AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Inferno pizza1/18/2024 Who knew that Washington’s most versatile pizzamaker had spent the first two decades of his career disguised as a lawyer? Before he launched his Della Barba start-up, Joey Barber was a corporate defense attorney. The Vace cheese slice is Washington’s iconic pizza.ģ315 Connecticut Ave. The approach allows you to savor the sweetness and acidity of the sauce, built with two tomatoes, and appreciate the woody perfume of the oregano. As every regular knows, a Vace pie comes with the tomato sauce on top of the mozzarella, as if it were a thin-crust variation on Chicago deep dish. Many Washingtonians swear by Vace’s pepperoni or its white pie with onions, but I love the cheese pizza, its perfection buried in its simplicity and its engineering. To sink your teeth into a Vace slice is to recall the thrill of the crunch, a pleasure nearly lost in a city beholden to ultrafine 00 flours and the soft, chewy crusts they produce. You can hold a slice in your hand, and it remains almost parallel to the ground, defying the laws of gravity and the rules of foldable New York pizza. The recipe came from Calcagno’s father, the late Valerio Calcagno, who mixed high-gluten flour into the dough so that when his rounds came out of the oven, they were hot, sturdy and crisp. The pizza at Vace, General Manager Diana Calcagno likes to remind people, is not New York-style, and it’s not Neapolitan-style. NW 20 .Ĭheese pizza at Vace Italian Delicatessen The sodium levels on this pie are assertive but not bloodthirsty. They’re also not too salty, which is important. These meaty fillets are fleshy, firm and full of clean anchovy flavor. “The vast majority of anchovies are terrible.” The kitchen doesn’t rinse or soak the fish, either, which can turn them mushy. “I’ve tasted pretty much every anchovy out there,” Pastan says. Pastan sources anchovies from Spain and kalamata olives from Italy. Take his calabrese, a riff on an Italian classic. In the 2000s, the VPN designation helped 2 Amys separate from the pack and tell the story of Neapolitan pizzamaking traditions, but “I don’t think it makes a difference anymore,” Pastan says, “and actually it’s kind of nice not to explain things to people all the time.” Besides, Pastan doesn’t need the pizza police to verify that he has standards. An inspector apparently didn’t like that Pastan’s crew was forming pizzas on a peel, not on the counter. It’s true, says owner Peter Pastan: 2 Amys is no longer a card-carrying member of the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, the organization that determines whether kitchens are following the strict rules for preparing Neapolitan pizza. Gallego, a partner at Red Light, says it’s nearly impossible to eat an entire Detroit pizza by yourself. The thick sauce, fortified with herbs and tomato paste, is ladled down the middle, like a racing strip. Your order will be served on a baking rack, looking like the best Stouffer’s French-bread pizza you’ve ever seen. You know, sub in fancy ingredients, cut down on the cheese or do anything that might imply the original was somehow inferior. A Michigan native, Gallego wanted to stay true to the roots of this workingman’s dish, so she refused to chef it up. It provides a necessary contrast to the crust’s light and airy interior, a duality that makes Detroit pizza so utterly seductive. That oil, in turn, finds its way to the edges of the pan, putting a crispy edge on the focaccia-like pizza. One key to great Detroit pizza, says chef Naomi Gallego, is to use Wisconsin brick cheese, which releases oil as it cooks. Original pepperoni Detroit pizza at Red Light Bar His spinach pie was inspired by the Popeye once served at the now-shuttered Co., baker Jim Lahey’s much-beloved pizzeria in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Consider Frank Linn, the chef and namesake behind Frankly … Pizza! in Kensington. If there’s a common element among the pizzas on this list, it’s the perfectionist nature of their creators. One just wanted to create a pizza to match the punny portmanteau floating around his brain: octopie. Another leaned on an Italian tradition that dates back centuries. One pizzaiolo was inspired by the work of a respected peer in New York City. The inspiration behind the 10 pizzas I ultimately picked is as varied as the pies themselves. I was searching for a good story and maybe even a pizza that said something about Washington. So this was my task: Eat more slices than humanly possible and identify the 10 best individual pizzas in Washington. I mean, chefs don’t limit themselves to one great pizza per storefront. But the thing is, even if you could visit every one, you’d still miss a lot a seriously inventive pies. If you had the desire, and the stomach capacity to handle all the dough, you could eat pizza daily for a month, and still not darken the doorway of every quality pizzeria in the D.C.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |