Making Things Pizza

Paulie Gee's Hampden

3535 Chestnut Ave.

Baltimore MD

In a perverse way, Pizza Club is grateful for the logistical complications that stalled the opening of Paulie Gee's Hampden for lo these past three years. The resistance of the smoke-encrusted old Republican Club building, which had to be stripped down to the bricks, helped us reflect on our own knee-jerk feelings of resistance to the new and trendy. In the interval between proprietor Kelly Beckham's announcement that he would open a branch of the pioneering Brooklyn craft-pizzeria in Baltimore and the unveiling of said local branch, we walked past the building for weeks and months, watching it slowly metamorphose.

The passage of time mellowed our suspicions of parachute Brooklyn imperialism; Beckham was committed to his colleagues in the local pizza scene and to his Hampden location. Most neighbors we queried were unfamiliar with the Brooklyn Paulie Gee's and its status as a darling of national pizza tastemakers. The Baltimore location would have to stand on its merits; the whole trend that it embodied had already spread locally with venues like Verde and Hersch's working in the same vein of finely-crafted high-end Neapolitan pies in a casual-but-classy setting. When we finally walked through the glass doors into the high-ceilinged dining room of Paulie Gee's Hampden, we were simply curious to taste their pizza.

The pizza, however, is not entirely the point. I mean, it is – this is a business where workers devote their time to optimizing the number of charred spots on a round slab of dough. There's like a 90% chance that you'll eat a pie complying with the most stringent metrics of quality. But the underlying ethos of Paulie Gee's Hampden seems to center on process, experimentation, and technical mastery, an ethos very connected to PG's humble roots in deep pizza-nerd culture.

Indeed, pizzas are complex interactions between humans, objects, and physical laws. In a fast-food setting, the process is automated and black-boxed to maximize efficiency and consistency. In a high-end setting, the process is fetishized as the artistry of a “chef” who has total creative control. Neither of these is correct; neither invisible systems nor Great Men determine pizza's fate. Many contemporary theorists suggest that things are running the show.

With its cooking area fully-exposed in the center of the space, Paulie Gee's declares the networked nature of the human and non-human. The ovens have individual names and dispositions; people maneuver with and around these infernal agents, discovering their dynamic properties. Inches, degrees, and seconds execute powerful entanglements. A fickle mixture of flour, water, and bacteria sets the entire agenda.

Granted, this is the start-up phase of PG's operation, so everyone is focused on learning how to use new tools, combine ingredients, and run a restaurant. But the spiritual essence of the place is also being formed, and at its core is a characteristically American paradox. We want the authenticity of time-honored Old World traditions – ovens hand-built by Neapolitan craftsmen, meat slices that taste like pepperoni but have fancy Italian names so you know they're legit. At the same time, we're obsessed with innovation, optimization, and novelty. You can actually taste this paradox in Paulie Gee's pizza. Cognitive dissonance tastes really, really good sometimes, but its weird moments are a reminder that we're all adrift on the same greasy flow of global capital, grasping at signifiers of authenticity.

The menu itself is testimony to Paulie Gee's postmodern condition. Each pie is named with a goofy wordplay, often on a pop culture reference, concocted to make people on dates feel foolish when they order. However, beneath the celebrity puns we find perplexities. “The toppings seem random,” Kate said of their specialty pies. Mike concurred, “these descriptions aren't grabbing me. It all sounds the same.” Another Mike added, “there are lots of different kinds of pizza but not a lot of variety. If you're gonna have all these options they should be distinctive.” PG's is assertive about not doing gluten-free crust until they develop a recipe that meets their standards of excellence. They do, however, offer a strong slate of vegan pies with house-made cheese and meat replacements. At one point, we mistook the vegan sausage for real sausage.

Over the course of a marathon 4-hour pizzafest, Pizza Club got to sample a wide range of pies (and we tried making some ourselves, with mixed success). PG's workers were friendly and accommodating of our shambling party, and we were in very good hands hospitality-wise. The baseline, a cheese pizza (dubbed the “Regina”) featured pure and strong flavors, a sauce made only of crushed tomatoes under a perfect lacing of mozzarella and basil leaves. PG's Neapolitan stylings function optimally under these simple conditions: the crust has crunch, the moisture balance is good. 

