pizza solutions, the particular, varied, obscure back-alleys of the freezer aisle. Does it come with its own oven-proof tray? Is it enclosed in an impermeable membrane of pastry dough? Can you eat it while driving? And how sick will it make you if you eat a whole box at once?



For Babu's® Pocket Sandwiches Masala Pizza, the answers were as follows: no; you would think so but no; probably; and not sick at all. To be fair, we had two people and the box contained two pizza pockets, so Babu was clearly looking out for us when he packaged this product. The masala pizza, advertised as “crispy bread stuffed with mozzarella cheese, jalapeno peppers, and masala tomato sauce,” was quite easy to prepare. We defrosted it in the microwave and then fried it in a pan for a total wait time of seven minutes between realization of desperate hunger/laziness and satiation of said hunger/laziness.



We were promised “All-Natural ingredients and authentic flavor to instantly satisfy your cravings.” This isn't a huge claim, since eating anything would have satisfied our craving to eat something. Would we have done just as well eating a Hot Pocket™? The masala pizza was a little bit spicy and tangy; its innards were undifferentiated. The picture on the box portrays a vivid filling bursting with fresh peppers and tomatoes, but as you can see the actual contents were more of a brown-taupe mush.



There was an air about these pizza pockets of already having been chewed, which is fine I guess particularly if you're feeling lazy. The pastry crust wasn't light or flaky or bubbly – just a sturdy workmanlike container for the goo. Except that mine had some structural integrity problems and leaked at the seams. Had I been driving while consuming this pizza-pocket product, it would have been bad news for my clean, pressed button-up shirt.



I felt more satisfied with this frozen food item than with the Hot Pocket™ just because the things that are in Hot Pockets™ freak me out. Babu's pizza pockets didn't have anything crazy on the ingredients label, just tomatoes and onions and flour and stuff. It tasted kind of mushy and salty-sweet and was filling but not nauseating, thus doing the work of the Hot Pocket™ with less angst and more spices.

5/8 slices

pizza face

http://www.yardbarker.com/college_football/articles/want_a_slice_of_tim_tebow_316_pizza/9313442

who are these people? they're on pizza, that's cool!

Toss

November 28, 2011
Toss
5716 York Road

Toss is a new pizza place near Belvedere square. It is sparsely, but elegantly decorated. It seemed geared towards take-out/delivery. Menu offerings include calzones, make-your-own pies, pastas, salads, sandwiches, appetizers, etc. They boast "fresh dough made daily". The pizza menu was written on a chalkboard on the wall, but we were unsure if this would change with daily specials.

Toss is owned by the former owner of Zella's. Which apparently now is under new management and isn't the Zella's that it used to be.

Satchmo's Spicy Chicken - spicy roasted red peppers, sauce, mozzarella, chicken, mushrooms, red onions, sun dried tomatoes.





Good cheese. Even though spicy is in the name of the pizza, we did not find it that spicy or at least spicy enough to include it in the name. Some people thought this pizza was not that exciting, but we all agreed that the crust was really good. It tasted like Zella's crust used to. There wasn't that much chicken on the pizza. We felt like the heat level of the sauce was just right, though the sundried tomatoes got lost flavor wise in the pizza.

Spinach and Artichoke - garlic herb sauce, mozzarella, tomatoes, mushrooms, caramelized onions, spinach, artichokes, feta cheese.




The artichokes has a hard time staying on the pizza when you lifted a slice up to your mouth. The cheese had a really great consistency. We thought that this pizza was far better than the first pizza. There was a more even distribution of spices and it was less dry. The dough was pillowy with think crust. The feta crumbles were a really good touch.

Toss special - tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage, ham, caramelized onions, roasted red pepper (roasted fresh)





This was a good looking pizza, but fell short performance wise. The cheese lacked taste and the peppers were not fully cooked. The peppers were still a little bitter which pointed to the fact that they're fresh, but should've be roasted/roasted more. We weren't crazy about this pizza.

Margarita - light tomato sauce, herbed olive oil, mozzarella, basil, tomatoes.



We found this pizza to be very tomatoey. The crust was better on this one that the others. It seemed very fresh and had both crunchy and chewy properties.

There was a discussion on the "Pizza is a Vegetable" scandal. Bonnie pointed out that half a cup of tomato sauce has been considered a vegetable forever. Nothing has changed, they just continued this policy out of fear that school cafeterias would have to double the tomato sauce to a cup and that would make very strange pizza.


