Spak Bros. Pickle Pizza Review - A Pizza for the Time of Quarantine

We seek out more and more usual things to distract us from the crushing waves of trauma that mercilessly beat against our brains. We steel ourselves behind oddities and weirdness hoping that these craven hobbies might make the rest of the world seem more normal by comparison. 

Most recently for me was Spak Bros. pickle pizza.

This is the kind of pizza you want to share with your friends. A pie you’ll want to get as a novelty, laugh about how good it is even though you started eating it with your nose pinched to get your buds to chuckle. Anything for a laugh. It’s gruesome on paper, a dare, like going to a haunted house encountering clowns, faux murderers, arsonists, criminals and nightmares of the mind only to escape through a smoky tunnel with a laugh.  The pickle pizza is more fun with a group of pizza adventures. Right now that’s an anomaly in the age of quarantine. 

The pickle pizza from Spak is not frightening. It’s unique, foreign, and defies the pizza tradition. when something clashes with your existing classification you get mad, or angry, or scared. And the pickle pizza, unlike other pizzas, even Hawaiian, elicits an emotional and visceral reaction which makes this pizza art in a lot of ways. The Pickle Pizza at Spak deserves to be studied and assessed by food professors at universities that focus on the culinary arts.

Note how crisp those pickles stand against a hungry pizza devotee

In the doldrums of the pandemic, it’s easy to get stuck in your routine. Waking up. Brushing your teeth. Eating avocado toast for breakfast every morning. Doom scroll. Log into work. Refresh the news. Work. Refresh the news. Room scroll. Work. Turkey sandwich for lunch. Work. Log off. Watch whatever new thing is on Netflix while also watching your phone refresh. Go to bed. Wonder if this will ever end and you’ll escape this snow globe of an existence. Sometimes you feel like a domino knocking into another domino.

The pickle pizza is a variable that disrupts to banal day to day existence. It’s completely different from what you would expect, and injects a much needed zest. 

The pickle pizza is of course worth eating and digesting. The dill pickles are sprawled over the canvas likeilipads floating on a sea of cheese. It’s impossible not to get a pickle in a bite of the pizza, they’re ubiquitous and delicious. 

The base of the pizza is a mixture of pickle’s best friends - a safety net for pickles going out on the wild. A special havarti cheese blend, dill and a creamy ranch sauce provide lubrications for these pickles to slide down your throat like a slip n slide. And before you know it the pizza will have vanished - the dill taste will linger in your mouth for a while but pickle pizza never leaves you. 

Next time you’re at a cookout or able to gather with your friends and loved ones you can recall the amazing pickle pizza you ate. “You got that??” They’ll say with a dash of disgust. Then you can charm them with your tale of how you ventured forth from your home, risking life and limb to get the legendary Spak Bros. Pickle Pizza.

Colangelo’s Pasta & Pizza - Pepperoni Slice Review

Months ago my Uncle Don told me he found a new love. A new favorite pizza in town. His pizza taste is peculiar for a Pittsburgher. Instead of going to Mineo’s or Aiello’s he opts for Pizza Napoli. He isn’t a fan of sloppy pies, but prefers a nice square pizza. so when he began to tell me about Colangelos in the Strip District I knew it had to be something unique.

On New Year’s Eve, in the midst of a pandemic he, dropped off a few slices for me and the family to enjoy. A perfect meal as a precursor to our solitary NYE antics. He texted me updates as the pizza he chose from their pizza window went through the steps.

“Got you and Christa some slices.”

“Currently in oven. Be there in 10”

Colangelos is a from-scratch Italian bakery that has a window of croissants, pizza and other Italian delicacies up for grabs. They also have a host of pasta, sides and really anything you would need to satisfy your cravings. Today, we’ll be focusing on their pizza.

The box he delivered was hefty, filled with six large quadrants of pepperoni pizza. It was droopy, soggy and collectively dense, a pizza quagmire. An environment that is inescapable as the gravity of the cheese and grease combine to pull you into its maw.