As we ventured deeper into the specialty realm, things got soggier – an arugula-topped pie was “a little watery, but very light and fresh.” More maximal options, like the “In Ricotta da Vegan” with house-made cashew ricotta and vegan sausage, were laden down with their topping bounty. These are delicious, high-quality toppings; more is always better in America, but they strain the traditional delicacy of the crust.

PG's deploys an array of flavor-infused oils and reductions to add complexity to their pies, equivalent to what their down-market competition calls “afterbakes”. One Pizza Club member coined the term “post-oven philosophy” for this trend. At PG's “Mike's Hot Honey” is a mainstay, a spin-off product from the original Brooklyn restaurant. Pizza Club enjoyed how this honey layers sweetness and heat on top of salty mozzarella and tangy sauce, but some felt that it was overkill and certain pies became cloyingly sweet.

To highlight hand-made ingredients from other local establishments, PG's was offering a Blue Pit Brisket (BPB) pie. This proved controversial in our group. Some declared it an abomination against pizza (“Nothing is ok about this”), while others loved its “balance of sweet, smokey, and bitter” flavors. The individual toppings were “all good...but the sweetness [of BBQ sauce] is overpowering. I'd rather just eat brisket,” said one Pizza Club member. A fan of the pie deemed it “nice synergy, something that can only happen here. Well done!”

We recognized the BPB as a novelty pie, meant to jazz up the menu and cure pizza fatigue by smashing together two beloved food genres. Which is fine – that's a thing all pizza places do (see: taco pizza, Philly cheesesteak pizza, mac and cheese pizza) and it doesn't have to be a masterpiece for the ages. But given the great abundance of Baltimore food-makers who pickle, smoke, jam, and ferment, we'd hope for more considered use of local ingredients. “They get the kind of nice things people are into – honey, mezcal, balsamic infusions – but not how to combine them,” said one Pizza Club member; Mike concurred, “they have the nice tools, the nice techniques, the nice ingredients, but not the nice touch.” Faced with infinite possibilities, it kind of feels like PG's is systematically trying out every permutation, which worked for Paul Ehrlich.

We attest that at Paulie Gee's Hampden the practice of Neapolitan pizza-making is being pursued at a high level of technical proficiency. The crust is thin, crisp, and delicate, pillowing out around the edges and characteristically spotted. Some felt that the leopard spotting made their slices taste burned, but natural variation is part of the deal with this style, and if you don't like oven-char, Neapolitan might not be for you. Conceptually, Paulie Gee's is like very serious cosplay: an enthusiastic, obsessive, sometimes-artless appropriation of a thing that it recognizes it did not create and does not own. For Paulie Gee the man, pizza was an elective affinity cultivated through the internet. As in cosplay, there's a sheer joy that comes with giving this affinity concrete form, enmeshing it within the world of vital materials.

In short: the cost of PG's craftsmanship runs from $8 to $18 for a specialty pizza that feeds two moderately-hungry people. There is variability from pie to pie, both in terms of how they're cooked and the success of the ingredient combinations. These variations will fall below the noticeability threshold for most patrons, who will find a similar experience to other local mainstays of Neapolitan style. Pizza lovers who pay special attention will have the unique pleasure of participating in a living experiment. “In 20 years,” said Mark, “they might have the perfect pizza. Or maybe 2 years, who knows. It's kind of exciting because you can watch their craft grow. It's very ambitious.” Paulie Gee's offerings may not cohere into a culinary vision, but that's because its model favors process, enthusiasm, and technique over authorship, a practice-based approach to pizza and networked modernity.

6.5/8 slices

Photo credits: Graham

Eternal return: Maria's of Hampden

Pizza Club sometimes wakes in the dead of night paralyzed by the terror of eternal recurrence. If there are a finite number of pizzas, and a finite number of pizza parlors, must not the same pizza reappear again and again in different times and places? Nietzsche suggests that there is no escape from this iron law of the universe and Pizza Club's function is to write this review over and over. Even as the mundane world is wracked by paroxysms of change and capitalism vomits up its bilious stream of innovations, we'll always be sitting at the same vinyl-topped table and eating the same pretty average pizza. Except at the new Maria's of Hampden, where there is no table.

