Pizza Pizza

Two hungry souls hit the road in search of the best pizza around and discover there’s more to a slice than just cheese, sauce, and crust. By Anna + David Kasabian. Photographs by Glenn Scott. Food Styling by Liz Walkowicz

Ever since America’s love affair with the Italian pizza started after World War II, the pie has evolved from a cheap, everyday peasant food into an infinitely varied canvas on which inspired chefs and food artisans can create a masterpiece. In honor of the special place pizza occupies in our hearts and in our local cuisine, we took a journey around the North Shore to hunt down the best pizza makers we could find. Here are eight of the North Shore’s pizza-making elite.

Plum Tomatoes Brick Oven Pizza
Steak and Cheese Pizza (Small $9.99, Large $12.99)
Along a humdrum stretch of Summit Street in Peabody stands a squat building of brick and stucco, undistinguished but for the dark brown awning of Plum Tomatoes Brick Oven Pizza. Step inside and breathe in; the air is filled with the sweet, musky aroma of pizza pies baking. No fancy chairs, no slick catchy menus; what you have here is an unpretentious little pizzeria that combines obsession and craftsmanship to transform an everyday repast into a passionate feast.

Our new addiction? The Steak and Cheese Pizza: thin, crispy, chewy throughout, with those oven-blackened blisters of crust around the edges where stray shreds of mozzarella are toasted and crunchy. We love the sweet and tangy sauce, made fresh daily with San Marzano tomatoes (arguably the best sauce tomatoes money can buy) and the tasty mozzarella that’s bubbly and chewy on the surface and creamy smooth just below. All this is topped with top-quality shaved sirloin, and the whole thing is baked in what Plum Tomatoes founder and owner, Pasquale “Pat” DeLeo, describes as “an old-style, gas-fired stone oven with thick stone all around inside.” Intense and even heat is important, he says.

The Steak and Cheese is not a subtle pizza. From the first bite your teeth manage to wrestle away from a slice, you experience an intensity of crunchiness, chewiness, and extra-strength, full-spectrum pizza flavor. It is perfect for those times when you need a high-octane pizza fix. 145 Summit St., Peabody, 978-538-7586, plumtomatoespizza.com.

Soma
Arugula Pesto Pizza with Shrimp (Large $17)
Sleek and swank, Soma rules Beverly as the beacon of big-city chic. As we await our pizza at the bar, we note the earth-tone walls and golden-hued lighting, the sweeping zebrawood bar lit with playfully shimmering lamps, and the cool blues music drifting through the air. All combine to create an atmosphere of stylishness, sophistication, and, frankly, rather high expectations for the pizza, added to this dining landmark’s menu less than a year ago.

Soon we see our server float coolly across the floor, our Arugula Pesto Pizza with Shrimp held up and out in front of her like a trophy. As the pizza descends in front of us on one hand, the other hand sweeps onto the bar and places a pedestal where the pizza alights, nearly at nose level. It’s a dramatic presentation, even for a pizza with such a lofty pedigree. Could this pizza live up to its billing? Definitely.

Here is a pie that is at once both rustic and refined. The sourdough crust is gorgeous to look at and tastes even better with its deep flavor and substantial, yet yielding chewiness. The arugula pesto tastes fresh and rich. The skillfully sliced red peppers appear more polished than on other pizzas we’ve eaten. Even the intensely flavored shrimp look like a chef fussed over them. On top, tangy fontina cheese, bubbling and bathed in fragrant olive oil. Finally, a canopy of fresh, cold arugula with flavor, texture, and temperature that all contrast wonderfully with the ingredients below. 256 Cabot St., Beverly, 978-524-0033, somabeverly.com.

Tripoli Pizza
Extra Cheese Pizza ($2 per slice)
Tripoli Pizza on Salisbury Beach has been making pizza for over 60 years and little has changed. Not the recipes. Not the methods. Not the walk-up-service stall where they got their start here in 1945. It’s still serving slices on floppy paper plates, still open year-round, and still feeding legions of passionate pizza aficionados for whom the austere, fluorescent-lit, one-car-garage-size stall is a shrine. And the Extra Cheese Pizza, from all appearances, is, in fact, the Holy Grail.

Tripoli Pizza in Salisbury Beach was originally the summertime pizza outpost for Tripoli Bakery of Lawrence, a Merrimac Valley institution in its own right, renowned as much for their cookies and breads as their pizza. Yet it is Tripoli Pizza in Salisbury Beach where the enduring Tripoli pizza legend—and the preeminence of Tripoli Extra Cheese Pizza—seems to have taken wing.

