YORK ROAD PLAZA PIZZA SHOWDOWN

 Vito's Pizzeria, 6304 York Rd. 

Fortunato Brothers' Pizza, 6374 York Rd.

At the beginning of this month of April Pizza Club visited two pizza parlors in the strip mall around Wells Liquors on York Road: Vito's Pizzeria and Fortunato Brothers' Pizza. First we went to the liquor store. That was the best part of this experience.

I lost my grease spattered notes from these pizzas but I pretty much remember what happened. First, people recommended both of these places on Facebook. Each place had its partisans. The whole thing seemed intriguing, with accusations of abusive management and this one time someone drove their car into the front of Fortunato's. So we decided to pit the two pizza places against each other to determine the best pizza of the York Road Shopping Plaza.

The best pizza of the York Road Shopping Plaza is Fortunato Brothers'. It was pretty good. The green vegetables were not quite thawed and baked properly, so they got kind of burnt, but tomatoes were employed to great effect. Someone said to try their white sauce with broccoli pie, and aside from the broccoli being weird (spinach would have been smarter perhaps) it was satisfying in all regards. The cheese was real and tasty. The crust was thin but pillowy. A lady at the next table was really struggling to eat a cannoli with a fork.

Fortunato's: guarded optimism. See cannoli lady in background

Before we could reach the haven of adequacy that is Fortunato's, however, we had to pass through the purgatory of Vito's. Some people really like Vito's. I'm not taking an anti-Vito's stance here, but I would conjecture that their pizza probably is much better when it's first cooked for the lunchtime crowd and served by-the-slice.

By the time we got there at 7 or 8, the slices on display did not look appetizing, and we decided that it would be more fair to order a fresh pie. In this, we were sorely misguided. We got one plain pie and one with something on it, I don't know, mushrooms or something that comes from a can and you can't mess it up. Nothing was 'messed up,' per se, but the whole thing was kind of a slog. We wound up not finishing the cheese pizza because the cheese was not too edible. If anyone who was there remembers anything more specific, please contact me with this information.

It should be noted that both places were affordably priced for events such as birthday parties or office lunches, where you are on a budget but don't want to give up on life and order Papa John's. Don't give up, please.

the end of a long day

Also, Vito's reminded us very much of the place where your middle school boy/girlfriend breaks up with you. Like, after band practice. Not that Pizza Club was in the band or had a boy/girlfriend, but this is the kind of place where you go for such mundane but necessary functions as eating pizza and ending a two-day middle school relationship. But you could do much better at Fortunato's, so go there unless you're on a by-the-slice mission some day around noon and want to report back to us about it.

Vito's Pizzeria: 2/8 slices
Fortunato Brothers' Pizza: 3.5/8 slices

Nuke the Whales

Peace a Pizza
15 Mellor Avenue, Catonsville, MD

Let me begin this review with a mea culpa. One should never trust one's faded childhood memories over the present-day testimony of trusted friends and associates who have one's best interests at heart. Although People Who Would Know reported unfortunate incidents at the Catonsville Peace a Pizza and strongly discouraged us from trying it, I, in pursuit of a misguided nostalgia or the phantom of youthful innocence, insisted that it was a good idea to drive half an hour to Catonsville for this pizza. As a direct result of my actions, people ate pizza that was not particularly good. But that's how it is - this is the duty of Pizza Club, whose adherents bravely eat unknown pizza so that others may benefit from our experience, be it harrowing or exalted.

Some history: Peace a Pizza was founded in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, not far from where I grew up. There was some kind of vague hippie branding to it, although as far as I can discern, the business has no affiliations with the counterculture. I think they went for the hippie thing because they put green vegetables on their pies, which was novel at the time. This was probably like 1990 or so, when there was NO SUCH THING AS GOURMET PIZZA. Pizza was fast food. Pizza Hut and Dominoes were the big players. In a town like mine, there was also a crappy pizza parlor on every block, but as a kid you wanted the Domino's pizza, because they had TV commercials, and tasted like processed plasticine runoff. Peace a Pizza entered this food ecosystem with new ideas - put things like goat cheese, pesto, baked ziti, hamburgers, etc. on a pizza. It was zany! When they started opening franchise locations, the unifying theme was tie-dye and the neon sign that says, "Sorry We're Open." There was a location in Ardmore, PA, where me and my friends would hang out there and feel smarter than everyone else (unifying theme of my teen years). I remember the pizza being pretty good, but what do I know.