We recently found ourselves once again in that basement corner of Keswick and 36th, a site once associated with Angelo's Big Slice, the "biggest" slice of "pizza" in Baltimore. The Big Slice died an ignominious death and now haunts the retirement tower on Roland and 40th. Its ghost is still tasty enough and they need your business so get up there and support Angelo's while enjoying a fantastic view. Meanwhile, the corner shop at 36th and Keswick was commandeered by a Frankenstein's monster, 36th Avenue Pizza, stitched together from spare parts. We did not have the opportunity to sample this pizza before the venture self-destructed.

Currently Maria's, a dine-in/carryout in Parkville, is attempting to operate a Baltimore branch in the same accursed corner. First mistake, Maria, is that the space has plenty of room for seating but you have not obtained tables. We are used to sitting under the awning outside Angelo's to eat gross slices of pizza. Baltimore's memory is long. Go to Home Depot and buy a plastic table. The bereft interior, combined with the forlorn 36th Ave Pizza sign still hanging out front makes us think that Maria's is hesitant about making a commitment to the location.

Pizza Club has no reason to believe that certain pizzas in New York City don't taste exactly like the greasy, sweet, bready pizza produced in Maria's ovens. Indeed, one Pizza Club member compared the cheese pies to a recently-scarfed dollar slice obtained around Union Station. Thus, some will call it passable New York style pie, which they may use as a synonym for what Kate called "totally reasonable" fast-food pizza. Plain, pleasantly crisped, mild and inoffensive. The free pepper flakes, garlic salt, and parmesan are there for a reason, but you need to remember to take them with you in a little plastic container because there's nowhere to sit. The price is right -- Maria's wants you to embrace the circularity of the universe by buying one large cheese pizza and getting the second for a dollar. For good measure, Pizza Club did this twice.

We observed that the large pies look much less appetizing coming out of the oven than the smaller ones, perhaps a consequence of heat distribution challenges. Maria's friendly teenage workers humored our questions about the principium individuationis and helped us stack up the pizza discounts. We left them to their fate and marched up 36th Street in a ragged pizza procession to share our shame with the denizens of the mostly-empty Belgian beer hall where you're allowed to bring your own self-destructive food preferences.

The cheese pie, as noted, was chewy and bland but pretty reasonable for what amounted to like $4 per pie. A mushroom and pepper pie did not inspire much interest. The exotic entry, a Greek pizza, was laden with vinegary pepperonchini which gave it some spice and flavor interest but did not strike us as especially Greek. The white-bread style crust is sturdy enough to support numerous toppings. Ben speculated that this pie would be good next-day pizza, but we were not able to investigate this as we gave away the leftover slices to the crust punks encamped in the vestibules of the Avenue.

"This is not great pizza," said Ben. "It is rubbery and sweet and not too flavorful. It is good pizza." When in Hampden, Pizza Club prefers Bella Roma or an Indian pie at Philly's Best. We spent a lot of time discussing Maria's selection of the classic pizza box design that depicts a brutalist courtyard in perspective with a giant flaming pizza sun setting behind a restaurant. Or is the fiery pizza sun rising? We are indifferent.

4/8 slices

All Pies Go to Heaven

Angelo's "Pie In the Sky"
3838 Roland Ave.
Top of the Retirement Tower
Hampden

At the end of a long, industrious life as Baltimore's largest slice of pizza with huge biceps, Angelo's was sacrificed in an ancient solstice ritual and reincarnated at the top of the retirement tower on Roland Ave. It's the best view in all of Baltimore. You can gaze down upon the graveyard to the north where rites of spring proceed apace with ribbons and flower garlands to win the blessings of the dead. Far to the south, the harbor god slumbers below a scrum of garbage-fed algae.

"Spring Break Walrus"

This space has seen the cyclical life and death of various culinary endeavors over the years. A cadre of dusty ghosts lurk in the rafters sipping burnt coffee; they cast an enchanted circle where pilgrims from the world below take refuge in the peaceful vale of senior citizenship.