But this is merely an illusion, because while it looks a gloopy hot mess, there’s a complex structure supporting the plains of cheese and sauce. While slices flip and flop gently back and forth like a flag in a gentle swirling wind, when you bite into the dough there’s a surprising crunch. 

It’s also expertly soft. Almost like a pastry dough, but thicker and not very sweet. The thickness isn’t close to the Detroit-style pies, but a hybrid of the classic New York slices and a Sicilian. 

There’s a very stark divide between where the crust ends and the base of the pizza begins. Two pizza universes neighboring each other with a border between. But when you get a bite that is equal parts crust and body, with cheese and a bit of a pepperoni, both universes are united as one. A utopia where each section of the pizza fits perfectly with the other. 

The pepperoni was perfectly greasy and added the right amount of zest to complement its cohorts, the sauce and cheese. I typically stay away from pepperoni since the extra grease can be off putting, but here it works. I think it’s because the soft dough absorbs that grease and blends it in with the body of the pizza, instead of letting it pool on the cheese. 

After crushing two slices, I was more than satisfied and stunned at the swirling flavors of the pizza packed into these rectangles. I put the remaining pieces in the fridge and eagerly awaited the opportunity to heat them up the following afternoon. 

The next day the pizza had evolved slightly. Some of the softness evaporated from the dough, replaced with a crunchier texture. Not a bad thing, but these slices are best eaten as fresh as possible. Still, these slices satisfied and I look forward to getting some of these fresh from the bakery itself.

Badamo’s Pizza on the North Side: A Delicious Combination of Passion and Perfection

Let me tell you when I first ran into the Badamo’s crew because it contextualizes their aura.

I was at the Michigan and Trumbull pop-up at the Vandal, an event that was packed with people pushing to the front for Detroit style pizza. I was helping to take orders for the evening, bustling around, weaving between people when someone from the kitchen shouted they were out of takeout boxes. A critical component was missing, we needed to fold pizza boxes stat.  So, the Badamo crew, who are waiting patiently to try this pizza ( who have probably spent all day prepping dough, getting restaurant in order, and all the other things that come with making pizza) and these dudes just start folding boxes. Like box folding addicts, they can’t stop. No shrugging, no fussing, they were eager to lend a hand and help out. 

And their pizza is a personification if that sentiment. Friends building some great. A family of pizza makers, a pizza that you want to share. 

I visited their newly opened location on the North Side. It's a small joint, but full of charm. The waiting area was filled with soon-to-be-regulars waiting for their Friday night order of pizza and hoagies. In their display case were an assortment of specialty slices. Perfect if you want to mix-and-match some slices to accompany your evening hoagie. 

I stuck with a fresh pie which came out piping out from the oven and appeared to be expertly cooked. I mean, look at that crust!

Above you can see a practically perfect in every way pizza. The crust is the right kind of brown, charred in the right spots, and you have an even layer of cheese that covers the sauce just so. 

Like a fool I grabbed a pizza and a hoagie to eat by my lonesome. The life of a pizza journalist.

One bite in and I was already dying to tell my pals about the pizza.I was enjoying. The sauce was tangy, not too sweet, and the cheese masterfully held everything together. Half the pizza contained sausage and green peppers. Both these toppings were fresh and fairly distributed without stealing the pie spotlight. 

The pieces folded easily, but I noticed the bottom was a bit too pale. It could've spent a minute or two on the hot side of the oven. I reached out to Badamo's and they confirmed that this happens sometimes saying:

A lot of times with the deck ovens if you're blasting the ovens with pies all night the stone cool down and you get more top heat than bottom stone heat. Therefore, it didn't get it's color. Normally if I notice that, I'll slide it to a spot that hasn't had a pie on it to get the bottom dark as well.