So they recently opened a Peace a Pizza franchise in Catonsville, which Pizza Club's Pennsylvania expatriates were keen to try out. Catonsville is pretty cool. It has a nice little main street area with music shops and bars and restaurants - would be very nice to walk around when not on a pizza mission. Peace a Pizza is positioned not on this historic main street, but around a corner in a boxy stucco building in the middle of a parking lot. It looks like a great place to take your kids after soccer. 

 

We ordered our pies in advance, on the advice of the Peace a Pizza staff, since they close at 8.30pm on weeknights (which seems crazy, but whatever). This may have had a negative impact on our experience, as I suspect that the pies were cooked sometime earlier and then reheated when we got there at 8. Lunch may be their optimum pizza-quality time.

discoursing on pizza networks

In an attempt to balance novelty with pizza staples, we ordered an eggplant parmesan, a vegetable primavera, an "upside-down," and a mac-and-cheese pizza. All of these will run you about $16 for a fourteen-inch or $18 for a sixteen-inch pie. This is pretty much what you'd pay in Baltimore City for actual gourmet pizza prepared by a person who has obsessively studied traditional Neapolitan pizza-making, which is very confusing. In fairness, we should note that they advertise "Gourmet-Style" pizza, rather than actual gourmet pizza, making the charade all the more consensual on the part of those who move to the suburbs and consent to pay for this stuff. The interior of Peace a Pizza was sparse and brightly-colored, full of smooth plastic surfaces. Chris said that it reminded him of high school, which is kind of the point, but why do we do this to ourselves? Some were bothered by a non-specific humming noise in the background.

The crust was somewhere between deep-dish and regular, thick and pillowy in places, with some spice to it. Moira praised it as "bread that you want to eat" as opposed to dry boring crusts on thinner pies. Others found it "aggressively doughy." It definitely had a thick skin on the bottom - we were unable to cut slices in half with a plastic knife - but this could be a reheating problem. Likewise, the cheese was pretty much solidified and didn't have anything distinctive about it. The sauce was sweet and bland, also congealed. An advantage of this pizza is that it lacks the vast pools of grease found on standard pizza parlor pies. It might be kind of healthy, who knows.

vegetable primavera

The vegetable primavera was a jumble of discarded vegetable parts from the pre-cut-and-bagged vegetable junkyard. As Moira tried a slice of this one, Chris observed, "I can see the joy draining from your face." We agreed, however, that it could be worse.

Eggplant parm

The eggplant parmesan pizza was weirdly grainy due to the breading on the eggplant. Its design seemed to have functionality in mind - it was a stout slice, solidified and not prone to bending or sliding. However, in terms of taste it was "an oil spill," according to Dan. The group was "completely underwhelmed."

"upside down"

I ordered an "upside-down" pie because this is supposed to be a wacky novelty thing that Peace a Pizza does. I never tried it in high school because why would you do that? It's pizza with the cheese under the sauce. The taste of this pizza was summarized as "Bagel Bites."

mac and cheese uggggh why

The mac-and-cheese pizza was the standout of the evening, as in, it was "the favorite of a not very inspiring bunch." Franco found it "delicious and decadent - exceeds expectations." Let's clarify: this is a pizza with white sauce and cheese, and then, on top of that, ziti pasta with more alfredo sauce and cheese. Embracing the overkill seems to be a strong point of PaP. "Gourmet" pizza is no longer the correct word for what they do, since a gourmet pizza industry has developed over the past ten years that puts vegetables on pizza in a way that tastes good. "Novelty pizza" would better capture their strengths. They're like, "heyyyyy woah let's put mac and cheese on pizza" and then they do it and it's a bad trip for the arteries but it's so loaded with cheese and starch that it can't taste bad. Maggie termed this strategy "an embracing of flavorlessness."

this pizza will not be divided

 This might be a franchise issue, I'll have to check next time I'm in suburban Pennsylvania. Because multiple people remember that pizza being much better than the pizza we ate in Catonsville. "Once Peace a Pizza leaves PA, it's not the same," Moira observed, though she attested that they still have great salads, and their partner business, Hope's Cookies, still sells good cookies out of this location.

"It's totally standard college pizza," Chris concluded. The staff were mostly high school and college-aged kids, and PaP is a pretty decent place to work during that time of life, in the suburbs, trying to save money for a car. I must make a concession to the gourmet pizza freaks who ship all their expensive ingredients from Italy and go on intensive pizza-making retreats and sing to their dough while it rises: it is not a totally mindless task to make a good pizza. This is a craft; suburban teens do not know how to make good pizza. Fortunately, if my memory is any testament, suburban teens also don't know or care what good pizza tastes like. "Good" is a relative thing. Sometimes you just need a place to hang out that's got food and some guy you have a crush on works there.

a riddle that cannot be solved

"I applaud them for their audacity," said Franco, "but this whole experience was like a riddle that I couldn't solve." Indeed. That's because there are no answers, only more mind-expanding questions and an endlessly-receding horizon of human possibility. But really, guys, could you make better pizza, like we remember it from Pennsylvania?