Old age is humanity's most important accomplishment and thus many rituals have evolved to honor elders while also politely removing their autonomy. Modern rituals revolve around prolonging life at any cost. Maybe you can't raise money for mortal illnesses because your humanistic training taught you that the corporate charity-biomedicine-industrial complex is morally bankrupt and exploitative. But you can drape a flower garland over an elderly person. A great place to meet them is in the retirement tower elevator on your way to get pizza at the new Angelo's.

Cheese Pizza

The question here is, "does this pizza differ at all from the old Angelo's?" No. It's still really cheap and pretty mediocre, but now it comes with the sort of view that most of us will never have from the executive office that our slapdash career paths will never furnish us with. It's also BYOB so REMEMBER TO BRING BEER.

We ordered three pies. There was nothing particular about them. "I've always thought that Angelo's was adequate pizza," said Mike. Mark agreed, "It doesn't exceed or disappoint expectations." Adding toppings will help validate the time and effort that goes into chewing and swallowing this pizza. The best idea was selecting garlic as a topping -- this added the element of flavor that was absent from the sauce, a "really huge improvement." The crust is slightly sweet and achieves middle-of-the-road chewiness and crispness.

Peppers and Mushrooms

Some people think that Angelo's is like New York pizza. I can't support that position. It's clearly Baltimore pizza, that is, it was reverse engineered from a picture of New York pizza on a takeout menu smuggled across the Mason-Dixon line. The faded image was soaked in olive oil, left overnight in the woods during a full moon, and braided into the hair of a virgin. To this day, when wolves howl across the Jones Falls at the flickering lights of Angelo's Pie In the Sky, diners recall the sacrifice of our ancient ancestor, symbolically renewed each season with the daubing of tomato sauce on a pizza stone which is then hurled at a scapegoat selected by the CityPaper Best of Baltimore reader's poll.

Garlic and Pepperoni

There are a lot of confusing things about the myth of Angelo's that require greater philological explication. The schism, as I understand it, was the result of a Freudian intergenerational conflict within the Pizza family. Angelo's old space at 36th and Keswick became "36th Ave. Pizza," with predictable disastrous results.

Be warned foolhardy moonlighters, the "Big Slice" that is the signature of Angelo's is not available after 5pm. Do I need to impart the hackneyed Baltimore wisdom pertaining to the Big Slice? Okay: the Big Slice is a gimmick. If you want pizza, get a regular pie, unless you're drunk, which is hard for most working people to achieve before 5pm.

Remnants

As usual, Pizza Club was both divided in its opinions and completely unanimous. Behold:
Tiffany: "I wouldn't come back here for the pizzas."
Mike: "I'll come back here all the time."
Tiffany: "There are other things I'll come back here for, just not the pizza."
Mike: "Maybe we're the bozos."

Quantitative findings:
Cheese pie -- 4/8
Pepper and mushroom pie -- 4.5/8
Garlic and pepperoni pie -- 6/8
Overall experience weighted for the "view factor" -- 6/8

Pizza Club Meeting: The Arthouse

The Arthouse
1115 W 36th St
Baltimore

 The ley lines underneath Hampden are shifting this year, bringing a new alignment of magnetic and spiritual forces, new vistas of astral energy, cheese plates, taxidermied badgers. I suspect that Woodberry Kitchen has obtained a chunk of Stonehenge and they are hiding it in their labyrinth deep under TV Hill, where it radiates ancient hexes.

Is it any accident that pizza stones are also made out of stone? What would a pizza cooked on a piece of Stonehenge taste like, and would it confer godlike mystical knowledge upon the eater? Keep your eye on Woodberry's Winter 2014 menu to find out.

The powers-that-be are summoning these occult forces for a reason, namely, Paulie Gee's is soon to open in Hampden, upsetting the equilibrium of Baltimore's pizza ecosystem with its Brooklyn star power. Stirrings from Joe Squared in the south and Iggie's to the east suggest a pending clash of the pizza titans, during which one of two things will happen: Baltimore will be destroyed in an inferno of mozzarella, or we will reap the benefits of free-market competition. The free market will also eventually destroy us BTW. But until then, it allows us to enjoy at least four different kinds of really good pizza. 