With a new oven on a busy night, there's a learning curve to baking pizzas. I'm really impressed with the insightful comment they sent back too. The folks at Badamo's really get pizza. They're in the pursuit of perfection but know that there are bumps along the road. Sometimes that's a pizza that's not perfectly cooked. And that's a-okay.

I look forward to going back to see how they've grown.

Badamo's pizza is reminiscent of the local small-town pizza shop, but with a level of perfection. It's an elevated version of the pizzas I grew up eating (Luciano's and Monte Cello's to name a few). It's comforting in its shape, but has a depth of flavor that those suburban flagships are missing.

I bet these guys grew up eating similar pizzas and thought, "Hey, we can do this." Add in a unique level of passion and a pursuit of perfection and you have one of the tastiest pizzas this side of the Allegheny. 

Pizza Review: Roberta's Airt-Tight Wood Fired Margherita Pizza

Roberta's pizza has thrived in Bushwick on a foundation of quality and freshness. Their business infrastructure was built organically over the course of a year where the Roberta's crew had nothing but close friends and family to rely on. In the Roberta's Cookbook there's a rambling introduction that tries to tell the Roberta's story (they note that it's a story still being written). While trying to capture the spirit they write, "To experience Roberta's, you have to visit it." And now you can purchase a vacuum sealed pizza of theirs in the freezer section of a local Whole Foods.

It's curious that a pizza place that relies so much on experiencing the environment of Roberta's would be one of the first to have their Margherita pizza sealed and sent across state lines. If so much of what makes Roberta's great is the atmosphere and making memories with friends, what good is a pizza divorced of that? 

While it may seem like a cash-in you'll be happy to know that this pizza actually holds up. Most frozen or reheated pizzas have a lingering taste about them. It's the taste of age, or a lack of freshness, that is entirely edible but in a different pizza class of its own. This Roberta's pizza came bubbling back to life after a mere three minutes in the oven. I let it loiter in the oven for a minute longer for extra crispiness. While the pizza was missing that pop of freshness, it is a solid Neapolitan pizza. 

Here's the pizza after spending a few minutes in the oven.

The puddles of cheese held dribbles of olive oil, the sauce was simple and tangy. The pizza was a near perfect facsimile of the one that comes out of a Roberta's oven. Which makes sense as these pizzas are cooked and immediately packaged, freezing a pizza in time until you're ready to open the delicious time capsule. The Margherita is a perfect canvas if you want to add your toppings and doctor up the pizza. The pizza is perfectly balanced as is, and the sauce shines through, but feel free to add a sprinkle of meat.

They did their best to put a quality Margherita pizza into the wild. But the question remains: if you need to visit Roberta's to experience Roberta's, why package the pizza? The Roberta's cookbook was written a while ago and maybe they wised up. Maybe they want to spread their passion for pizza and open up the opportunity to gather with friends and make their memories in their homes. Or parks. Or wherever. The pizza is what draws friends and family together. It doesn't matter where it's eaten, as long as it's eaten with your pizza pals.

Roberta's air-tight Margherita is the king of the freezer section pizza. If you need a Neapolitan pizza in a pinch you can't go wrong with this package. It retails for ~$10 at Whole Foods or you can spend $70 to have it shipped from your door from Gold Bely's. 

Pizza Taglio: Bringing Roman Style Pizza to Pittsburgh

Tony is the guy that brought his pizza to Espresso a Mano. It was a caffeinated testing ground to see if Pittsburgh was ready for an evolution in the pizza species. 

He’d deliver the pizzas around noon. Then, the pillowy soft pizza, that was perfect for bravely dipping into espresso or resting your weary head, would vanish. Look at that thing!

The patrons couldn’t resist it. Tony took it as a sign to open a pizza shop in East Liberty. And that’s how we get to Pizza Taglio.

Now this is a pizza place. It’s a long area, simple and open so Tony can greet every single person as he makes pizza. Tony is stationed in the middle of the restaurant surrounded by stacks of dough, ingredients within an arms reach and ovens to his back. 

