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Oh, Provel.
It was really only a matter of time before the world found out about your clean bite and how the basic elements of your construction - cheddar, swiss and provolone cheeses - melt from edge to edge of pizza crusts across our fair city. Sure, the government may tell us you are not actually “cheese”, but Provel, we honestly don’t care. We don’t care because even if you are the product of food science, you are still ours and ours alone. Or rather, you were ours.
You see St. Louis, the rest of the world is onto us. Ok, not the rest of the world. Just the well-heeled hipsters and denizens of Clinton Hill, a sliver of Brooklyn populated with rehabbed stone and brick brownstones and well manicured, postage stamp sized lawns. It is a landscape that suggests Lafayette Square or Utah Place in Tower Grove was picked up and transferred to the outer boroughs of New York City. The similarities don’t stop with the local construction either. When Clinton Hill is looking for a pizza, they probably won’t make the call for Imo’s, but they just might head down to Speedy Romeo for The Saint Louie, a wood-fired pie, cut into squares and topped with Italian sausage, pepperoni and thin coins of pickled chili peppers, all riding on a bed of fire-kissed Provel (see Speedy's menu at right, photo below).
However, while Brooklyn may have co-opted our cheese, it forgot about the crackers, specifically our own take on thin crust. In its place is a light Neapolitan dough, crisp from baking with a solid collar for handling the outer pieces of the pizza. When pulled from the fire, the outside squares of this pie are quite good. The combo of pickled chilis and sausage are top-shelf while the Provel - whose natural smokiness is heightened from baking in a wood oven - is rich and creamy. And it is in the first few minutes, with the first few squares, it looks like the best St. Louis-style pizza you’ve ever had is actually from a neighborhood pizzeria in Brooklyn.
The feeling is fleeting.
To make a St. Louis style pizza, one has to embrace the symbiotic relationship between Provel and the crust it knows so well. Provel is as utilitarian as it is edible, melting into puddles of cheese that follow the contours of a pizza cut into squares instead of stretching and pulling as mozzarella would. The result is a square of pizza that can be held without a traditional pizza collar; the toppings stay in place and the cracker crust stays crisp, offering a platform to transport cleanly from plate to mouth.
Without a rigid crust, The Saint Louie’s (delicious) Neapolitan crust quickly caves under the weight of sauce, Provel and toppings, leaving the now rapidly-cooling center squares of the pie hard to eat, not only logistically, but from a flavor and texture perspective as well. Provel, wonderfully creamy when hot, quickly turns synthetic, chewy and oily as it cools to room temp. And we are reminded why Provel is so often accused of not actually being cheese.
The Saint Louie at Speedy Romeo is indeed a curiosity for both St. Louis and Brooklyn. It is the brainchild of a midwest transplant - co-owner Justin Bazdarich hails from Kansas City - who has taken the pizza of his youth and reimagined it for a new audience on the East Coast. Truth-be-told, St. Louis could learn a thing or two from this Brooklyn-based take on our signature pie, primarily that Provel pulled bubbling from a wood oven is vastly superior to Provel baked in gas-fired deck or conveyor ovens.
It is enough to make one wonder what else we could learn about our beloved and misunderstood pizza style should another city get a hold of a brick of our precious Provel.