2/8 slices

Green pies and other things that will come to bother you someday if you spend too much time thinking about pizza

Verde
641 S. Montford Avenue

classy lightbulbs

Many have suggested that Verde, new kid on the scene, impeccable, authentic Neapolitan, etc., is making the best pizza in Baltimore right now. A few weeks ago, Pizza Club went all-in, ordering almost every pizza on their menu to determine what the buzz is about. Since we tried so many pies (they are "personal" sized, enough for two moderately hungry people), I will simply present you with the anonymous findings of the individuals who ordered each pie (although there was much sharing, the person who ordered the pie must take ultimate responsibility for it). It should be noted that pies are divided into red or white sauce categories and cost in the $8 to $16 range.

this is a pizza montage

OFFICIAL SAMPLING FEEDBACK

Padrino: "Lemony preserved olives, sharp sopprasetta, and a cheese I've never had before deliver powerful flavor. Sauce is delicious and thick, basil lovely. A bit floppy when hot."

Pizza Verde Rossa: "Really successful salad-on-a-pizza style pie with delicate prosciutto and arugula over buffalo mozzarella and red sauce - bursts of flavor from the basil and pecorino romano sprinkled throughout. Plenty of sauce, thinnish but not crispy crust."

Marinara: "This 'za was tasty though slightly bland. This is not to say 'bad.' I know that a lactard [editor's note: this blog has no position on the moral status of the lactose intolerant] should not be so critical of a slice without cheese, but this was essentially boring bruschetta. I would probably eat again though."

White Prosciutto: "Delicious crust and great ingredients, but the white sauce aesthetic falls flat."

Daily Special ('Risotto' sauce with squash and zucchini): "You see the squash but do not taste it. Savory/sweet, not enough veggies. The point of the crust was mush" [editor's note: many pies had structural problems due to crust thinness - the middle of the pie tended to collapse into mush. Some people eat pizza with a knife and fork, and this would be appropriate rather than laughable at Verde. I suppose it's not bad, but it doesn't seem like it's doing anything for the pizza. Also, this pizza was the group's favorite.]

Sorrentina: "Unique pizza with smokey cheese and lemon but TOO MUCH of one thing, should cut it with broccoli rabe or anything really. Furthermore, there were many naked slices with no topping."

Funghi: "Lameghi!"

Margherita: "Subtle, surprising, perfect balance of flavors."

Salame: "Salty at first, followed by a zesty-ness. Crust was ok. Improved as I got closer to the edge. Cheese was good but not a dominant feature."

no pizza was injured

After the ritual consumption of pizza, we regrouped to discuss the bigger issues at stake. Is Verde a standout among the recent crop of high-end gourmet pizza places popping up in Baltimore? In terms of the basics: we felt that their dough was promising but didn't deliver a good holistic experience. It was chewy and crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside around the crust, but under the cheese it succumbed to sogginess and disintegration. Such a slice cannot be lifted. Flavor-wise, however, veteran pizza-clubbers suggested that it was superior to the crust at Birroteca, a new restaurant comparable to Verde on almost every count. The red sauce was tangy and garlicky, an agreed-upon strong point, but many regarded the white sauce as bland in comparison.

In terms of the crass but very real value-for-money question, I have no doubt that Verde's ingredients are top-notch and worth the expenditure, but I'm beginning to wonder if you could make a good pizza that is more accessibly priced. The market seems to have settled on the $12-18 range for an 8-10 inch thin-crust pizza with a couple of toppings. Meanwhile, 7-11 suggests that we keep our new year's resolutions by "tightening our belts" which means purchasing their large pepperoni pizza for $9.99. Let us for the moment pass over the deeply troubling contradictions of this promotion; what I'm saying is that there should be a palatable middle ground.