If there was a pizza purgatory where you were sentenced to make pizzas for eternity, I imagine it would looks like this. For Tony this is heaven.  At least, I’m assuming Tony, who quit his life as a lawyer to make pizzas full-time, would consider this heaven. 

This was my view all night. I took a seat nearest to Tony so I could keep a close eye on him. I wanted to study this guy who dared bring an evolution of pizza to Pittsburgh. And in return he yelled pizza facts at me all night.

I’m reading the menu when he shouts over the glass “I finally found a cheese for the margherita pizza that I like.” Two things here before we move on.

1. I wasn’t aware Tony was on this journey. Why not just use buffalo mozzarella from Italy like everyone else?

2. That is his ice breaker? He must kill at parties because who doesn’t love to talk about exotic cheeses.

Tony continued,“Yeah, you’ll never guess the country.”

“Hmmm…not Italy?”

“Colombia!! Can you believe it? They ship the buffaloes over there and raise them in Colombia. It’s incredible!”

Tony was incredibly excited. I think he actually couldn’t stop talking about this cheese. He was thrilled beyond belief and had to tell someone. I doubt I’m the first to hear about Tony’s secret Colombian-Buffalo Cheese. 

But that’s the passion and attention to detail Tony brings to his craft. Every pizza, every topping, every piece of flour has a story.  There’s only eight pizzas on the menu and each one is carefully constructed. You can pay for extras, but why would you? That’d be like paying an artist to draw over the hair on the Mona Lisa with a half-empty highlighter that happened to be sitting in the gallery.

I chose the Greenpointer. This pizza is inspired by a pizza place in Brooklyn and, I think, built for those that crazy artistry paired with comfort. This pizza is covered in honey and soppresota.

I ordered the Greenpointer and Tony shouted over the glass if I wanted it round or square - what a question! 

I asked Tony what he thought and he paused, then said, “Round would be great.” But I must have subconsciously reacted, or Tony saw something on my face that only a lawyer would be trained to see. 

He stammered, his hands flopping dough back and forth into a pie, “Well the square would be great, too. It would work with the sauce and the cheese. Either way, I guess you could do it either way.”

I went with round. Did it make a huge difference? Did he serve me an illegal pizza? I was puzzled, but incredibly delighted.

Halfway through my Greenpointer Tony brought out a square cauliflower pizza. Before the plate could touch the table, Tony started to confess to me. He confessed how the dough is going to rise longer. And how he didn’t get a chance to check the bubble structure. I told him I’d be more than happy to check the bubble structure and that the pizza looked amazing. Should I have told him I wasn’t wearing a pizza wire?

So here’s the cauliflower pizza.

Check out that bubble structure!

This cauliflower pizza was oddly decadent. There was nothing sweet on it, but it was creamy and savory and a blast to eat. Each bite unleashed a hint of smokiness, like it was cooked atop some hickory wood chips. It had an after taste of summer camp, like you were eating a creamy, slightly charred marshmallow that your summer crush roasted for you. 

Delightful and comforting.

But here’s a kicker. On the table before me I had what most people would consider two pizzas. They have a lot in common (cheese, sauce, bread), yet these two beings could not taste anymore different. Side-by-side they seemed alien. Like one was the missing link from pizza history and the other a modern, nimble, evolution of pizza.

Bouncing between the two pizzas was like skipping back and forth between planets or traveling across time. They in no way had a single flavor in common yet they share similar DNA. 

It’s simply pizza wizardry. That’s the only explanation.

I’m about to leave when he looks up and asks me if I’ll try his pizza carbonara. I’m meeting my fiancé up the street, I’m already incredibly late. “You have to try it,” he says. It sounds like Willie Wonka convincing Charlie to get inside his glass elevator. 

