1.- PIZZA IN WASHINGTON: AN UPPER-CRUST TOUR
OF EVERY D.C. STYLE
Many of us who loved pizza as kids were raised with a
very limited vocabulary: Small, medium or large? Regular, thin crust or deep
dish? Cheese, pepperoni or veggie? (No, never veggie.) You can blame Big
Pizza’s supply chain for our relative lack of options, but in the delivery age,
those basic selectors were pretty much all we had, such that the arrival of
stuffed-crust pizza remains an event worthy of folklore.
As adults, we’ve moved beyond gimmickry and, in some
cases, beyond delivery altogether. That’s because Washington has become a
veritable pizza atlas, with choices spanning cities, countries and regions of
both hemispheres. In fact, within our very small slice of the country, there
are two kinds of pizza that are distinctly ours, to say nothing of the fine
versions we import and even improve upon, from Naples to New Haven.
Know a type of pizza — think crust, not toppings —
found locally that we’ve overlooked? E-mail us at goingoutguide@washpost.com.
The local favorite
With a flaky, puff pastry-like crust and a thin, sweet
tomato sauce, Ledo
Pizza exists
in love-it-or-hate-it territory. But for locals, a square Ledo’s pie conjures
happy memories of childhood. The smoky provolone, thick pepperoni and chewy
crust take me back to family meals at the Original (and still best) Ledo
Restaurant, which opened in Adelphi in 1955 and spawned legions of Ledo Pizza
franchises before moving to College Park in 2009. It’s loved by generations of
University of Maryland students — including my parents, who passed along the
Ledo’s gene. I still savor Ledo Pizza’s overindulgent Ledo’s Deluxe, a supreme
pie topped with sausage, pepperoni, bacon and hamburger. I couldn’t eat it
every day, but once in a while, it’s a nostalgic treat.
— Fritz Hahn
Ledo Pizza franchises are located throughout the area.
www.ledopizza.com. The Original Ledo Restaurant, 4509 Knox Rd., College Park. 301-422-8122. www.ledorestaurant.com. Plain pizza $5.99-$16. Not available for delivery.
Chicago style
When discussing pizza, the terms “deep dish” and
“Chicago style” are often used interchangeably, but this is as wrong as using
“barbecue” in place of “grill.” Given sufficient yeast and the right flour, any
pizza can fill a deep-dish pan, but few can claim to represent the Second
City’s signature food. True Chicago pizza is more akin to a casserole, with a
buttery crust serving as a retaining wall for a volatile sea of molten
mozzarella. An easy test: Remove the first slice from the pan. If subterranean
cheese flows from each side to fill the void, you’ve got a Chicago-style deep
dish pizza, and if you’re eating it locally, it should come from Alberto’s
Pizza. The Dupont Circle pizzeria packs so much cheese into each of its
dense-crusted deep-dish pies, you’ll worry about the integrity of the pizza box
in which it’s delivered. A large pizza from the shop weighs more than seven
pounds, and it’s a challenge to eat more than a single slice at a time. The
sauce could be chunkier, so it’s best to order one of the pizzas with toppings
— incorporated beneath the top layer of tomato, of course — to absorb some of
the excess moisture.
— Alex Baldinger
Alberto’s Pizza, 2010 P St. NW. 202-986-2121.www.albertospizzadownunder.com. Deep dish pizzas start at $24.95. Available for
delivery through GrubHub.
Neapolitan
To be deemed the maker of a true Neapolitan pizza, one
must pass muster with no less an authority than the formidable-sounding
Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. It is an understatement to say the
Associazione is exacting. There are rules for the crust — no added fats
allowed; built upon a yeast that’s “insipid” in taste — and it must be cooked
in a wood-burning oven, no substitutions. The tomatoes and mozzarella di bufala
must be separately certified, and God help you if your basil is not fresh. So
it’s perfectly reasonable to consider the Margherita DOC pizza at Pupatella a minor miracle, a chewy piece of the Old World
in Arlington. Pupatella’s thin crust is remarkably soft and dotted with a
smattering of char that adds smoke to the pools of runny mozzarella. The
tomatoes are tart. And the basil, well, it turns out that, dipped in a floral
olive oil, it’s just as crucial as the Associazione believes. One of only three
pizza-makers in the area (along with 2 Amys in upper Northwest and Il Canale in
Georgetown) currently serving to-code pies, Pupatella has an advantage over the
others: Toiling in front of the red, domed oven on busy nights is owner Enzo
Algarme, below, Neapolitan not by certification, but by birth.
— Lavanya Ramanathan
Pupatella, 5104 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. 571-312-7230.www.pupatella.com.
$13 for an 11-inch pie. Not available for delivery.