No one in our group seemed to feel that Verde's pizza itself was particularly memorable, although the rustic-industrial atmosphere, some side dishes, and some nice Italian wine would make it a memorable evening out, unless you're Dan, who couldn't stop thinking about how the antique reproduction Edison lightbulbs are "massively inefficient." Heather speculated that perhaps high-end pizza will become a phenomenon similar to the corner bodega: "it becomes a matter of location, ambiance, etc. If I wanted this pizza would I go here? No, I'd go to Birroteca because it's closer. But this is good for the neighborhood." Perhaps the Baltimore pizza glut of 2012 is finally hitting home, and we can no longer recall the difference between one authentic Neapolitan pie with organic local toppings and another authentic Neapolitan pie with organic local toppings. Pizza Club is currently searching out the cheapest, most gut-busting fast-food pizza joint in Baltimore to recalibrate our critical machinery.

 5.5/8 slices

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

for president

by Josh LaFayette of Boston, MA (via Aaron Cohen / Super Precious Gallery)

That election was great and all but it's time for a viable third party candidate. 

Mozzarella in the free world

This Canadian-American smuggling ring suggests the pervasive cheese identity issues facing us in an increasingly globalized world. Is it worth betraying your country for cheap American imitation mozzarella? Perhaps, to make cheap American pizza. As far afield as Europe, questions of cheese authenticity are causing disruptions in cultures with an evolving relationship to crappy American food. I might translate this article from German so that we actually know what it means. Thanks to Marion Schmidt, keeping an eye on international pizza affairs.

The Pope of Federal Hill

Barfly's
620 Fort Ave.
Baltimore, MD

First of all, this bar is not named after the 1987 film Barfly, in which a young Mickey Rourke plays a young Charles Bukowski. Mike, the proprietor, explained to us that "Barfly's" was the name of his fantasy football team, and thus when he opened a sports bar he gave it the same name. He had to explain this because Pizza Club members were all wearing our Mickey Rourke masks, believing it to be a Rourke and/or Bukoswki tribute bar, which was kind of awkward. Mike assured us that he does like the movie Barfly, and demonstrated his familiarity with Rourke's poignant career trajectory. There is a solitary Mickey Rourke poster in the alcove near the restroom, but the rest of the bar is decorated with sports and Baltimore memorabilia. All I'm saying is that this place could capitalize way more heavily on the drunk-belligerent-lost-to-the-world-Charles Bukowski angle and bring in a whole new demographic.

This brings us to my second preliminary point of discussion: the Great Federal Hill Pizza Bubble of 2012. Barfly's is one of a handful of new pizza establishments in Federal Hill, all offering gourmet pizza in a bar setting. We might classify their target demographic as "upscale bro": young people who want to drink, play foosball/darts/pool, and watch the game, and then get hungry and chow down on some gourmet pizza. There's variety within this bubble, with Hersh's skewing towards fancy sit-down restaurant, the Stalking Horse skewing towards sorority girls ("specializes in frozen slushy drinks with flavors like pina colada, purple grape vodka...and our most popular frozen Red Bull & Vodka Slushy"), and Pub Dog skewing towards dogs. They all make pretty delicious pizza, but is this sustainable? Will the Federal Hill Pizza Bubble burst when bros realize that they just want to eat falafel? And is it worth going all the way to Federal Hill for pizza if you are not part of the "upscale bro" demographic living in the immediate vicinity?

We brought up these questions with Mike, who is well aware that he's part of a burgeoning Pizza Bubble. He had an interesting take on the situation, arguing that more pizza in the neighborhood isn't a threat to his business. If there were more diverse culinary options - Mexican, Japanese, Middle Eastern, etc. - then customers might get distracted and drift away from plain old pizza. But in the current market, he's only competing with other gourmet pizza restaurants/bars, and he is confident that as long as he serves good pizza, people will choose his place. Mike is no vainglorious Pizza Bubble profiteer.

So, how good is this pizza? We ordered four pies (they serve 10-inch pies at $11-14 each): a plain cheese, a white spinach, a veggie, and a buffalo chicken. Before our pizza arrived Mike brought out some "special dressing" which he said is a customer favorite for dipping crust. "I don't know what's in it," he said, "but people come back for the dressing." We identified it a Caesar dressing with a lot of extra garlic, olive oil, and Parmesan, but it was indeed very good.

Barfly's serves all its food on paper plates, perhaps to accentuate the "upscale dive-bar" theme, but they were the compostable kind so I guess that's good. The pizza, which arrived promptly, had a crisp, bubbly appearance that promised good things to come. Indeed, the crust was crunchy on the outside and puffy on the inside, thick and almost buttery-tasting. We were impressed and couldn't figure out how they did it. I'm not sure if this is a trade secret, but Mike revealed that they achieve champion crust by adding Parmesan cheese to the dough, which is pretty brilliant.

cheez pizza

The plain cheese pie was, as per Mike's modest claim, "really pretty good." They use real cheese, and, as Dan attests, "real cheese goes a long way." Dan believed this to be the best pie. Other Pizza Club members, however, suggested that if you come all the way to Barfly's you'd do better to get a specialty pie with toppings.

