Origin8 Cargo Unit handlebar. Pizza box friendly?

Origin8 has been pumping out some fairly cool shit in the last several years.  Most of the stuff seems like an affordable knock-off of a higher quality, albeit more expensive product.  Not to say that any of is inherently bad, I’m not saying that at all.  Most of the Origin8 stuff I’ve owned over the years has been very usable.  Tires, handlebars, I think a couple of hubs here and there.

Either way, Andy just got a set of these awesome Origin8 Cargo Unit handlebars.  A seemingly sturdy metal basket welded directly on to a set of riser bars.  Perfect for a chill Steamroller in the city and the basket looks to have been welded to fit the dimensions of most 12 pack beer boxes.  But we wanted to find out how well it does with pizza…

Here you can see Andy flying down Broad St. at around 2 A.M. on a Monday night in Richmond.  We  just left Aladin’s with 4 slices of cheese pizza and the two small boxes fit comfortably in the basket.  The only way to carry these was to lean them sideways.  We expected disastrous results when we arrived home.

This may look like a meltdown but the slices from Aladin’s held up extremely well.  While they are smushed up in this picture, we were actually able to flatten them out without losing much in the way of cheese coverage.  This is sloppy, late night, drunkard ‘za anyway.  It’s supposed to be like this you fool!

Cool design from Origin8 but I’m still waiting on the perfect pizza storage.  Pick up these bars at Carytown Bicycle Company.  Keep riding!

Gluten free at Stuzzi

Stuzzi loves to wine and dine the Pamparius folk so my trips to Richmond are usually accompanied with a stop in at the only DOC/VPN certified pizza place in Virginia.  The stuff is always satisfying.  Occasionally some of the pies can have a soggy center but who am I to complain?  I’ve eaten a larger percentage of soggy pies in my life anyway.  Perfect dough is hard to come by.

Anyway, my anti-glutenist doppleganger Ralphy was my wing-woman on this massive Richmond weekend.  After several extended nights of partying, celebrating, smashing and rocking, we definitely needed to gorge on some hot Italian foods.  We met up with Peter at Stuzzi and the belly-stuffing commenced.

I ordered a Vodka sauce pizza with an assortment of meats, basil, mozzarella, ect ect.  Very good, but the gluten free option is where it’s at.

In short, it tasted great.  You could definitely tell it was a rice based, gluten free crust.  Apparently it comes from Naples, as do most things at Stuzzi.  I think even the napkins are Italian.  Anyway, my words aren’t as important as Ralphy’s but I remember her mumbling “this is the best Gluten free pizza Ive ever had,” and something about the onions being caramelized just enough.  At least, thats what I think she said with cheese hanging from her mouth.

We had a few other things, mozzarella sticks and rice balls which were all tasty treats.  Some cheesecake with an amazing cream that none of us could possibly finish.  Pete also gave us some Gluten free pasta (from Naples, no less) to take home, a very generous gesture, regardless of what’s been written about Stuzzi’s owner.  I could care less, poor people need to eat!

The trip to Richmond was without a doubt the best I’ve had since I moved and I can’t wait to swing back down in two weeks for Pizza Crawl 3:  The Pie Strikes Back.

Belmont Pizzeria

I suppose we’re a little late getting to Richmond’s latest pizza joint.  Belmont Pizzeria is located in the museum district on Belmont close to Patterson ave.  The place specializes in New York style take out but seems to have a few gourmet options on the menu and some specials written on the chalkboard.

Andy and I each ordered a slice and a drink from the rural boy who worked the counter.  Prices are a little high in my book, but we’ll let you decide.  We noticed the guys in the back cutting out individual triangles of dough to make the slices absolutely fresh.  Not that I give a damn.  I’d rank the pizza just below average at best.

The slices are absolutely huge.  Each one filled up a small pizza box as you see above.  While the slices themselves are big, the crust is extremely thin, so you’re really just getting your money’s worth.  I have never seen a NY slice this thin before and it really requires rolling up in order to eat.  I’m not sure if cooking the slice longer would solve the problem, but the crust was way too floppy and soft to eat any other way.

The ingredients were average.  The flavor really just reminded me of a Piccola’s type joint.  Sauce wasn’t too sweet and not exactly fresh, the mozz was ninja turtle style (stretches for miles) and the pepperoni was thin and flavorless.

