Entries tagged with 'Washington DC'
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 1, 2007 at 11:57 AM
Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema visits recently opened high-end pizzeria RedRocks:
Hovering over the activity is a slim, fair-haired guy wearing a permanent grin, otherwise known as the owner, James O'Brien, a musician (he plays guitar and piano) and barkeep-turned-restaurateur. He'll tell you his passion for pizza stretches back to his youth in New Jersey and time spent in New York and New Haven, Conn., places that live and die by pies. Only after he knew pizza would be the next bullet point on his résumé did he meet the man who would shed serious light on the subject: consultant Edan MacQuaid, whose dozen or so years of employment at Pizzeria Paradiso and 2 Amys—Washington's trailblazing pizza purveyors—give RedRocks street cred.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, October 4, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Photograph courtesy of the Pupatella pizza cart.
Melissa McCart (Counter Intelligence) writes about a type of street cart you don't often see, a Neapolitan pizza cart. It's in Arlington, Virginia's Ballston neighborhood:
Enzo Algarme and Anastasiya Laufenberg weren't kidding when they said they know pizza. The name of Ballston's new Pupatella Food Cart—pupatella is slang for doll in Naples—is a reference to Algarme's grandmother who inspired his love of cooking. Although they've only been open a week and are making do with a standard oven as opposed to the wood-burning one that's becoming the standard in the area's top pizza joints, Algarme and Laufenberg turning out an impressive thin-crust margherita pie. It's well-cooked, but not too brittle, and topped with basil, mozzarella and a glaze of sauce with a hint of sweetness.
Pupatella is located at North Stuart Street and 9th Street North, near Ballston's Orange Line station [map].
Posted by Adam Kuban, September 18, 2007 at 3:20 PM
On the blog DCist today, a comparison of Washington pizzerias 2 Amys, Bebo Trattoria, Comet Pizza, and Red Rocks.
What gets my attention, however, is one of the commenters:
NYC expats who want their coal-fired pizza fix now have an option outside Baltimore. The Phat Pug Coal Fired Pizzeria, 8814A Bel Air Road, Perry Hall, MD is about an hour's drive from downtown DC. If you're down on the burnt crust tip, this is your only option outside New York. And yeah, coal fired pizza ain't coming to DC no way, no how. Imagine what that stuff does to your lungs.
For the uninitiated, coal-fired pizza ovens are the holy grail of pizza ovens, since they're able to crank to mega-high temps and properly cook a pie.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 11, 2007 at 6:15 PM
Hey, Slicesters, Ed Levine here. If you follow this site regularly, you know we've been excerpting chapters and info from the pizza book I wrote, Pizza: A Slice of Heaven. Since Adam has been talking a lot about D.C. pizza as of late, I thought I'd post my chapter on the subject. Enjoy! —Ed
It was at Ella's Wood Fired Pizza, the first stop on my Washington, D.C., pizza tour, that I developed my owner-occupied pizza theory. I sat down at a table across from the beautiful, fire-engine-red, wood-fired brick oven and ordered a Margherita and a marinara pizza. I asked my waiter where Ella's got its mozzarella and sausage. He said he didn't know but would ask the chef, who was sitting at the bar. The chef then walked past my table on the way to the kitchen. I repeated the questions directly to him. He said, "I don't really know. I think the mozzarella comes from California, and the sausage, well, I don't have any idea. A lot of sausage comes from Pennsylvania, so maybe it's from there." This exchange did not fill my stomach with confidence; at the very least, a chef should know where his ingredients come from. Maybe he's new, I consoled myself, and his name couldn't be Ella. But there was no Ella in sight, and nobody else in charge.
Unsurprisingly, the pizzas were thoroughly mediocre. Much better than your run-of-the-mill slice place or chain, but nothing you'd travel even ten blocks for. Our next stop was Matchbox, which makes a big deal on its menu about its coal-fired oven and all the trips made to the great pizza emporia in New York. I ordered a medium half-plain, half-sausage pie, and asked our waitress where they got their mozzarella and sausage. She came back and said the guys making the pizza didn't know. Our pie arrived, and it was yellow, which meant they were using aged, not fresh, mozzarella. The sausage had a nice fennel taste, but the sauce was overpoweringly herbaceous. It tasted of dry, old oregano. The waitress came over and said they got their sausage from Sysco, a megasized food distributor. I appreciated her candor, but not the pizza. Once again I felt there was a pizza leadership vacuum at Matchbox. I was beginning to get discouraged about pizza in the District of Columbia. How could our nation's capital, full of college students, 20-somethings working on Capitol Hill, not to mention a hundred senators, 532 members of the House of Representatives, nine Supreme Court justices, and the president and vice-president not have at least a few solid slices? This state of affairs is unpatriotic, not to mention unregulated.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, July 11, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Blogger D.C. Concierge answers a question from one of her readers: Where can I find good pizza in the District?
She recommends Comet Pizza and Ping Pong (Warning: Slicester Hackmuth tells us that the pies here are "tiny and expensive"). The concierge also is also in "LOVE LOVE LOVE" with 2 Amys, which at one point was one of the few pizzerias in the U.S. to be listed with the Verace Pizza Napoletana organization (the joint is no longer listed on the VPN site).
Anyway, the concierge claims that the best brick-oven pies in D.C. can be found at Matchbox or at "the unlikely pizza find" of Busboys and Poets.
Her favorite, however, is "a hidden gem" called Washington Deli.
The fact that the above recommendations come from someone who doesn't know what New Haven– or Neapolitan–style pizza is should be just as disconcerting as taking pizza advice from a guy (me) who hasn't been to the nation's capital since Carter was in the White House.
