Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Arturo's

Last weekend, friend and fellow pizza-blogger Jason from I Dream of Pizza organized one of his acclaimed pizza groups to set out and chow down on some coal-fired pizza from Arturo's on Houston St.


The place has a great vibe- lots of classic photos, paintings, and even live jazz! A funky bassline always goes great with a slice in my opinion.


After a short wait, all 11? 12? of us were seated in the back to passionately discuss and photograph pizza in semi-privacy. We ordered four large pies: mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, bacon & sausage, and the Diavolo minus the ham (sliced tomatoes, onions, peperoncini, no sauce).


Here's my disclaimer- the pictures in this post are sub-par. Due to confined quarters, low light, and the overwhelming anticipation of my fellow diners for me to just finish up with the damn photos already, I had to snap with a quickness, so pardon the sloppiness. Hey there's Brian Hoffman from Eat This NY at the head of the table!

First up was the Diavolo:


Pretty damn tasty, especially with that peperoncini mixed in there. I'm not usually a fan of onion on pizzas, but this one blended great with the rest of the toppings.


Everyone seemed to agree that it was probably for the best they didn't put sauce on this pizza, it was a bit on the sweet side and would not have gone well in combination with the toppings.


Next came the bacon and sausage pie, but considering I didn't try any and my pictures turned out terrible, I'm just going to skip it. That leaves the two varieties of mozzarella:

Plain...


...and fresh-


Totally discernable, right? Yeah, whatever. This is where I became disappointed with Arturo's. According to our waiter, the fresh mozzarella was made with muttz homemade that day. Sure, I believe that. What I don't believe is that the milk or curd they make it from is fresh. It tasted like sour milk, which obviously imparted some rather questionable tastes.

(plain on the left, "fresh" on the right)

This being the case, I preferred the plain pie over the fresh, but I think I speak for most of the group when I say the real winner of the night was the Diavolo. Yes, I'd order it again if I was at Arturo's, but no, I wouldn't go back to Arturo's in the first place. I mean, sour cheese? C'mon Arturo, who are you kidding calling it fresh?

3 comments:

  1. nice write up!! just seeing this now or i would have said something yesterday :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice review Brooks. Thanks for the mention. My post just went up today. Took me long enough.

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  3. Very nice review. One thing that can ruin a pizza is old cheese!

    ReplyDelete

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