Do I turn down the opportunity for a pizza with an egg cracked on it? Or do I…well no, there is no alternative. When Tony offers you pizza you always say yes. It’s basically a pizza commandment.  

Here’s the end result of the pizza carbonara. It’s a white pizzas with a wiggly egg in the middle. It sits there like a king sitting on its throne, surrounded by its kingdom of cooked meats and cheese.

Tony cracked the egg on top of the pizza immediately after it came out of the oven. “The egg will be cooked enough in about 15 seconds.”

And by the time he brought it to my table it looked like your normal sunny-side up egg. 

The pizza was breakfast. The kind of breakfast you make on a sleepy Saturday morning, complete with bacon and eggs. 

At this point I was bursting with pizza. 

Then Tony brought out a cannoli. 

“So does this cannoli have a backstory too?” I asked.

Tony had retreated behind the glass and tossed some pizza, thinking. He said “Well, I’m Sicilian. I had to have something like that on my menu.”

---

Pizza Taglio is something special. Tony is a force to be reckoned with—he finds inspiration for pizza, ingredients, and recipes in the deepest darkest depths of the world. What he’s doing is turning experiences into pizza, like it’s a prized form of alchemy. 

When you visit Pizza Taglio in East Liberty, you’ll walk away with a unique pizza memory. Be daring and try a pizza slightly outside your comfort zone. It could be the closest thing to knowing what another dimension taste like.  

For Tony, his next adventure is taking him to the heart of Cuba. I’m not sure what he’ll find there, but I know it’ll be great. Could it be a specially seasoned pork? Or pizza wrapped up like cigars? 

Hopefully we’ll find out soon. 

I Don't Know Where New Haven Is But I Know They Have Pizza and a Guy Named Pete

I Googled it, New Haven is in Connecticut. But mistakes were made and it’s better to move forward, not backward. There’s never pizza behind you. Remember that.

Pete’s APizza (apizza?) brings the “famous New Haven” apizza to the depths of Washington, DC. As the nation’s capitol it’s only appropriate that there is a selection of pizza from across the United States.

I’ve never heard of New Haven Style pizza, but I’m always up for a new spin on the classic pie. I mean, what makes pizza so amazing is it’s a cuisine made up of three basic ingredients: bread, cheese, sauce. That’s it. Anyone with a $2 bill could gather enough ingredients to build a pizza. So any spin on the formula without adding a cesspool of toppings is an exciting thing to a pizza journalist. 

What’s funny about DC is that it’s tough to come across a place that will sell a single slice of pizza to you. It’s like bizarro New York city. But Pete’s Apizza fills that tiny hole in your tiny pizza heart.

Once you pick the apizza you want from their minuscule apizza zoo, you pick out how many pitchers of Peroni you’ll be enjoying. 

It’s casual for sure, but this is no Sbarro’s. It’s a smart and intelligent take on pizza that Henry Ford would be proud of. Quite a streamlined process. They even give you a little table card. 

Eight is the number of slices I wish I had ordered.

So here’s the pizza. Sorry, apizza. It’s simple and efficient, much like their process. There’s no mess and no excess of anything. It’s quaint. Just how I imagine New Haven to be.

For as basic as it looks, this pizza is full of that crunch.

It’s as if there’s invisible crust on the top of the pizza. It’s surrounded by an aura of brittleness that breaks apart as soon as your canines find their way into the cheese. From top to bottom, it’s crust. Not crusty because that’s a bad thing. But crunchy, shattering, crust. Laminated with cheese.

The sauce, well, I’m not sure there is any sauce. Check out this cross section.

Straight from cheese to crust! There’s no easing into it or lubrication between the two. They just sit atop of each other like oil and water. Or best friends intertwined with one another. Does sauce know they’re having a party without them? Perhaps.

You can’t even fold this pizza in half without worrying about a pizza splinter breaking off of the mother ship and blinding you. Never able to witness pizza bubbling in the oven again.