I believe Belmont Pizzeria is open quite late on Fridays and Saturday.  3am if I remember correctly.  If that’s the case then the Museum District has a viable option for late night pie but dont expect to just walk in a grab a slice.  It takes quite a while for them to make each one.

Eating our words: Stuzzi is great

Ok.  We had our reasons for expecting Stuzzi to be a bit of a disappointment and I personally have a bit of disdain for such uppity pizza places with their fancy menus in half-assed Italian and their adoration for the awful lager that is Peroni.  I feel more comfortable in a place that is as simple as the food itself.  Dingy,  cheap, utilitarian.

With that said, we have finally made our first stop at Stuzzi pizzeria napoletana and I am really stoked to say that it is the first of hopefully many visits to come.  We eat our words with smiles on our faces.

From what I hear Stuzzi has been very busy since it opened earlier this week.  We walked in on a Wednesday evening and there was only seating available at the bar which we gladly accepted seating to.  Inside, the place is quite nice but really doesn’t overwhelm you with gaudy taste.  Wearing t-shirts and shorts, none of us felt under dressed even though most of the patrons were dressed a bit more dainty.

Here, you can see the men in action in front of the brick oven which looks to be completely wood-fired.

Time for the pies.  We placed our order collectively, ordering 3 pies at once.  We waited for no more than ten minutes before we were served.  Visually, the pizzas are stunning.

I will only comment on my pizza for now while the others chime in at a later time.

Above you see a salami, basil, fresh mozzarella and San Marzano tomato pizza.  The flavors absolutely pop here.  No single ingredient comes off as too dominant.  I love the salami on this.  Very salty and spicy with no acidic after taste.  The cheese is very creamy, fresh and well balanced.  The sauce is great as well.  If you’ve had fresh San Marzano tomato sauce before you’ll recognize its pure, bittersweet flavor.  The toppings are very well balanced on my pie, nothing is over dressed.

The crust is my only point of complaint.  Don’t get me wrong, this stuff is very, very good.  My gripe is that there is too much cornicione than I’d like and on my pizza, it was just too much to chew on.  I’d like to see a lighter, more “fluffy” crust if there is going to be this much edge crust on the pizzas.  I simply felt too full after crushing the remainder of the crust.  Dropping $12-14 on a fairly small pizza I tend not to leave anything behind.  One thing I like about 8 1/2′s pies is that they keep their cornicione to a minimum, giving you more area for the toppings to rest on.

Here are the pictures from the other pies that were ordered and hopefully we will hear from Andy and a special guest comment from Braden at Carytown Bicycle Company.

Assante’s pan crust

Sorry for the lack of updates lately.  Neither of us have felt like indulging in fatty slices and we’ve been hitting the trainer hard to work off the holiday buldges we’ve sprouted.

-here you see andy working with our intervals coach Dr. Desmond-

In addition, Richmond has been absolutely spermed on with shit weather for several days straight and with no signs of letting up.  Needless to say, no one feels like doing anything.

On a better note, I went to a friend’s house last night to exchange feelings on said poopy weather and mull around in our own little depressed worlds, but lo and behold Mike D. had ordered a pan crust Assante’s pizza with ham and sausage!  All my years living in the vicinity of this fine establishment and I had never thought of ordering anything other than their hand tossed pizza.  The pan crust was quite good, barely bringing back fond memories of my expedition to the Great Pebble Pizza City back in December.  To get absolutely real, this wouldn’t pass for good pizza almost anywhere but on a night when the weather was as retarded as it was last night, almost any kind of pizza would make some poor lads happy.

new pizza!

Richmond seems to be a never ending pizza garden with new pizza parlors popping up every week.  This time it’s Stuzzi coming in at 1 North Belmont.

“We’re doing something that should make national headlines,” they say on Richmondmagazine.com.  We’ll see about that.  I’m just about sick of these places that think they can make an impeccable neapolitian pie with “homegrown” ingredients and fancy San Marzano tomatoes.  Just make a fucking decent pizza and save the shmucky VPN ingredients for another day.

I hope I get to eat my words.

street view google

Pie, Lombardy

Finally!  This joint has been on my mind for several months and they’re finally opening their doors to us.  It’s a “soft opening” so there are still a lot of kinks to work out and the new wait staff could definitely use more training but it could turn in to a pretty chill place to get  a decent pie and some brews.

Pie is a two story restaurant.  The first floor is a small dining area with seating for around thirty people.  Looks pretty quaint.  The upstairs is a pub, with around 15 beers on tap, a lot of wine and two TV screens.  The whole place is decorated very nicely, but I don’t care about that.  Lets get to the pizza.