The veggie pie, described as "muted," had olives, spinach, mushrooms, green pepper, red sauce, and mozzarella. The toppings are under the cheese, an effective way of preventing dry toppings and keeping them from falling off. The vegetables were all real and fresh, but we didn't get a strong impression of this pizza - it was just a nice bunch of stuff on a tasty crust.

top: veggie. bottom: buffalo chicken.

The buffalo chicken pizza was a group favorite, "harmonious", "saucy but not overwhelming", creamy, cheesy, etc. Ashley noted their effective use of chicken. We voted this pie "very, very good."

white spinach

The white spinach pizza tasted kind of like spanakopita because the crust is so buttery and pastry-like. White sauce was a bit much with this crust - it benefits from the counterbalancing bite of tomato sauce. But the spinach was fresh and if you're really into creaminess this could be the pie for you.

Sarah was asked "would you consider current-day Mickey Rourke attractive?"

We greatly enjoyed our Barfly's experience - it would be a perfect spot to watch a game, they have a bunch of beers on tap, and it probably doesn't get too crowded because a) it's a spacious/cavernous building and b) there are three bars per block in this part of town. If you care about pizza, it's worth making the trip to Barfly's at least once to try it on for size. It is definitely the kind of pizza you eat at a bar, but within that category I'd venture to say it's nipping at the heels of excellence. The place was pretty empty on a Wednesday night, although there was a pirate because it's Fed Hill and some lady mistook Dan for a woman due to his long flowing hair. Young Mickey Rourke (may he rest in peace) smiled down upon us as we ate pizza and played darts.

6.5/8

Too fast too loulou

Tooloulou Pizza
4311 Harford Rd.

nice logo. "tooloulou": Cajun for "crab"

I guess they probably have pizza in New Orleans, I don't really know because I still have not been there. They definitely have a lot of other food, like po'boys and catfish and muffalettas, that are respected worldwide as delicious and authoritative. When Pizza Club visited Tooloulou, a New Orleans-themed casual restaurant in Hamilton, we were hoping to put together the pieces of this puzzle: why do pizza? What could make a pizza embody "New Orleans"? Would that thing just be shrimp?

It wasn't just shrimp - it was also alligator, crab, and smoked duck. Tooloulou is definitely doing something good with its specialty seafood and meat pizzas. But looking at the rest of the menu made us wonder why anyone who was not there on a specifically pizza-oriented fact-finding mission would order pizza at all. The other stuff sounded great and distinctive, while piling onto the pizza wagon just meant piling novelty toppings onto a pretty standard pie.

gator time

We particularly recommend Tooloulou in the beverage department: they have every kind of root beer ever, as well as Cheerwine, sarsaparilla, birch beer, etc. etc. It's kind of small and hot inside their storefront, so these beverages were consumed in large refreshing quantities. The space is decorated with assorted punning wall plaques ("buy our pizza, we knead the dough") and Old Bay kitsch, but not aggressively so. There's only room for two tables and a bar, but we were the only people eating in at 8:30 on a Tuesday so it was fine. Folks came and went picking up boxes of pizza to-go, suggesting that Tooloulou already has a local following.

enter the duck

We ordered a smoked duck and a veggie pizza. This choice turned out to be strategic, as it created quite a study in contrasts. The smoked duck was delicious, well-put-together flavor-wise, and definitely a distinctive thing that you can't find elsewhere in Baltimore. The veggie pie, on the other hand, was a throwaway, making the resident vegetarians feel that there was nothing for them at Tooloulou (though, upon examining their menu, I discovered that they make a veggie po'boy with tofu and mushrooms that sounds ridiculous but I couldn't get that because we already ate pizza). Let's hash out the details.

golden ratio

The duck pizza contained tomato sauce, house smoked duck, caramelized onions, sweet peppers, and goat cheese with a balsamic reduction. The amount of duck was very generous, it was cooked to a nice texture and cut intelligently into bite-sized bits. What could have been a liquidy pizza with an overload of toppings was instead perfectly proportioned and integrated. The crust, too, was perfect, crisped and only slightly burnt where it formed delicious crunchy bubbles.

