 |
 |
| Photograph by Katherine Bish | |
|
|
I'm an Italian from New Jersey. I have rules about pizza.
RULE NO. 1: ALL PIZZA IS GOOD PIZZA. Pizza is hard to mess up. And even if you do manage to mess it up, you're still lucky to have yourself a hot and gooey mess of mozzarella, pizza sauce and carbohydrates.
RULE NO. 2: THE FASTEST WAY TO MESS UP PIZZA IS TO DRESS UP PIZZA. I long frowned upon gourmet toppings, artisan crusts, anything that dared to be called "California- style pizza." But eventually I had to defer to my No. 1 rule about pizza and amend this No. 2 rule about pizza. Now I gladly champion the upper-crusty/artsy-fartsy stuff.
So let me come right out with it: There are two very good new pizza places in town: Pi, which opened in March in the former Mirasol space across from The Pageant; and Katie's Pizzeria Café, which opened last January in the former Blackberry Café space across from the Richmond Heights Schnucks. Both serve the sort of new-wave pizza that isn't classically New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Bel Air, whatevs. It's a thin-to-medium crust, a sauce more sweet than salty, and shameless in the quantity and quality of its toppings.
RULE NO. 3: THE ANSWER TO "WHAT DO YOU WANT ON YOUR PIZZA?" IS "YES, PLEASE." There's pretty much nothing I dislike on top of a pizza, which is one of the reasons I abandoned Rule No. 2 some time ago.
While I do mean it when I tell you that I liked everything I ate at both Pi and Katie's, here were my favorites. At Katie's I went ape for the pizza with fingerling potatoes, parsnips, pancetta, onions, Parmesan and rosemary. It was probably the parsnips that put this one over the top for me. Note that this is a tomato sauce–free "white" pie, which some people don't consider "real" pizza. I think it is, so let's call…
RULE NO. 4: WHITE PIZZA IS REAL PIZZA. At Pi I loved the Bucktown, which includes roasted chicken, artichoke hearts, red peppers, green olives, red onions, feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. I can't tell you specifically what I liked about it. Job requirements be damned, I don't believe in overstudying pizza. I just like to eat it, rather quickly, to the point where "devour" is a better word for it.
RULE NO. 5: THE BEST THING TO EAT WITH PIZZA IS MORE PIZZA. MAYBE SOME SALAD. Pi and Katie's demolished this rule for me. At Pi we started with a pound of the best chicken wings I have ever had. They're baked! They're big! They're not coated in some weird, staining orange sauce! We also had the garlic bread, deconstructed into a half-baguette of fresh French bread and a whole, roasted garlic clove to spread upon it: heaven. Katie's surprised the hell out of me with its prosciutto-wrapped spring rolls, all things verdant and good (read: zucchini and asparagus) wrapped up in a basil leaf and a slice of yummy cured meat. And yes, at Katie's I did have a little salad: the fried artichoke salad, studded with goat-cheese buttons, pistachio nuts and more asparagus, all bedded on lovely greens. Delicious.
RULE NO. 6: DUNK YOUR CRUSTS IN YOUR RED WINE. Just hear me out on this one. It's a very New Jersey Italian thing to do and perhaps more than a little startling to do in public. But rules are rules, and that's how you complete your pizza feast. I have to give the slightest nod to Katie's on this one, simply because their bold wine list offers up a Nero d'Avola by the glass, which is almost unheard of.
Don't ask me which one I like more—I adore both Pi and Katie's—because the only way to answer is to tell you which one I've been to most recently. As I write this, that's Katie's. But ask me again in a week or so.
Pi: 6144 Delmar, 314-727-6633. Hours: 5 p.m.–midnight daily.