This now-fabled concoction resembles a normal pizza in so many ways, yet it is unlike any other pizza you have eaten. Slices are square with a tender, cracker-crisp crust. The trademark Tripoli tomato sauce is mostly sweet and mildly tangy with more than a touch of garlic. The top is covered with grated cheese, sprinkled with oregano, and the whole thing is baked, sliced, and served hot. Order an Extra Cheese and the baker tosses on a circular slice of provolone and pops it back in the oven until the cheese weeps. So will you. 15 Broadway, Salisbury Beach, 978-465-3846, tripolibakery.com/pizza.

Red Rock Bistro & Bar
Lobster Pizza (Large $18.50, Double the lobster, add $12)
Every day, Red Rock’s Chef Lee Fannon and his crew turn out an amazingly diverse and wonderfully creative bistro menu of salads, sandwiches, appetizers, and main courses. But for all the culinary range and imagination you’ll find in evidence here, there’s nothing else on the menu quite like the Lobster Pizza.

Imagine this: Hand-stretch a hunk of house-made dough into an oblong flat about 12 inches long and six inches wide. Throw it on the grill until each side is nicely toasted with dark amber grill marks. Spread on some sweet mission fig jam. Crumble a handful of Massachusetts-produced Great Hill Blue Cheese. Sprinkle shredded mozzarella and fresh corn kernels. Scatter a generous handful of lobster claw and knuckle meat. Toss it onto the deck of a ferociously hot oven until the bottom is crisp and the pie is barely cooked through. Just before it’s rushed out of the kitchen, scatter freshly-sliced shreds of scallion greens over the top so they barely begin to wilt before the pie is served.

Red Rock’s Lobster Pizza is about as far from familiar comfort food as you can get. And even though it does hearken to classic food combinations (like figs and blue cheese, and lobster and corn), combined this way on a pizza, it’s an original. Suddenly, lobster, figs, blue cheese, and corn–the most pronounced flavors–are transformed into one of those astonishing, synergistic combinations where each ingredient is delicious and distinct, yet there is also a singular overall effect of tastes, aromas, textures, and temperatures that is completely unique. 141 Humphrey St., Swampscott, 781-595-1414, redrockbistro.com.

Angela’s Coal-Fired Pizza
Vegetable Classico Pizza (Small $15.50, Large $18.50)
Apparently, when it comes to pizza ovens, it’s not just how hot you get it, it’s how you get it hot. At Angela’s, the way they get their ovens very hot indeed–as in 1,000 degrees hot–is by burning good old-fashioned coal, although not in good old-fashioned, smoke-belching, coal-fired ovens. Angela’s ovens, built to order in Abruzzi, Italy, are planet friendly. At first we were skeptical. Is this just a gimmick? But then we ate a large Vegetable Classico—in its entirety. We couldn’t help ourselves. It’s that good.

First, don’t be surprised by just how fast your pizza comes out of the kitchen, blistering hot and wafting steam. After all, a 1,000-degree, coal-fired oven is going to cook your pizza very, very fast. It’s also going to do some wonderful things to your pizza that no other oven can do.

The thin, hand-stretched crust, for one thing, is darkly toasted and totally crisped on the surface, yet deeply chewy beneath with a unique and pleasing charred flavor. The deck of the oven, where your pizza sits baking, cooks the bottom of the crust so quickly that the sauce, mozzarella cheese, and sliced onions on top stay moist and fresh. And the mushrooms and red and green peppers—themselves pre-roasted under the same hellish conditions—remain crisp and distinctly flavored. It’s all well worth a drive up Rte. 1. 890 Broadway (US Rte. 1 North), Saugus, 781-941-2625, angelascfp.com.

Oregano Pizzeria & Ristorante
Pepperoni Classico Pizza (Small $10.99, Large $15.99)
There came a point three years ago when Claude Elias and his family grew weary of their search for great pizza and down-to-earth Italian food without fancy names. So Elias decided to make it himself and opened Oregano Pizzeria & Ristorante.
From the start, Elias’ goal was to bring in the best, and that began with his pizza oven, which he found in Genoa, Italy. Next came his pizza maker, who trained side by side with a pizza master from Naples. The rest of his core ingredients, including extra-virgin olive oil, pepperoni, and fresh mozzarella, are imported as well.

“Our dough rises two hours, and then we refrigerate it for a minimum of 24 hours,” Elias explains. “What happens is it rises slowly, and that is the secret. Then we bake it at 800 degrees, so it’s done in just a few minutes.” Elias notes that just before it comes out of the oven, the pizza maker raises the pizza into the oven dome, where the temperature hits a scorching 1,500 degrees. This finishes the top and makes the whole thing extremely hot.