great expectations

The veggie pizza had a white sauce, mushrooms, spinach, capers, roasted cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella. The tomatoes didn't seem to actually be roasted at all, except for a few which were slightly wrinkly. The spinach looked pretty dessicated. There was lots of cheese, which had the texture and chew of a good quality cheese, but it just wasn't that exciting. Even the crust, which presumably was the same crust as the duck pizza, was softer and undercooked.

wilted expectations

"I actively want to eat more of the duck pizza," Jonah said while sampling the veggie. "I wish this slice would end so I could go back to the duck." Dan, who does not eat meat, turned his attention to unlocking the secret messages encoded in the restaurant's music playlist. "This pizza makes me hyper-aware of the sax solo in [the 1981 Men at Work chart-topper] 'Who Can It Be Now'" he remarked. Indeed, paranoia was the name of the game for vegetarians. Why were we being treated like second-class citizens? Also, I discovered that capers are some kind of weird mini brussels sprout. I always assumed they were salty bad-tasting berries that got rejected from breakfast cereal. No! They are sprouts. If you don't believe me and you are eating a boring vegetarian pizza with capers on it, definitely pick the capers off and dissect them and you'll see what I'm talking about.

cheesy expectations

In the end we got one delicious pizza and one ok pizza, but both were very filling and we wound up taking a lot home. Dan never figured out what it meant that so many Police, Dire Straits, and/or Sting songs kept playing in a particular order. The proprietor was a jocular man who gave us free watermelons on our way out, which was very nice of him (the restaurant offers seasonal, CSA-furnished produce specials, but I guess they could not use watermelon on pizza). If you are meat-enabled, you should try the specialty seafood and sausage pies at Tooloulou for a deluxe topping experience, but the veggie treatment suggests to us that nothing really novel is going on under the hood of these pizzas - it wouldn't be worthwhile to order a plain cheese pie. To even out their offerings, they just have to elevate the lowly vegetables up to the hallowed plane of smoked duck.

6/8 slices

What happened that night

Maxie's Pizza Bar & Grill
3003 N. Charles St.

We may never really know what happened at Maxie's on the night of August 8th. I certainly don't, because I was stuck in traffic on I-95. Various accounts survive, however, which offer us insight into the kind of pizza that people ate on that night, and whether it was good. On the internet, Maxie's calls itself, "Baltimore Charles Village Best Pizzeria Bar and Grill." What does this claim mean? Isn't it the only Pizzeria Bar and Grill in Charles Village? There seem to be many stipulations. Based on eyewitness testimony we may reconstruct certain aspects of the Maxie's experience.

The most complete testimony comes from Sara Tomko, who offers the following:
"My first experience at Maxie’s Pizza & Bar would be described as mediocre. I liked the basement bar with its clubhouse vibe and would return for the happy hour (1/2 prices bottles!) but would not dine in. The restaurant side was typical pizza parlor with hard plastic booths, which gives you no reason to stay any longer than to finish your slice. The pizza looked really appealing. I was dazzled by all the specialty slices. I ordered the Greek based on a friend’s recommendation and my inner frat boy gravitated to the chicken parm pizza. I started with the Greek, which was hard to navigate, being overloaded with toppings (shredded iceberg lettuce, kalamata olives, tomato slices, onion, feta cheese). With every bite, toppings tumbled to the table and floor and distracted me from enjoying what little taste the slice had to offer. The crust was on the thick side and chewy but couldn’t support the weight of the entire country of Greece, the hot lettuce was a turn off and the slice lacked flavor overall. I turned to the chicken parm for redemption but it tasted burnt. The chicken was dry, the cheese and sauce was nothing special and couldn’t save the dry, burnt chicken. I didn’t finish my slice, it was that bad. I would kill this at 2am with little food options but never again if I had the choice. I learned an important lesson: never listen to my friends or inner frat boy again!"

Sara's story is one of glossy surfaces, flashy toppings, and flavor disappointment. Others present that night concur, but see no redeeming qualities that would bring them back to Maxie's. When asked about his experience on the night of the 8th, Dan replied, "That meeting never happened." Pressed to confront his memories of Maxie's pizza, he managed to whisper, "So many toppings, so little flavor..." before breaking down in tears and running from the room.

Bonnie was also present at Maxie's. She reflected upon their pizza with equanimity: it is only by-the-slice college take-out pizza, she was only stopping by because she was hungry and in the neighborhood, etc. Even so, she found it unremarkable at best. Perhaps it had been on display all day, and lost any advantages that freshness could have offered.