Ratings:
Spicy Chicken - 5/8
Spinach and Artichoke- 8/8
Toss Special - 4/8
Margarita - 6.5/8
Overall - 6.5/8

the beautiful and the sublime

In case you were worried about the absence of pizza-related themes in contemporary fine art.
http://www.tedmineo.com/works.html

Next Meeting

Tuesday, November 29 at 7pm
Toss
5716 York Road

http://www.tossthepizza.com/

With time to go see Dune at the Charles at 9pm!

Italian Graffiti

October 13, 2011

On a temperate evening a few weeks ago, Pizza Club convened at Italian Graffiti in Fell’s Point. We were compelled to try their pizza because they, like us, had been voted “Best of Baltimore” by City Paper (except they won best pizza and we won best food blog, not to brag or anything). Anything that purports to be the best must hold up to pizza club scrutiny.

Even the best pie in Baltimore needs to have a gimmick. Italian Graffiti is decorated floor to ceiling with “graffiti” of an “Italian” nature, mostly about pizza. It wasn’t entirely persuasive as street art, but seemed to have been lovingly applied. The employees were friendly, but the place seemed to be empty on a Thursday night. This might be because they are known for speedy delivery and many people order from home. We, however, wanted the complete experience. We even dipped into the non-pizza offerings, munching on a bunch of delicious “Graffiti rolls,” which were pizza dough stuffed with spinach and cheese.


As we looked at the menu, we realized that there was only a dollar difference between a medium and a large pizza, which was significantly bigger, so we ordered four large pizzas. It should also be noted that they offer specialty pizzas by the slice, some that are not on the menu and change often.

We ordered four pies: the Graffiti Feta, the Genovese, the Buffalo Chicken, and the Margherita.

The Graffiti Feta is field greens, mixed vegetables, artichokes, roasted red peppers, feta cheese, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The Feta pie was one of those pizzas that is basically a salad on a pizza: it had arugula, roasted eggplant, mushrooms, and balsamic vinegar. This can be a good thing or a bad thing; it was hard to handle, and there were unavoidable topping casualties. However, it provided the vegetable course of the meal, which felt very healthy and nutritious. Andrew said “I like eating pizza and salad at the same time.” The crust was a little dry, possibly because of the lack of sauce, but people appreciated the balsamic tang as the vinegar soaked into the crust.





The Margherita pizza was a definite winner. It was a classic pizza with fresh mozzarella and basil with tomato sauce. It was described by one table as “completely awesome and delicious,” “straightforward,” and “really solid.” The crust of this pizza was more persuasive than the Feta, possibly because of a generous slathering of sweet, hearty sauce. Some felt lie there was too much sauce compared to the giant slices of mozzarella. The mozzarella was good and stretchy. Although a simple pie, the Margherita was a crowd-pleasing classic.




The Buffalo Chicken is breaded chicken, mozzarella, blue cheese, celery and wing sauce. It was pretty intense. There was a lot of chicken on this pizza that was described as “fall-off-the-slice chicken”. The Buffalo sauce was pretty spicy and left a hot tingle on your tongue. This was the first Buffalo Chicken pizza that we have come across that actually tastes like chicken wings. The crust held the toppings well and did not collapse under the weight of the copious toppings.



The Genovese had creamy pesto sauce, sun dried tomatoes, sausage, parmesan cheese and mozzarella. This is a sausage pizza and the sausage was certainly a dominant taste, which was not a bad thing for most people. There was also secret sausage under the cheese. People preferred the sliced sausage on the pizza to bit of sausage they have experienced at other pizza places. The pesto was not overly garlicy. There was debate over the pesto to sausage ratio.



We lingered outside for a while pondering if they deserved to have won Best of Baltimore. It was pretty good and the pizzas were sizable. Is it the cute gimmick? The graffiti delivery car? They must do more business that way. We were uncertain of their delivery radius. Do they offer more than other pizza places in town? More uncertainties. We congratulate Italian Graffiti on their win and hope they do well. Do they win our best of? Maybe not.




Buffalo Chicken: 6.5/8
Margherita: 7/8
Graffiti Feta: 7/8
Genovese: 5.5/8

Overall experience rating: 7/8