These are troubling, perplexing times. How much longer can I afford to live in my neighborhood?  Isn't it great that Walmart gives people jobs? I mean, I can't unionize either and I just spent four years in grad school. For shelter from the storm of late capitalism, we highly recommend The Arthouse, newly opened on the Avenue in Hampden. 

None of us could remember going inside this storefront back when it was an art gallery. They've renovated very nicely, with warm-colored walls, tin ceiling, and a nice layout of bar and table seating. Go to the back and sit near the brick oven's roaring fire, order one of the Baltimore beers on tap, and drink until you are warm and rosy-faced and untroubled, at least for a while. 

The pizza here is promising on a technical level; they have really nailed the crust, which is the most important thing. It's crispy on the outside and pillowy on the inside with appropriate chewiness. Toppings come and go; specialty pies are like high-premium stock options fluctuating wildly in the night. The point is that this was a really good Pizza Club meeting. We had fun and enjoyed each other's company.

cheese pizza

As per our earlier discussion of ley lines, there are certain configurations of landscape, history and sensoria that help humans feel peaceful about our condition here on earth. Sometimes this bubbles up as nostalgia -- I mean, pizza -- explaining why pizza is having such a "moment" in popular culture. But glorifying pizza on the internet is a hollow exercise -- these felicitous configurations are only available in actual places, like The Arthouse in Hampden, where we ordered eight pies from their ample menu. 

spicy leek

Many people felt that the cheese pie was the best: it had a lot of cheese, kind of like a New York pizza but smaller. Mariam observed that "a good plain pie is hard to find," and she appreciated the tangy, garlicy sauce. (I found the thick layer of cheese a bit too sturdy, but I was alone in this.) They offer a number of vegetarian pies, including a "Fun Guy" (mushrooms, onion, fennel, brie, thyme, and balsamic reduction) and a "Spicy Leek" (leek, cherry pepper, mozzarella, romano, thyme). The Fun Guy was really heavy on the mushrooms, which some felt gave it an earthy or "dirt" flavor. I enjoy mushrooms, especially a lot of them. Other than the spice, which seemed to be red pepper flakes, the Spicy Leek pie was not too exciting. 

Italiano pizza

Meat-eaters enjoyed the Italiano (mozzarella, tomato sauce, sausage and pepperoni) best. They appreciated that it was simple and not greasy. The Duck Confit (pulled confit duck leg, black bean sauce, pickled onion, arugula, crema) was over-topped. Duck on pizza sounds like a good idea, but our tasters concluded that there are better things to put on pizza. 

duck confit pizza

The Arthouse also has an escargot pizza for those who like to push the envelope of vegetarianism. I tried it because whatever, I'd rather eat a snail than a duck. They kind of tasted like mushrooms, which I like. I thought the pie was well put together, though people who know more about escargot found it weird to eat them on pizza. 

escargot on pizza

The white pizza was the most controversial. Most of us found it a flavorless vehicle for ricotta cheese, while a vocal minority thought it was the best pie of the evening. Pro: "Balanced, sweet, amazing." Con: "Globs of ricotta on limp crust, needs herbs and garlic."

Mick observed that the Arthouse seems to be "very topping-oriented," striving for new and interesting combinations which can overwhelm a pie. Their pizza dough is great, so there's time for them to figure the rest out. Someone will always be enticed to order a duck confit pie just to see what it is, but does that strategy have enduring value? We crave excitement and variety, as though the world isn't varied and terrifying enough. Order the cheese pizza and you will be satisfied, and drink an extra beer with the money you save.

Rating: 6/8 slices

Evan feels hope for the future

Duck, duck, pizza

Birroteca
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.

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. 

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). 

 

"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.

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. 

 

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.” 

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.

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

Casa Mia (that pizza place in the Rotunda across from the box office)

Casa Mia's of the Rotunda
711 W 40th St
Baltimore, MD 21211

  Today we are talking about solid pizza. Where I grew up, there was this stupid pizza place where all the cool kids hung out after school. But the pizza there was really bad. Like, big floppy rubbery vast sprawling grease-ocean bad – the kind of crap that people only feed to eleven-year-olds just because they can get away with it. So me and my bespectacled braces-wearing friends took secret pride in going to the other pizza place, three blocks away, where the pizza was of highest quality and we could talk shit on the cool kids without being disturbed. This became a sort of ritual until we discovered that the Chinese restaurant around the corner was EVEN COOLER (i.e., a place that no one our age would ever go).