Or see what time it is in Naples. Or New Haven.

I found the pizza a bit dry and too full of crunch. It’s special. But I think I prefer something a bit on the softer side. But, for fans of crust I think you’re in for a treat. 

And here’s some Peroni being poured–a necessary to keep your whistle nice and whet. 

Pizza Review: Ledo's Pizza in Deep Creek, Maryland

I had the pleasure to visit Deep Creek, Maryland with some rascals. It’s a sleepy town that exists for folks to sail their boats, pretend they’re a squid in a man-made lake, or make an army of grilled cheese on a grill. Right next to the larger-than-life liquor store is Ledo’s Pizza. It’s one of the last stops before a cove of lake houses, so it ends up attracting customers like dopey moths wandering towards a bright light out of convenience. 

While my comrades were busy juggling bottles of cherries soaked in whiskey, pounds of beer,  and a grotesque amount of booze that hobos pray wait for them in heaven, I went to Ledo’s Pizza. Their entrance was quaint. Fake bricks and decor screamed “Hey, we’re probably Italian” a mirage that didn’t work on me, no matter my level of hunger. I thought about leaving behind a Foursquare tip to warn others, but even that level of slacktivism seemed over the top.

Instead of a circle, they sprawl their pizzas out in rectangles. They’re used to serving families so this format suits them perfectly, not a young man who’s idea of a serving of pizza is one large pie.  It’s a novelty that leaves crust enthusiasts behind. Only a portion of the pizza has a handle so after the outside walls of the pizza are demolished all hell breaks loose. Like a pizza prison break.

Crust or no crust, this pizza is something that would be served at a prison. An upscale prison, not the Eastern State Penitentiary (unless Steve Buscemi was in charge of the cafeteria). It’s flimsy, like a sheet of wax paper, and flops with the sauce and cheese. You can see why a crust is needed. 

It’s a shame the engineering of this pizza is poor because the sauce and cheese are passable. Nothing to write your ma home about, but it’s something I wouldn’t mind eating. If Ledo’s wanted to up their game, they need to evolve from that rectangle and work on a circle. There’s a reason pizzas are round, Mr. Ledo. No one wants to be forced into using a fork and knife to enjoy their pizza. They don’t even get those tools in prison and this is prison quality pizza!

Pizza Review: Fazio's White Pizza in Bloomfield

I’m a big fan of the traditional cheese/red sauce/crust pizza. Nothing fancy. If a pizza can’t hold its own when it comes to the pizza triforce, it’ll never be good. Ingredients piled on only serve to trick the eater into making them think they’re eating something better than they are. 

I bring this up because I recently visited Fazio’s pizza on Penn Ave in Bloomfield to eat their white pizza. I normally shy away from pizza that doesn’t have that red sauce fueling its tastiness. It’s like the life blood of the pizza. Without red sauce it’s like eating a pizza that perished. A vampire pizza of some kind that’s been resurrected after 200 years. Something is just off and there’s an uncomfortable amount of garlic. But the owner of Fazio’s, Jon Fazio, told me that his favorite pizza is their white pizza. It’s a staple. Everyday they create the “white pizza mixture” by hand. It’s something he’s very proud of and I had to eat it to believe it.

I recruited John Carman, local Italian expert, to help me conquer this fabled white pizza. Would it satisfy our hunger? Or, like Captain Ahab, would we come away from this experience unsatisfied and spend the rest of our lives finding the white pizza that Jon Fazio whispered in my ear. 

We ordered a large white pizza from Mr. Fazio. There was some hesitate before we dove deep into the depths of this white pizza. We looked at the pie and returning our hungry gaze were images of ourselves. Below the diced tomatoes, ricotta, mozzarella, and oregano, was a shimmering layer of grease. Precious grease that would line our gullets as we slipped slice after slice down our throats.

