Review: Kyro Pizza

Kyro Pizza

900 Cathedral St.

Baltimore, MD

We arrived at Kyro Pizza on a dreary evening and were treated to dreary pizza. Not that it was bad pizza necessarily, but it was not the kind of pizza that inspires faith in the progress of civilization. With so much going on in the pizza world, and the stakes in the gourmet pie game growing ever higher, it's disappointing to encounter a place with the form, but not the content, of pizza connoisseurship.

nice-looking wall thing

Kyro has a snazzy design scheme, with website, menu, and interior décor coordinated to convey some kind of young, hip, trendy vibe. But is it enough to install a brick oven and write “Maryland's best brick oven pizza” on your website banner? They offer a lot of other Middle Eastern menu items which are perhaps better than their pizza – for some reason, restaurants like to tack pizza onto their normal offerings, but it's a bad move to promote lackluster pizza over the things that you actually make well. Really, our gripe with Kyro was the over-hyping – you can't design your way around average pizza with pretty signs.

When we slogged in from the rain on a swampy Wednesday night, there was one other occupied booth in the place. As we waited for pies, a discourse on cheese-pizza essentialism unfolded - I think the point was that plain cheese pizza is the closest that one can get to the pure Platonic form of pizza while trapped within the finite bounds of human consciousness. This conversation was relevant because there's a lot of stuff on the Kyro menu that my mom would think is “weird”/“crazy”: they are particularly noted for exotic pies like the Sharm el-Shek (salmon and caviar), the sloppy joe and hotdog pizzas, and the General Kyro, which is a pizza with General Tso's chicken on it. These items demonstrate that they are willing to put anything on a pizza, so we're supposed to give them credit for adventurousness. But what about the foundations? We ordered with an eye to uncovering the pure form of a Kyro pizza.

foundations: elasticity

We got four pies: a Margarita (tomato sauce and cheese, determined to be the most elemental cheese pizza out of four on the menu), a Dahb (grilled eggplant, roasted red peppers, garlic, tomato sauce, sun-dried tomatoes), Di Funghi (sauce, cheese, and mushrooms), and an India (Tandoori chicken, spicy tomato yogurt curry, squash and mozzarella with mango chutney). 

just regular pizza

The cheese pizza, a litmus test, did not bode well. Dan pointed out that Kyro's use of a brick oven was technically adept: the thin crust was correctly cooked, with a nice even bake, and the dough had been proofed correctly because there were no huge air bubbles. However, the crust lacked spring or bounce – it was very typical, and not really worth finishing. The central part of the pie could have used more sauce. The cheese was “fresh enough,” but too salty, and the whole thing lacked “zing.” Dan observed that pizza, like sex, is good even when it's bad, which is one way of looking at it.

Dahb pizza

We asked for a Dahb pizza with whole wheat crust, which, in light of their issues with regular crust, was a mistake. It was crunchy but bland and flavorless. The toppings were excellent, especially the eggplant, suggesting that it might be smart to order non-pizza menu items containing eggplant. The sauce, again, was standard pizza parlor sauce. What were we thinking, dragging down an adequate pizza in the name of health? I would caution against it. Get your whole grain fiber somewhere else.

vegan mushroom pizza

We also customized our mushroom pizza with soy cheese to test out Kyro's vegan accommodations (past reviewers have praised their vegan food). Nobody noticed the soy cheese, but that's because the pizza itself was just boring. It resembled any other pie you would get at a standard pizza parlor. In a world of specialty pizza inflation (see: Joe Squared's mushroom pizza with forty kinds of mushrooms), paying premium prices for shrively plain mushrooms is not cool ($15.50 for a 14” pie). This seems equitable towards the dairy and non-dairy consumer, at least, since veganizing made no noticeable difference in quality.

India pizza (chutney not pictured)

Finally, the meat-friendly dug in to the India pizza. They really liked the mango chutney that came in plastic containers on the side. “It's like dessert on a pizza,” said Chris. Upon closer examination we concluded that it might be Smucker's apricot jam. The tandoori chicken was a bit chewy, and nobody noticed the yogurt sauce. We proceeded to spread “chutney” on the remaining slices of every pie to make them more palatable.

yes to chutney

This may seem like an overly harsh evaluation, and it probably is. But things are competitive out there. A new high-end fancy pizza place opens every week. Claiming to be “the best” in this booming industry is an invitation to critical scrutiny, and Kyro Pizza doesn't hold up very well. At around $17 for a large specialty pie, you could do better somewhere else. If you really want caviar, and you want it on a pizza, then this is the place for you. However, from our perspective, fancy toppings don't make up for lackluster foundations.

“Good but not life-changing”

3.5/8

BALTIMORE PIZZA CLUB-IN-EXILE

BALTIMORE PIZZA CLUB-IN-EXILE
by Alicia Puglionesi

Thirteen ways of looking at a Blackbird pizza
(Blackbird Pizzeria, 507 S. 6th St., Philadelphia PA)


1)
My brother recently revealed that he is a "vegan," and after all the pain and suffering that this lifestyle choice has caused for our family, I felt it was time to begin the healing process by bringing them a vegan pizza that we could share. The pizza would need to break down entrenched prejudices with sheer charm and tastiness. Upon the shoulders of this humble pizza would rest the happiness of a home torn asunder by dietary and ethical conflicts. Nothing and everything was at stake. Pizza doesn't have shoulders, that makes no sense.

2)
Jason, newly-minted "vegan," recommended Blackbird Pizza in Philadelphia's Society Hill because it's the only place he knows that makes specialty vegan pizzas (and, for the record, vegan cheesesteaks, sandwiches, plus many other foods not addressed here). Decisions made by necessity are often the best decisions. In today's world of superfluous consumer choice, etc. etc. The Baltimore-based reader should also note that this pizza parlor is relevant because it's named after blackbirds, which are either the same as or related to ravens.