An excellent example of Elias’ artisanal talent is the Pepperoni Classico. The crust is thin, the edges are crisp, and the flavor is rich—a testament to the slow rising. A very fresh-tasting tomato sauce (Elias’ secret recipe), thinly sliced button mushrooms, distinctively tasty pepperoni, and fresh mozzarella make for a profoundly satisfying combination of flavors and textures. 15 Pleasant St., Newburyport, 978-462-5013, oreganopizzeria.com.

Flatbread Company
Coevolution Pizza (Small $9.75, Large $17.75)
This is pizza on a mission. But don’t worry; a big part of the mission is great pizza. And the other parts are saving the planet and having a good time. Who wouldn’t sign up for that? And for the folks at Flatbread Company, it’s not just marketing—they really mean it.

For example, the only cooking fuel we saw in use is firewood, which is stacked everywhere, inside and out. Pizzas are baked in a hulking, hand-built stone oven that looks positively prehistoric. Even the sauce is cooked in a witch-sized caldron hung over a blazing wood fire. Ingredients, as you might expect, emphasize locally-grown organic produce, free range chicken, clean meats, and all-natural, chemical-free everything else. Pretty earthy stuff, and boy, does it make great pizza.

Among the pizzas with names like Jay’s Heart (similar to a pizza margherita) and Community Flatbread (Jay’s Heart plus mushrooms, herbs, and caramelized onions), we liked the Coevolution. Shaped into an oblong pie (the current fashion among some artisanal pizza bakers), this pizza has a hearty rustic look. The crust delivers a pleasing balance of crunchiness and chewiness plus an earthy/yeasty aroma that can only come from long-risen dough. All the other toppings – including Kalamata olives, fresh rosemary, roasted red peppers, goat and mozzarella cheeses, red onions, and garlic—taste fresh and distinct. Mission accomplished. 5 Market Sq., Amesbury, 978-834-9800, flatbreadcompany.com.

Onion Town Grill
White Greek Pizza (Small $12, Large $15)
For all you North Shore trivia buffs, here’s an interesting nugget: our very own town of Danvers was once the onion-growing capital of the region. They even named the popular Danvers Onion in the town’s honor. Hence the origin of this establishment’s moniker, Onion Town Grill, which turns out to be a charming little neighborhood place that’s just as homey and folksy as its name would have you believe. And while it’s only been open a couple of years, it somehow manages to feel like it’s been here forever.

When it’s time to relax, Onion Town Grill looks like a perfect place to catch a game (on one of seven widescreens around the large, horseshoe-shaped oak bar), sip a beer, and munch on a fresh, hot White Greek Pizza. If you’re looking for fancy, go elsewhere. If you seek truth in pizza, eat here.

Notable on Onion Town Grill’s pie are the sweet, elastic, buttery crust; the creamy, aromatic feta; the high-quality Kalamata olives; and the fresh, tasty spinach. It’s a classic—some might say even basic—recipe for a pizza made in one variation or another by scores of restaurants in the area. Yet the one they make at this spot, lovingly operated by co-owners Gail Couture and Donald Harwood (sister and brother and both first-time restaurateurs) takes what could be just another ordinary White Greek Pizza and brings it to a much higher level. 175 Water St., Danvers, 978-774-3343, oniontowngrill.com.

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Newburyport’s Revitalive Cafe

Written by Alyssa Giacobbe

Photograph by Lauren Carelli

Before you knock it as a left-over hippie fad, consider that eating raw has been around since the birth of humanity. Modern day raw foodists, however, rally around the purported health benefits: increased energy, weight loss, improved sleep, and even a reversal of some more serious health conditions.

“We’ve seen people improve symptoms of diabetes, arthritis, Lyme disease…,” says Anna Forkan, who, with Kristen Overlock, co-owns “raw food education center” Revitalive and the recently-opened Revitalive Café in Newburyport. Since going raw, the pair have lost a combined 140 pounds and reversed their own depression, peptic ulcers, and chronic fatigue.

By not heating food above 115 degrees, say raw foodists, it retains more nutrients, as well as enzymes that aid in digestion. But it’s not a life of rabbit food. Located in the Tannery and open for breakfast and lunch, Revitalive Café offers up such creative raw creations as Meetballs and Marinara (made of sprouted almonds, raw sundried tomatoes, basil, and sea salt), and Mock Tuna Salad, in which pumpkin seeds, celery, sweet onion, and sea veggies are impressively reminiscent of actual tuna on rye. Chocolate cream pie is made with raw organic cacao, coconut, and dates.

In addition to limiting temperatures, the café avoids all animal products, grains, soy, garlic, artificial sweeteners, and mushrooms, the last of which are common allergens. “Our aim is to make eating raw an easy thing to stick to,” says Forkan. “People can enjoy something that looks and tastes like a tuna sandwich. The reality is, you don’t have to starve, and it doesn’t have to taste horrible.”