The ingredients were fresh and each bite was accompanied with a flood of flavor. It was peculiar at first. Finally a white pizza that satisfies. Then a kind of melancholy set in. I had hyped it up to myself and thought about this white pizza for so long that its extraordinary mixture of toppings failed to meet my expectations after the second slice. While it’s not strong enough to be a staple in a pizza diet, it’s worth eating just once. Like a pizza tourist attraction. 

Oh, and bring some napkins, cause this thing gets crazy greasy.

Pizza Review: The Holiest of Pizza, Church Fair Pizza

Walking through Bloomfield is hardly predictable. The streets are lined with roaming characters with no destination and I’m not sure they know how they got to the Little Italy of Pittsburgh. Pizza and hoagie shops see a rotating cast of patrons that stumble by the plethora of outdoor seating occupying the sidewalk. One night a live band might be playing on a street corner, the next night there could be a farmer’s market. Every trip through Bloomfield is like walking through a mystical alley where you might bump into a man selling magic lamps. 

On this particular night there was a church festival. Sprouting out of nothing, the Immaculate Conception church festival was a bastion of neon, fried foods, gambling, instant bingo, and pizza. Pizza I can only assumed has been blessed in some way.

Pizza partner, Christa, and I wandered around the booths before stumbling on the pizza. The usual suspects were there: the money wheel, instant bingo, funnel cake, a DJ playing top 40 hits, Angry Birds, and cheap stuffed animals that were guaranteed to rip open after settling into a child’s bed. 

The pizza booth was selling pizzas for only $1. I’d be a fool not to participate. Buying a slice first meant visiting the ticket booth to exchange my american dollars for the preferred currency of the church festival, tickets.

The exchange went smoothly even though the ticket lady was baffled I was only getting $1 worth of food. I went to the pizza booth and handed them my ticket in exchange for a square of pizza that just popped out of their suite of ovens.

The three ovens sat behind the ladies working the booth waiting to cook pizzas like church patrons waiting to in line to receive a sacrament. I’m not sure of the logistics behind this oven technology, but that can’t possibly be safe, can it? One wrong jostling and you have a gas leak. Combine that with a couple open flames and the church festival becomes a hellish battleground. It’s outside, thank goodness, but ovens weren’t meant for the elements. I’m impressed by their craftiness and really want to try this for myself. Coming soon to Mintwood St, outside ovens.

Anyways, the pizza. It was square, gooey, and surprisingly crisp and doughy at the same time.

It was fairly undercooked which I wouldn’t hold against these little squares. Instead of three separate levels of pizza (crust, sauce and cheese) it all conforms into one limp rectangle. It tends to buckle under its own weight, but if you manage to get it into your mouth in one piece you'll experience a kind of tenderness reserved for the finest of meats. The softness gives your jaw a workout, like chewing a piece of gum, but it packs enough flavor that you don’t grow tired of hosting it in your mouth. It’s all very basic and elementary, but there was a simple joy in eating a cheap slice of pizza surrounded by neon lights and carnival games that may or may not take a dozen people lives during the course of this festival. 

I can recommend this pizza with one caveat: don’t eat it outside of the festival. The pizza is an embodiment of the rag-tag church event. The amateurism of the pizza goes unnoticed compared to the old women tending to the instant bingo or the kids begging their parents for one more handful of funnel cake. 

Pizza Review: Pizza Cooked via Coal Taste Like Coal

My dad, Tommy T, was out of town and was in danger of missing his precious Thursday Post-Gazette. What’s important about the Thursday paper is that it holds all the mysteries of the weekend activities. This weekend’s edition outlined the Arts Festival and probably made a bunch of jokes of how it’s probably going to rain. Sorry if you’re not from Pittsburgh, it’s a really dumb joke.