3)
Thinking fast, I sent up a Pizza Club beacon (mass text) so that other pizza devotees might enjoy this hopefully-tasty treat and contribute their valuable insights. Joined in short order by a local expert, we departed for the "nice" part of the city where you have to pay for parking.

4)
Founded by a former chef at Horizons, Philly's premier vegan fancy-pants restaurant, Blackbird is more humble in appearance but still a bit hard on the wallet (specialty pies run you $19, while [humungous] individual slices clock in at $2.50-$3.50). It opened this past summer at 507 S. 6th St., the space that formerly housed Gianna's Grille. This was confusing for me since I always refer out-of-town vegetarians to Govina's or Gianna's for a veggie cheesesteak fix. For the record, Blackbird's veggie cheesesteak is more expensive than Gianna's, and neither were/are as good as Govinda's, so if you get anything out of this paragraph it should be that you need to go to Govinda's for a Philly cheesesteak.

5)
After pondering the menu and ruling out weird shit like nacho pizza and barbecue pizza, we decided on a Fungi pie (white pizza with exotic mushrooms, truffle oil, and garlic sauce) and a "South Philly Style Pizza" (red sauce, broccoli rabe, seitan steak pieces, and fennel). The staff was friendly and helpful, and the by-the-slice pies were flatteringly displayed behind glass. We sat by the fake fireplace/space heater and pondered the human condition, trading temporary tattoos for cigarettes and otherwise making the best of things.

6)
When the pies were ready it became clear that, as I had known all along in the deepest recesses of my soul, we would have to eat some of the pizza on the spot, rather than bringing it all home to my hungry family. This is a basic evolutionary hunter-gatherer instinct, it's totally ok and not poor form at all to skim a little off the top. Also, it was crucial to utilize the expertise of my friend Joyce, resident Funguy expert, in evaluating the mushroom pizza.


7)
The first bite of 'shroom 'za yielded what our resident expert termed "that genuine mushroom funk." Truffle oil, a trump card in terms of classy ingredients, gave the mushrooms some subtle nuance; garlic provided a sharp counterpoint to the fungal earthiness. I'd also like to use the word "bouquet" here. My brother took issue with the presence of a long human hair delicately adhering to the crust (pictured). The hair did not belong to any member of our party, but also did not match the hairstyle of anyone else in the restaurant. Our undimmed desire to continue eating is a testament to the fact that it was good pizza. The appearance of another mystery hair went entirely unremarked because who really wants to think about these things.


8)
As a segue between pizzas, we can discuss what they had in common: a consistently good dough, compressed to a crunchy, flaky, unobtrusive vehicle underneath the toppings, and blossoming into an airy crust with those baked-cheese bubbles that are arise in the intermediate crustal zone and are secretly the best part of pizza.


9)
Having said all these nice things about the crust, essentially setting it up for a victory lap, I'm sad to report that it didn't perform as well in pizza #2. Pizza Club members and auxiliary members and honorary member-experts engaged in extensive scientific debate regarding the causes of this disappointment. Two competing hypotheses emerged: the familiar "topping overload" hypothesis posited that the plethora of toppings on the South Philly pizza were simply more than the delicate crust could handle. Joyce advanced the more complex theory that the watery consistency of the vegan cheese plus sauce was causing the crust to soften, providing less structural support for toppings. This hypothesis eventually won out. We silently longed for knives and forks with which to tackle the floppy slices. (Note: there were knives and forks available at the counter, but no one wanted to be the first to show weakness).


10)
The South Philly pizza considered holistically had a notable fruity aftertaste, possibly related to the composition of the sauce. This fruity tang didn't compliment the seitan-and-broccoli-rabe faux-cheesesteak theme; a cheesesteak pizza should be meatier and more savory. Thinly-sliced fennel, a refined stand-in for the traditional onion topping, only added to our confusion. Perhaps Blackbird's sauce is not a strong point, as the white pizza we sampled had none of these weaknesses.

11)
This leads us to the subject of fake cheese. Cheese is the cornerstone of American pizza. Let it be stated, upfront and with no righteous bullshitting, that whole-milk mozzarella cheese and select auxiliary cheeses are the true heirs to the throne of whatever used to go on top of pizzas before cheese was invented. Why, having made this remarkable leap of human ingenuity, would we reject the miracle of cheese and revert to a substance made out of fermented arrowroot flour and oil? The question of authenticity in American life is very interesting to me. Some people really believe in things and want to show you hidden-cellphone-camera footage of cows being horrifically abused in factory farms. Other people are not able to digest dairy.

12)
Blackbird's stance on the fake cheese issue is that most fake cheese is bad-tasting and made of soy. They work with Daiya cheese, which is not soy-based. You can pretty much do your own research on the internet, but the claim is that this miracle-cheese-like-substance tastes cheesier and lacks the virtuous-soy aftertaste of the first-wave fromage substitutes. This is true for the most part. Its weakness is a liquidy consistency which, as noted above, contributes to goopiness and crust-collapse.

13)
Now would be a good time to wrap up this review with a sentimental tableau of family reconciliation. By the time my brother and I got home with what remained of the two pizzas (there was PLENTY of pizza left, geeze), the rest of the nuclear unit was quite hungry and irritated. They were prepared to hate on this alien and potentially immoral species of decorated bread. But guess what? They liked it. So there you go. And I actually wrote thirteen paragraphs before I went back and numbered them and added the stupid title.

7/8 slices, plus points for answering the eternal maternal question, "You're a vegan?! How will you live? What did I do wrong???"