Because this sample of Maxie's pizza only included by-the-slice offerings, it will be necessary for Pizza Club to evaluate a fresh-out-of-the-oven pizza at a future date, in the hope that this will be a significant improvement. Based on our most current witness testimony and forensic reconstructions, however, we do not recommend purchasing their slices unless you are substantially inebriated and/or just don't care.

2/8 for by-the-slice pizza

beer pizza / pizza beer

We know that these things go together on an elemental level. They have the same materials in them: grains, yeast, water. Then pizza has a bunch of other stuff on top of it, but its bedrock is grains and yeast. So is there any reason why pizza and beer should not exchange these essential substances in a grainy makeout session? Why not mix up the pizza and beer before they go into your stomach?

On a conceptual level I am all about this, and I think it should work in both directions: we should have pizza made from spent beer brewing grains, and beer made from the mountains of discarded pizza crusts left behind after kids' birthday parties, which ideally would ferment in an underground pit for five years and then be conditioned with tomato sauce infusions. However, I don't know much about the beer-making end of things, so my first objective in project beerpizza/pizzabeer was to make a pizza crust out of beer grains.

The concept of the beer pizza emerged during a recent high-powered meeting of Lady Brew Baltimore, an awesome homebrew club started by the lovely Laura Cohen. We were brewing a pumpkin brown ale, and after fishing the cheesecloth full of whole grains out of the boiling pot, Laura mentioned that the grains can be used in bread although most brewers throw them out. Fellow lady brewer Christine added that she once made a pizza crust with brewing grains. So I take no credit for this discovery, I only seek to advance the science of beer pizza and expose the general pizza-loving public to this innovation.

I snagged the sackfull of soggy grains and brought them home to experiment with. Fortunately the internet already knows everything and I got a recipe off there for "spent beer grains bread," figuring that pizza is just bread spread out flat with toppings on it.

This bread, however, is super grainy, as you might expect from something that contains more than 50% whole grains. (I'm not even sure what was in that cheesecloth - wheat, barley, some other stuff?). It's dark, molasses-brown in color, and the texture is moist and heavy. So, it doesn't taste anything like "pizza crust" as pizza crust is conventionally understood. However, it was still delicious topped with scallion pesto, figs, goat cheese, and balsamic vinegar. If you wanted to make it more recognizable as pizza, you could replace some of the beer grains and whole wheat flour with white flour. I'd also recommend cooking on a pizza stone, since the dough is very moist and can stay soggy underneath the toppings unless extreme heat is applied.

So here's a recipe for three loaves, or three really big pizza crusts (I halved this and got two medium-sized pies):

3 cups white flour
6 tsp vital wheat gluten
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
3 cups spent beer grains ground in a food processor
1/4 cup sugar or honey
1/4 cup butter or olive oil
1 egg beaten
3/4 cup milk

Combine the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients and add them together. Knead for 10 minutes by hand or 5 minutes with a bread hook mixer thing.
Let the dough rise in an oiled bowl until doubled (90 minutes), then punch down and divide into three balls.
Let those rise for another hour in their respective oiled bowls. In the meantime get your toppings ready and jack the oven up as hot as it will go.
After the second rise, gently coax the dough onto baking sheets or pizza stones and pull/roll/stretch it into shape. It's moist and tender, so dust everything including your hands with flour and don't be too aggressive or it will tear.
Put on some toppings (again, go easy on the saucy toppings because the crust might not crisp well).
Put it in the oven for 20 minutes or until the crust is crispy (this will depend on the temperatures achievable in your home oven).
Congratulations you have a beer pizza!

So now the question is, can my vision of pizza beer ever be actualized in a way that is neither repulsive nor hazardous to human health? Were these two things ever meant to converge so early in their life-cycles, or is it an abomination against god and country? Stay tuned.

Pizza north of the border

A noble pizza blog from Philadelphia pizza pals:
http://takeyrtruffleoilpizzaandshoveit.tumblr.com/

No direction home, slice

HomeSlyce, 1741 Light St., Federal Hill

What constitutes a pizza? Let's venture into that swirling vortex of reflexivity and neurotic hand-wringing and arbitrary boundary-setting. Pizza can be on a bagel, while it cannot be on a Ritz ™ cracker. It can be inside a pita, but it cannot be inside a soft pretzel. How do we know these things? How do we sort our chaotic sensory impressions of the world into categories like “pizza” and “not-pizza” with relative consistency? Are these categories natural or constructed?