In return for retrieving the Thursday paper on his behalf, Tommy T was going to bring me some coal fired pizza from Anthony’s Coal Fired pizza out in Robinson. There are actually Anthony’s all over the country capitalizing on this coal fired trend. I’m not sure why anyone would buy a coal fired pizza. Would you let Bert the chimney sweep make you a pizza right after his chimney cleaning shift? No. You wouldn’t. You don’t want soot and ash all over your dinner. Yet this coal fired phenomemon delivers such an experience at a premium price.

By the time my dad delivered the pizzas from Robinson they were fairly cold. He had to kill some time before I was home from work, so while he ran some errands in Bloomfield he hid the pizzas in his trunk because he was, “Worried someone might break into my car and steal all the pizzas.” Unfortunately, I wouldn’t put it past some Bloomfield citizens.

The pizzas were charred on their edges. They looked like they escaped battled, blackened by a brush with death. Their shells compromised, they were half the pizzas they should’ve been. Biting into a coal fired slice certainly wasn’t as exotic or appealing as you would hope it would be. It’s as gross sounding as eating frog legs, but, unlike frog legs, this tastes just as bad as it sounds. Sensing the cheese or toppings (pepper and arugula in this case) was an impossible task. My poor tastebuds had to battle through a bastion of blackness to taste anything resembling a pizza. 

The circumstances were unfortunate. Coal fired pizza may not be for me. I’m a fan of the simple and fundamental pizzas. Pizzas that have their crust tickled by a playful flame or were birthed in a brick oven. Burning a pizza has classicly been a sign of amateurism and I’m not sure basing an entire company around this idea is such a great idea, Anthony.

Tommy T may think otherwise.

Pizza Review: The Church Brew Works

A few blocks away from my home is the one place that every visitor in Pittsburgh wants to go. It’s not Primanti’s, thank goodness, but the Church Brew Works. It’s schtick is that the owners desecrated a church and turned it into a brewery. They even de-holyfied the altar! What was once a beautiful building is now a beautiful building you can drink at without having to play Simon Says with a man in a robe. I suppose you could still do that, but it’s not mandatory.

The Church Brew Works boasts several large brewing cylinders behind the altar so you know they aren’t messing around. I’m sure they’re filled with the holy spirit of drinking because their beer is delicious. And once you get those spirits in you, you’re gonna want to eat something. And boy howdy, they have pizza there! Isn’t that the darndest? 

A few people, whether it’s at parties or on the Internet, have raved to me about the pizza at Church Brew Works pizza. I play coy when this happens. I shrug my shoulders and wave my hands around to distract them from my disdain, the same way a magician  does to trick his audience. The problem is that the Church Brew Works is such an institution that I don’t want to say bad things about this “critically acclaimed” pizza. But, so it goes. 

A few weeks ago my friend Dan was in town. He’s pictured above. As you can see his mouth is filled with some of The Church Brew Work’s pizza. We ordered the Portobello Pesto Pizza which was topped with portobello mushrooms, basil pesto, red onion, kalamata olives, provolone and parmesan cheese. In my mind the combination of these ingredients swirl together to create a flavor so precious and delicious that it would be an honor for tastebuds to take part. Unfortunately, when the pizza arrived it was anything but.

The ingredients teamed up to create something so salty and overpoweringly bad that getting through this pizza was a task even Hercules would refuse. It was as if a bumbling chef knocked over a container of miscellaneous ingredients onto this pizza. Instead of cleaning things up and thinking about the combination he just let it be because, “I’m not getting paid enough for this." 

The crust was okay, but I think I’m just searching for something nice to say at this point. The pizza was truly a cacophony of chaos that I wouldn’t recommend trying unless eating it was to pay off a debt or ransom. This was the same situation when I had the four-cheese pizza a year or so ago. It was just a mess that not even I could manage. I’m not sure why they can’t play it cool and offer a pizza that isn’t a combination of whatever is within reach.

I guess when you turn a place of worship into a place of dining, you’re bound to be struck with a curse. It’s a shame that the curse couldn’t have been on the fish sandwich.