Pie has your normal list of red and white pizzas with toppings like fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, sausage and more exotic toppings like prosciutto and squash.  We got the sausage.

As far as the toppings go, the sausage is some of the best shit I’ve ever had on any pizza in my life.  These weren’t sausage pebbles that you find on pretty much every cheap pizza and they weren’t little pepperoni sausages either.  What you get are long, thick, juicy sausages with so much funkin’ flavor in them you’ll definitely finish them off even if you don’t finish the slices.  The cheese was your usual fresh mozzarella that most gourmet places around here carry accompanied by fresh tomatoes and basil.  Nice blend of flavors.

The crust?  Well, it certainly looks good.  Tons of crust bubbles all around the cornicione and a stiff under-crust that holds the weight of the toppings without cracking under pressure, but the stuff is dry as can be.  It has all the makings of a great crust but just has nothing on the inside to light your taste buds.

Hopefully this stuff can be worked out but either way you can get a great pizza that will easily fill up two people for $9-$11 while you sip on a selection of beers and wines.  I’m sure by the time they’re ready for a grand opening, the staff and cooks will have everything ironed out for a tight experience in the fan.

I went back the next day with some friends who were kind enough to offer me slices of their own.  The white squash pizza was an interesting take and something fresh, while the red pepperoni had me stoked on coming in again and getting my own.  Thanks Jake and Ryan.

Great location, great prices, decent pizza with lots of potential.  I’m stoked on this place.

Oh ya, they’ll turn on the hockey games for you too…

Pizzeria Due, Chicago, IL

After eating nothing but pizza from Friday night until Sunday afternoon (Father and Son’s leftovers) I hardly had the stomach or the drive to get more, but I knew I needed to hit up at least one of the famous places in the heart of downtown Chicago.  Pizzeria Uno, Due, Gino’s East or Giordano’s, I didn’t care.  I felt it was necessary to the trip.

We eventually snail our way downtown around 9 or 10pm, a little later than I wanted but shit happens when you’re wandering around in a new city.  As 10pm came and went, I kind of gave up on finding a place to dine at, I didn’t think any place would still be serving this late on a  Sunday night.  As we make our way to the Signature Lounge at the 96th floor on the John Hancock building, I look left at an intersection.  Far in the distance I spot Pizzeria Due.  I run down the street to check to see if they were open and sure enough they were will serving this late.  Perfect.

image from goplantit.com

Pizzeria Due was opened by the owners of Pizzeria Uno, right across the intersection from eachother in the 40′s after Uno grew to be too popular.  They claim to have created the original deep dish pizza but others claim it was Lou Malnati, which is another pizza joint I wish I had the chance to try out.  You can read all about that crap on wikipedia so lets talk pies.

I was apparently the only one hungry enough to order anything so I got a small pie and tried to split some of it when my friend Katie.  The pie was split up half pepperoni half mushrooms.

The pie we got was a little more typical of a thick crust pizza.  Lots of gooey cheese, well cooked toppings, and a thick, moist crust that would easily fill up a hungry dude.  I don’t remember anything really unique about this stuff, it was just good. Everything was cooked perfectly, the crust had a nice balance of textures with a little oily touch.  Tomato sauce was a little more typical than a place like Burt’s; more on the tangy side than spicy, but it was certainly fresh and very tasty.  One thing I realized about Burt’s is that they don’t go very heavy on the cheese, which is something I don’t mind as much.  Due certainly had the most gooey cheese of them all.

Pizzeria Due is another really cozy pizza joint with friendly service and decent prices.  I typically paid about $15-$17 bucks each pizza on this trip of mine, which was usually enough to feed 4 people on average, though I found myself eating the Father and Son’s leftovers three or four times on the trip.  I can really understand the appeal of deep dish pizza now.  It seems to me that the goal is simple; you take good pizza and just make more of it in one dish.  Bread is something that I love to eat and I also find it to be very delicious, although not as good for your sex appeal in the long run, so it makes sense why this kind of pie is full of flavor.