I thought of this because Casa Mia, that pizza place in the Rotunda across from the box office, is the place I'd go after school if I was eleven. It's hard to explain what makes it perfect, but it's in a basement and next to a movie theater past this weird deserted hall of mirrors, and there's hardly ever anyone around.

The Casa Mia target demographic is movie-goers, casual by-the-slice buyers, so when I called them up and wanted four large pizzas they seemed a bit caught off guard. However, they were very helpful in explaining Casa Mia's offerings. We ordered two traditional pizzas (a meat and a cheese) and two specialty pizzas (one vegetarian white and one spinach and tomato with white sauce).

When I showed up to get the pies they were still in the oven, so I hung around the Rotunda where there was some kind of pit bull rescue charity event going on that involved nice old ladies wearing “I heart pitbulls” t-shirts. The guys at Casa Mia were busy taking small orders from the theater crowd, but they provided reassurance and glimpses into the oven until my pies were ready. I stared at a poster for the Hunger Games, which I didn't realize was a CGI movie about a young woman who suffers a breakdown after applying too much bronzer.

I drove the pizza home as quickly as possible because we were having a party, the kind of party where you invite people over to eat pizza and then demand that they provide a sophisticated critical analysis of said pizza. The general consensus was that Casa Mia is a solid pizza place for normal, everyday pizza consumption.

The meat pie seemed to have somewhat runny sauce, and the toppings weren't particularly distinguished although the sausage was said to have “good character.” Sara found the sauce on the cheese pizza spicy, and Patrick commented positively on the cheese itself. Patrick is also a closet Casa Mia devotee, which was news to us. He has long believed that their traditional cheese pizza is “the best.”

The specialty pies offered both more rewards and more perils. Some of the vegetable toppings weren't properly prepared to grace a pizza – Milana found the broccoli wet and “strange,” while the spinach was still clumped up, having recently emerged from the can.

The white sauce was a good base for the spinach-tomato pie because it didn't overwhelm the toppings, though some people thought it was too squishy. The toppings were strategically placed under the cheese, preventing messy spills. The vegetarian special boasted a solid sheet of vegetables on top, a happy sight for the health-conscious who like to mask their pizza in greenery. The onions and tomatoes were crunchy and fresh, while the artichokes and broccoli were canned/frozen (as is reasonable for a pizza place in the Rotunda).

The crust was just the right thickness, bearing up well under many toppings and some liquidy sauces. “Not super-special, not cardboard,” one diner remarked. We all ate way too much pizza, just like when we were eleven.

5.5/8 slices

Bella Roma

Bella Roma
3600 Falls Road
Hampden
June 2 2011

Bella Roma is that inconspicuous pizza and sub place on the corner of 36th and Falls road. It is easy to ignore or write it off, but we received a tip about the exceptional quality of their Bella Roma Delight and felt it was our duty to follow this lead. We ordered two pizzas, one plain cheese and the other the Bella Roma Delight, which is chicken, spinach, tomato, onion, and ricotta cheese. We were instructed to ask for a "crispy" crust, by those in the know. We took our pizzas to nearby Roosevelt Park and ate al fresco.

The crust on the cheese pizza was thin, but still sturdy. The pizza was chewy and there was an expansive cheese covering, leaving a narrow band of crust. It was a bit on the greasy side and we noticed perforations on the underside, most likely to aid in the cooking process.




The Bella Roma Delight was pretty intense. The crust had a nicer texture than the basic cheese pizza. We also found it to be less greasy. The ricotta on the pizza really put it over the top. They put nice big dollops of it on the pizza. The Bella Roma Delight includes 4 food groups, so for the heath conscious, perhaps this is for you. The vegetables used were also definitely fresh and the toppings were plentiful.





The cheese pizza was kind of ordinary and I wouldn't go out of my way to get it from them, but the Bella Roma Delight is certainly something I would like to experience again and again.



Ratings:
Cheese - 5.5/8
Bella Roma Delight - 7/8