Hackmuth, who does live in D.C., recommends Vace. And three of the concierge's readers recommend Radius, which always gets favorable mentions from Slice readers whenever the city is brought up.
Vace
Address: 3315 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington DC 20008
Phone: 202-363-1999
Radius Pizza
Address: 3155 Mount Pleasant Street, Washington, DC 20010
Phone: 202-234-0808
Comet Pizza and Ping Pong
Address: 5037 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC 20008
Phone: 202-364-0404
2 Amys
Address: 3715 Macomb Street NW, Washington DC 20016
Phone: 202-885-5700
Matchbox
Address: 713 H Street NW, Washington DC 20001
Phone: 202-289-4441
Busboys and Poets
Address: 2021 14th Street NW, Washington DC 20009
Phone: 202-387-7638
Washington Deli
Address: 1990 K Street, Washington DC 20006
Phone: 202-331-3344
Posted by Adam Kuban, July 9, 2007 at 10:15 AM
Photograph from zenfrisbee on Flickr
In October of last year, Washington, D.C. restaurateurs James Alefantis and his parter Carole Greenwood, co-owners of Buck's Fishing & Camping, took over the abandoned space next door and opened one heck of a quirky pizzeria. Comet Ping Pong—decorated with an old neon sign from Comet Liquor in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, three ping pong tables in the back, and an overall ping pong theme—opened to a somewhat shaky start, but the Washington Post's Tom Sietsema revisited recently and was mighty impressed:
Comet's pies are intended to reflect the childhood memories of Greenwood (who grew up in suburban New York and Washington) and Alefantis (who was raised in Buffalo and Washington). As such, the crust is thin and crisp, with a flavor distinct from so much of the competition because of the chef's mix of Italian pizza flour and whole wheat flour. The base is seasoned with garlic-infused olive oil before toppings are applied, and the round is slipped into an oven that hovers between 600 and 700 degrees. No ordinary base decoration will do: Greenwood makes her pies using fresh mozzarella cheese made from the milk of Jersey cows, hence the cheese's pale yellow hue, and a sauce that she made from the 2,000 or so pounds of tomatoes she got from farmer Mark Toigo and flavored with basil, garlic and a bit of honey before canning them at a Pennsylvania facility.
The bronzed and bubbling results show up as large ovals or rectangles, cut into squares and presented on wax paper-covered silver trays. The toppings typically include something meaty (spicy sausage with garlic and fresh mozzarella) and something not (wilted greens scattered with black olives and mild ricotta), but they also change to take advantage of what beckons in the market. In late spring, I was tearing through asparagus, thin slices of crisp potato and fontina cheese, a lovely nod to the season that tasted as good as it looked. More recently, whole soft shell crabs decorated my crust, an idea Greenwood says she got from chef Jeff Buben by way of chef Roberto Donna. (Diners trying to get some assistance from the staff on how to tackle soft shell crabs on a crust don't get much help. Experience has taught me to slice right through the little beasts, which enriches the pie with their tasty liquid innards.) Another hit from the water is the pizza sprinkled with tender little clams, soft onions and fresh thyme. Additional toppings cost a dollar or two; one of the more unusual and delicious: mushrooms smoked over the grill at Buck's.
Comet Ping Pong
Address: 5037 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC 20008
Phone: 202-364-0404
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 7, 2006 at 3:28 PM
Be careful what you joke about:
Washington D.C.-based Manny & Olga's pizza was only joking when it printed coupons that said buy 1,000 pizzas and get 1,000 free.
But students at Georgetown University are taking the offer seriously.
A campaign is underway on the campus, and, as of yesterday afternoon, 953 students had joined the so-called pizza coalition.
College Kids Accept Pizza Challenge [meatnews.com]
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 21, 2006 at 9:00 AM
Dear Slice,
I couldn’t help but notice that you have no listings for good pizza in Washington, D.C.! Well, if you ever find yourself down this way, I strongly suggest you come to my neighborhood of Mount Pleasant and check out Radius Pizza. While I would not call it 100 percent New York–style pizza, it is awesome and has been rated the best pizza in D.C. by a congresswoman from Manhattan, albeit the Upper East Side. ;-)
In my opinion, Radius is the best pizza that Washington, D.C., has to offer.
Sincerely,
Gil G., Washington, D.C.
Dear Gil,
Thanks for the tip. What about 2 Amys? Slice has heard some great things about that place, too.
Hasta la pizza,
Adam
###
RADIUS PIZZA
Address: 3155 Mount Pleasant Street, Washington, DC 20010 [map]
Phone: 202-234-0808
Pizza Intel: DCFoodies.com, DCist.com, Washington Post
2 AMYS
Address: 3715 Macomb St. NW, Washington DC 20016 [map]
Phone: 202-885-5700
Pizza Intel: DCFoodies.com, DCist.com, Washington Post
Posted by Adam Kuban, October 30, 2006 at 11:48 AM
Pity poor Ed Levine. When his workday doesn't involve ordering one of each doughnut at a well-regarded New York City doughnuttery, he gets to eat pizza from some of the country's best pizzerias and write about it for Details magazine. His findings cover some familiar ground to readers of Slice and of Mr. Levine's 2005 book PIzza: A Slice of Heaven, but there are some new entries to be savored.
Pizzeria Bianco [623 East Adams Street, Phoenix AZ 85004; map]
"The sauce tastes like a distillation of the ripest tomatoes."
Di Fara[1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn NY 11230; map]
"... a Di Fara slice has a one-of-a-kind flavor."
Totonno's [1524 Neptune Ave., Brooklyn NY 11224; map]
"Order the white pie, made with ricotta, mozzarella, and enough fresh garlic to ward off a roomful of vampires."
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