“Our goal isn’t for everyone to be 100 percent raw,” she continues. “If people ate a salad every day, that would be awesome. Or even if they ate an apple once a day. We’re not dogmatic. We just want to be positive, because you can and you will feel better.” With a little help, of course, from a slice of guilt-free chocolate cream pie. 50 Water St.,
Newburyport, 978-462-1488, revitalivecafe.com.

In The Raw A guide to uncooked eating around the area.

1. Grezzo Organic and locally grown vegan and raw food in an upscale setting. 25 State St., Newburyport, 978-961-1676, grezzorestaurant.com. 2. Rawbert’s Organic Garden Café-style breakfast, lunch, and dinner, including outstanding raw cookies and handmade chocolates. 294 Cabot St., Beverly, 978-922-0004, organicgardencafe.com. 3. Life Alive Raw and “flash-steamed” breakfast, lunch, and dinner for beginning or budding raw foodists. 194 Middle St., Lowell, 978-453-1311, lifealive.com. 4. The Natural Dog Holistic pet products include raw meals and treats for animals. 155 State St., Newburyport, 978-499-9909, thenatural-dog.com.

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Sixty2 On Wharf

It is a rare occasion to find a restaurant where all of the stars are aligned—an informed and attentive staff, an original wine list, and a chef who understands precisely how to crack the code on flavor Nirvana. Salem’s intimate restaurant, Sixty2 on Wharf, just a year in business, has all of this, and then some.

Without a doubt, chef Antonio Bettencourt is very talented, has an obvious passion for food, and understands the pleasure it can bring. Dish after dish is its own little symphony of intricate flavor balance—with fresh notes that rise in sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (savory), they are the five tastes we all know but rarely experience in harmony.

The meal began with two antipasti dishes, Cauliflower and the Arancini prepared perfectly and portioned thoughtfully. The cauliflower is lightly battered, fried, and served with currents (sweet), pine nuts (a bit of savory), and red wine agro dolce (a rich Italian version of sweet and sour sauce). The idea is to get a spoonful with all of this in one bite and enjoy the flavor rush of all combined.

The Arancini, a deep fried risotto, stuffed with fontina cheese over tomato confit and basil, was crisp, firm, and well seasoned. Bettencourt creates his confit with the tastiest tomatoes you will ever find: San Marzano (don’t ever make your pasta sauce without this canned tomato). He cooks them for 3-4 hours on low heat to make the flavorful concoction reach its peak in richness.The micro-crunch of your first bite to break through into the cheese-laden risotto, the contrast of the smooth, meaty confit, and the high note of basil make for an unforgettable combination.

My choice for the pasta course was the Garganelli served with red wine-braised duck, dried cherries, pine nuts, and Tuscan kale. This delectable dish raised the flavor bar many notches. The sauce was deep and savory, and here, the dried cherries brought in a condensed flavor that contrasted so nicely with every bite of the tender duck. The pine nuts rounded out the flavor and introduced a bit of crunch, while the Tuscan kale (a tender version of common kale), a tiny note of bitter, balanced the entire dish. The pasta is made in-house with a triedand- true balance of two flours and eggs.

My choice for the main course was the slow roasted pork chop with broccoli rabe. The pork was served atop a mostarda (an Italian fruit and mustard condiment) of Seckel pears (tiny, sweet variety), cippoline (sweet onions), and dried cranberries. The pork was tender and flavorful—a shoulder chop which, because it has fat, has flavor. This dish is a fireworks display of deliciousness.

Wines here change frequently and come via the wine steward who travels the globe in search of new, interesting vintages. I sampled two reds, the Chiantari 2007 Nero d’Avola, and the Altesino 2005 Rosso di Altesino, and one white, Batasiolo 2007 Gavi di Gavi. Each was very enjoyable and each had its own distinct character.

For dessert, I chose the Apple Crostada, an almond tart with currents, served with an amazingly creamy, cinnamon gelato. The slightly sweet, buttery crust, filled with chunks of apple and almond slivers, capped with a Dinner is Served: Chef Antonio Bettencourt, top right, has an obvious passion for food. Some favorites, from left, the Apple Crostada, the Garganelli served with red wine-braised duck, dried cranberries, pine nuts and Tuscan kale, and the scallops being prepared.

The Menu

62 Wharf Street (Pickering Wharf), Salem, 978-744-0062, 62onwharf.com
Chef: Antonio Bettencourt
Antipasti: Cauliflower, Arancini ($5 each)
Pasta: Garganelli ($12)

Entrée: Pork, which is a slow-roasted pork chop with broccoli rabe an a mostarda of seckel pears, cippoline and dried cranberries ($23)Dessert: Apple Costada with currants andcinnamon gelato ($7) —Anna Kasabian

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