Pizza and Hockey, New Jersey Edition

As a part of my 25th birthday gift I was treated to a hockey game. This time it was in New Jersey.

After driving six hours straight towards the beautiful city of Newark we stopped in a nice little area called Elizabeth, NJ where we came across a little neighborhood pizzeria. The inside looked quite fresh but a little too new and fake. You know the deal. Its the kind of “Italian” restaurant with the faux-Italian decor and obligatory framed photos of The Godfather actors and pictures of New York.  This place claimed to have a brick oven which was in plain view from the dining area.  This “brick oven” looked like it was made out of that shitty fake rock siding you see on newly built houses.

They should have kept it out of view.

And you can imagine that in the middle of shit-Jersey that there was no shortage of Italians working in pizza places.

Anyway, on to the pie.  Sure, it had all the characteristics of a brick oven pizza.  It was baked fairly quickly.  The crust was very crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.  A fair amount of oven blisters were visible on the crust ends.  We ordered the “Mamma Mia” which had onions, green peppers, prosciutto, sauce and fresh mozzarella.

The fresh mozzarella was anything but fresh.  There was no flavor, no creaminess.  Just rubbery cheese.  The sauce was probably the worst thing on this pie as it was way too salty.  It might have been good for dipping bread sticks in but on a pie that already has the salty meat prosciutto, a salty sauce just throws everything off.

The crust was well baked but was rather tasteless and texture-less.  I like a bumpy, gritty surface to my pizza crust but this stuff was smoother than a Papa John’s bread stick.

It’s a good thing I forgot the name of this place but if you’re interested and in the area it’s on 3rd Avenue in Elizabeth, NJ.  I don’t recommend visiting this neighborhood though.

The Devils beat the Predators, 5-2.  The place went nuts as Ilya Kovalchuk socred his first goal as a Devil.  Awesome hockey experience!