This trip rocked and the pizza rocked even harder.  The best pie was definitely at Burt’s, everyone I was with seemed to say the same thing.  Father and Son’s was great but how the fuck did a rock get in my pizza?  Fuck you for that.  Pizzeria Due was also great if you enjoy a less than spicy thick crust pizza but I love the atmosphere there.  Half-basement dining in the heart of downtown Chicago?  I’ll take it any time,it doesn’t get much better.  And the only non deep dish pizza I tried at Piece was pretty damn great too.  Dammit, all of these places were good.  Are there any bad pizza places in Chicago?  Or did I just choose very carefully?  I’d like to think the former, but like everything else, there’s bound to be some shit stinkin’ up someone’s flower garden.

Now if we could only get a decent deep-dish pizza joint here in Richmond…

Thanks to Katie and Laura for showing me around and all the friendly people I met.  Go Blackhawks.

Burt’s Place, Morton Grove, IL

After a fun trip to the Home Alone house in Winnetka, IL. we made a stop at a much talked about pizza place just outside of Chicago called Burt’s Place.  I had read great things about this place on the internet and from Mr. Bourdain’s show, No Reservations, so myself and others were excited to check this place out.  Tucked away in a cozy neighborhood with more than cozy service, this was easily the best pizza I had while I was in Chi-town.

We almost didn’t find it.  Who would have thought such a popular pizza joint would be nestled far away from the main business road, way deep in a neighborhood that I would have no doubt never, ever visited if it hadn’t been for Burt’s Place?  The people inside were more than accommodating.  The joint was small, and about two people were on the floor serving, one of them I recognized as Burt’s lady from the No Reservations episode.

As soon as we realized they didn’t accept credit cards, we told them we had to go find an ATM.  That was no problem for them, they took our order anyway since the pizzas usually took around 45 minutes to cook and let us leave to get money while the pies were in the oven, so they’d be closer to being done by the time we came back.  I can’t imagine any other pizza parlor doing this for total strangers.  Very cool.

We sat down and ordered some beers from a menu that consisted of mostly Great Lakes Brewing Co. beers which were all very much good beers.  I ordered a pale ale with an %8 abv. which is something I’ve never seen done in a pale ale.  I was disappointed in the lack of a beer for the budget minded as every beer on the menu was $4 or more, and thats bottled!  Is it really that hard to keep a small stash of Budweiser?

Anyway, I didn’t come here to drink.  We ordered two small pies, which was more than enough food for 6 of us.  Granted, some of the ladies only ate 1 slice, and one couldn’t eat any due to a Gluten allergy (god bless her soul) but the three slices I ate absolutely annihilated me.  One pie was sausage, one veggie.  The verdict?

Amazing.

This was one of those pizzas where you can tell just how great it is going to taste before it enters your mouth.  You can taste the spices and flavors through your nose right as it’s placed in front of you.  The crust on these pizzas is caramelized which is sort of a defining characteristic of Burt’s and it really sets it on its own pedestal.  Crispy, chewy, full of flavor and plenty of it to go around, the crust is almost one with the cheese that is baked on top of it.  And forget about that dog food sausage that you find on your pizzas around here, this stuff is sliced thick like pepperoni and spiced perfectly.

I forced myself to eat more of this than I should have, but how many times am I gonna get to come here?  If I’m ever in the windy city again, I’ll definitely be making a trip out here.  The pizza is absolutely crushing and the people of Chicago, I consider them lucky to have such a killer place to eat.

What yo drink is?

Way back when we started this blog, we initially talked about pizza and beer together.  Our founding post brushed upon the greatness of these two timeless consumables in which often brings us together to celebrate the freedoms that this great country affords us.

You don’t find us talking about beer on here very often.  Probably because we know what we like and we tend to stick with it.   This blog has also become very defined and specific, but we definitely love having a few beers along with our pizza, though it certainly doesn’t have the be the only thing you can sip on.  I feel like you can drink almost anything with pizza.  Cola, water, beer, juices and even milk, though I’d rather have a tasty brew.

Sierra Nevada has long been one of my favorite breweries .  Its standard pale ale is definitely one of the most delicious, readily available beers in the country.  You can always find that shit in any gas station and 7 Eleven.  My good friend Mike D. let me try some of his Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale the other night while we were at Cous Cous having a few while our friends’ power was out.  This shit has quickly become my beer of choice for this holiday season.

pic courtesy of JustBeer.wordpress.com

I love hoppy beers, so this definitely has my palette stoked and packs a punch at 6.8% abv.  Devils are playing the ‘Canes tonight at 7pm.  Expect to find me chowing down on a 14″ Romanza cheese with a couple of these Ales.

What do you guys like wit yo pizza?