Post-Neapolitan
Co-owner Peter Pastan already has his temple of
Neapolitan pizza, the much-admired 2 Amys, where the kitchen follows all of the
hard-and-fast rules established for the Italian pies. At Etto,
Pastan and team take a more relaxed — you might say more artisanal — approach
to Neapolitan pizza. They mill their own grains in-house, grinding hard red
winter wheat and spelt into a coarser flour that wouldn’t pass muster in
Naples. They also stretch the dough into 13-inch rounds, two inches more than
the maximum set by the Neapolitan authorities, and add toppings, including
cotechino sausage or roasted cauliflower, above, before firing the pizzas in a
hickory- and oak-burning stone oven. “It’s always good to do new things,”
Pastan says. “Otherwise your brain stops working.” It’s also good to see
American chefs creating a personalized pizza, influenced by tradition but not
bound by it.
— Tim Carman
Etto, 1541 14th St. NW. 202-232-0920. www.ettodc.com. $13-$17. Not available for delivery.
New Haven apizza
Unlike certified Neapolitan pizza, New Haven apizza
(pronounced “a-beets,” a dialectic echo of the Italian Americans who developed
these pies in the early 20th century) does not have hard, inflexible rules to
define it. Yet New Haven piemakers do follow generally accepted practices:
Their crusts are crispy and chewy, the backsides often sprinkled with toasted
bread crumbs. Their default cheese for a plain tomato pie is typically pecorino
Romano; if you want mozzarella, you ask for “mootz,” and it will likely be the
aged whole-milk kind, not the fresh buffalo-milk kind. The large, irregular
rounds are also cooked hard, resulting in that blistered char so characteristic
of apizza. As for coal-fired ovens? “I feel it’s overblown,” says Thomas Marr,
chef and co-owner of Pete’s New Haven Style Apizza. “If you’re
in New Haven, there are more places that don’t use coal than do.” Many use deck
ovens, like the ones at Pete’s, Marr argues. The main difference between Pete’s
apizza and the pies back in Yalie town is that the District rounds aren’t
cooked as long. The locals apparently haven’t developed a taste for char.
— Tim Carman
Pete’s New Haven Style Apizza, locations in Clarendon,
Columbia Heights, Friendship Heights and Silver Spring. www.petesapizza.com. Slices $2.75-$3.50; whole tomato pizzas start at $10.50. Delivery
varies by location.
Argentine fugazza
America’s pizza offerings tend to be of Northern
Hemispheric origin, except for the subequatorial slices that are Argentina’s
gift to global pizza culture. The country’s cuisine draws influences from Latin
and Italian food, which have produced a uniquely Argentine style. What sets
Argentine pizza apart is its spongy crust: Fugazza, as it’s called, is nearly
an inch thick and, as the name implies, is more like focaccia than traditional
pizza crust. You can find Argentine pizza at Del Campo and at Rural
Society, chef Jose Garces’s steakhouse in the Loews Madison Hotel. Start
with the Tradicional, served in a personal-size pan and topped with a quilted
layer of mozzarella and soft, sweet caramelized onions — and not a drop of red
sauce.
— Maura Judkis
Rural Society, 1177 15th St. NW. 202-587-2629.www.ruralsocietyrestaurant.com.
$11-$16. Not available for delivery.
St. Louis style
The deep-dish pizzas served at District
of Pi refuse
to adhere to a geographic label. They get lumped in with St. Louis-style
because that’s where the small chain of restaurants started. And the Penn
Quarter storefront has a few authentic Gateway City accents — most notably, the
tasty Pi Common beer brewed specifically for the pizzerias by Schlafly, a St.
Louis microbrewery. (And the St. Louis area code is 314; do the math.) The
pizza, meanwhile, takes cues not only from St. Louis but also from San
Francisco and, most notably, Chicago. It’s deep dish, but with a cornmeal crust,
so it’s sturdy and crisp. You don’t need a knife and fork for this pizza — you
can grab a piece like pizza proper, as the crust holds up the hearty dish.
You’ll also notice that the pizza is round with slices, as opposed to slabs and
squares. Pi also eschews the ubiquitous-in-the-Lou Provel cheese blend, using
mozzarella on all of its pies (with some cheddar on the Delmar) — underneath
the toppings and the chunky tomato sauce atop the pizza. Confused yet? This
won’t help: Chicago’s own Barack Obama, who tasted Pi’s deep dish on the
campaign trail in St. Louis in 2008, declared it the best pizza he’d ever had.
— John Taylor
District of Pi, 910 F St. NW. 202-393-5484. www.pi-pizza.com. Deep dish pizzas start at $11.95. Not available for delivery.