If you are game for this wild trip into the heart of the nature of reality, you should check out the new pizza place in Fed Hill. HomeSlyce is like a trendy hip contemporary pizza bar thing that is just slightly off the mark of being trendy and hip, which makes it quite tolerable as a place to hang out. They have a pool table. The interior is painted yellow and black, like a big friendly bumblebee clumsily ricocheting off your face. HomeSlyce offers a number of attractive specials that could make it worth your while if you are feeling ambivalent about trying something new: Mondays are “half price slyces,” which means that Pizza Club dined at a 50% discount after we reminded our server that it was “half price slyce” night and he recalculated our check.

So at HomeSlyce they make these things called “slyces.” Not pizzas, not calzones – a slyce is like a hybrid of the two, with folded-up edges and an open trough in the middle. Every time I write slyce with a “y” it makes me feel sad, so let's make it a proper noun and call them Slyces. A Slyce is like a pizza boat or canoe or kayak. This is a new thing under the sun (except that it comes from their parent restaurant, Cazbar, which serves Turkish pides which are basically the same thing, but with tasty Turkish food inside).

Margarita

The Slyce, in general, has a lot of crustal surface area that is not within biting range of a topping: at each end is a knot of crust where the Slyce is sealed off, high-and-dry above any cheese or sauce. Even along the sides, the ratio of crust to topping skews towards the folded-over crust; if you are a crust-leaver-behinder, there will be a lot to leave behind. Of course, chain pizza joints solve the crust-leaving-behind problem by throwing in those cups of melted butter-flavored substance for you to dip the pizza ends in. We recommend a similar tactic for HomeSlyce: given the known crust/topping asymmetry, provide dipping sauce or something. We requested sauce and they gave us some marinara, but the situation demands a more inspired dipping option.

Probably chicken-pesto

The reason that I insist so vocally on the need for better dipping resources is a positive one: HomeSlyce crust was quite good, even when it was far from any topping, making us want to eat more. It was light and chewy, with browned edges and just enough crunch. So we were highly motivated to finish it.

Thanks to the Monday half-price special, we were able to sample most of the Slyces on the menu. A Slyce could feed two or three people, or one really hungry person – HomeSlyce also offers traditional pizzas in 10” and 16” sizes, which Pizza Club will evaluate at a later date.

HomeSlyce Classic - our #1 selection

The Margarita Slyce was a standard mozzarella-sauce-basil affair – those stuck with the end pieces observed that the crust was underdone, with some doughy areas where it got folded in on itself. A “Port the Bella” (?) Slyce comes with garlic sauce, mozzarella, roasted red peppers, spinach, portabella mushrooms and feta cheese. Some Pizza Club members wanted more oil on this pie, and felt that the mushrooms were not particularly fresh. A Chicken-Pesto Slyce, with “pesto sauce,” mozz, chicken breast, sun-dried tomatoes, peppers, onions, olives, and feta, was underwhelming. The sauce did not taste like pesto. The “Pop-Pie,” with garlic sauce, onions, spinach, and goat and gorgonzola cheeses was a favorite with some club members for its intense garlicky punch and good flavor balance.

Crusty remnants

The hands-down favorite, however, was the HomeSlyce classic, decked out with goat cheese, walnuts, eggplant, spinach, caramelized onions, roasted peppers and “HomeSlyce sauce.” We got two of them and they were the first to vanish. We theorized that, because of its lineage as a Cazbar-affiliated project, HomeSlyce might have particularly strong eggplant chops, and we recommend getting their pies with eggplant.

Solution to crustal excess

This is definitely a new venue – the staff seemed a bit addled and the first thing our waitress did was spill water down Jen's back (for which she apologized profusely). In a way, this pizza is “fancy but not” - an everyman pizza in a fancy package. The different pies that we sampled all tasted somewhat similar – at least, the experience of eating them was similar, with the abundant crust overwhelming the other elements and the different sauces not very differentiated. As mentioned above, there is a psychological element to the Slyce experience in which one's bedrock assumptions about pizza are challenged, so perhaps the concept overshadowed the execution. We liked what we ate, but upon analysis it seems to be your typical upscale bar pizza – you would eat it if you were there anyway for a drink, but it wouldn't merit a special trip after the novelty of the first encounter wore off.

Pizza Club rejoiceth

It should also be noted that Dan attempted to order a plain cheese Slyce as a baseline indicator. This order was lost, caught in some ethereal twilight dimension of Federal Hill, rediscovered, and became the last pie to come out of the kitchen. Dan loved this pizza at first bite. It was described as “very gooey, messy,” and also possibly the best Slyce of the evening. This seal of approval suggests that HomeSlyce has its basics figured out. They just have to rise to the challenge of making this new pizza concept into a satisfying reality.

5.5/8