New York style
Whether there’s actually something in the water or
it’s simply a matter of civic pride, New Yorkers are very particular about
their dough. To hear them tell it, nobody can compete with Big Apple bagels,
and pizza? Fuhgeddaboudit. So it’s no surprise that Wiseguy
NY Pizza would
take great pains to explain the labors required of making authentic New York
pies in Washington by way of a 19-point manifesto on its Web site: a special
filtering system resulting in “Newyorkinized” water; no more than three
toppings per pizza; a slightly salty, crispy crust that’s foldable. In truth,
no treatise is needed to verify Wiseguy’s New York bona fides, which come
through with just a single slice of the margherita pie. Several tasters noted
that the pizza’s flavor reached addictive levels as they ate toward the crusty
end, revealing a salty tang familiar to anyone who has walked down Broadway
with a folded slice in hand.
— Alex Baldinger
Wiseguy NY Pizza, 300 Massachusetts Ave. NW.
202-408-7800.www.wiseguynypizza.com.
Slices $2.99-$3.99; pizzas start at $18.59. Not available for delivery.
Vace style
If you didn’t know any better, you might think your
sauce-topped pizza from Vace Italian Deli had
been prepared by a disgruntled kitchen worker who couldn’t follow standard
cheese-on-top protocol. But this very intentional mix-up is the method Liguria
native Valerio Calcagno chose when he opened the Italian market and
delicatessen with his wife, Blanca, in 1976. “It’s just the Vace way of doing
it,” Diana Calcagno says of her late father’s method. “It’s not specific to any
region of Italy, it’s just the way he wanted it.” The cheese serves as a
bodyguard for the crust, keeping it extra crispy and resulting in an audible crunch when
bitten. “A lot of people say it’s New York style, but it’s definitely not,”
Diana says. “It’s just Vace.”
— Holley Simmons
Vace Italian Deli, 3315 Connecticut Ave. NW.
202-363-1999; 4705 Miller Ave., Bethesda.
301-654-6367. www.vaceitaliandeli.com. Slices $2; pizzas $9-$10.50. Not available for delivery.
Sicilian
At Spike Mendelsohn’s We,
the Pizza, you can have your slices topped with everything from Cajun
chicken to bechamel and spinach. But if you like your pizza pure, simple and
with a thicker, chewier crust, grab a slice of Spike’s Sicilian. What Americans
call Sicilian pizza refers to a thick, square, pan-baked pizza that evolved
through Italian immigrants in New York. Cooked in a cast-iron pan in a
500-degree oven, We, the Pizza’s Sicilian uses less water and more olive oil
than the rest of the menu, giving the dough its sponginess with a hint of
crunch on the bottom. To highlight the specialty crust, the toppings are purely
traditional: tomato sauce, roasted tomatoes, basil and a healthy blanketing of
mozzarella.
— Maura Judkis
We, the Pizza, 305 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. 202-544-4008;
2100 Crystal Dr., Arlington.
703-415-7992. www.wethepizza.com. Slices $4; pizza $20. Not available for delivery.
Jumbo slice
Traditionally, jumbo slice is meant to be eaten between
midnight and 3 a.m. before you call it a night, but a slice from Italian
Kitchen on U is
enjoyable at any hour. Don’t let the larger-than-average dimensions (smaller
than the cartoonish slices typically served in Adams Morgan) lead you to think
this is pizza for late-night carb cravings and nothing more. There’s a
noticeable sweetness to the thin crust and an irresistible salty crunch when
biting into a folded slice of the pepperoni. It’s a respectable way to cap the
evening next time you’re headed home from U Street’s bars.
— Margaret Ely
Italian Kitchen on U, 1110 U St. NW. 202-387-4992. www.italianonu.com.
Slices $3.50-$4; pizzas from $7.99. Delivery available within 1 1 / 2 miles.
Mediterranean
Astor Mediterranean’s pizza crust begins with a mix of flour, olive oil, yeast, egg whites,
sugar, salt and whole fennel seeds. “The fennel gives the dough a special
taste,” says owner Abdalla Hashish, remembering a type of cookie his mother
used to bake for him that incorporated the same spice. Ingredients are blended
and left to rise before the mix is pounded down three times, covered with
toppings and baked in a shallow rectangular pan at 450 degrees. Astor uses the
same dough for all of its pizzas, though it’s best suited for the Greek pie,
which is topped with chunky tomato sauce, mozzarella, feta, gyro meat, kalamata
olives, tomatoes, spinach, porcini peppers and garlic. “Most Mediterranean food
uses the same ingredients,” says Hashish, who hails from Egypt. “We just try to
put our own spin on them.”
— Holley Simmons
Astor Mediterranean, 1829 Columbia Rd. NW.
202-745-7495; 2300 N. Pershing Dr., Arlington. 703-465-2306. www.astorfoods.com.
$11.95-$17. Not available for delivery.