GASTRONORMOUS

Where: My place, Brooklyn, NY
When: last Saturday
What: Pizza with potatoes, blue cheese, and vidalia onions; chopped salad

Now, normally I am a sauce girl. I like sauce on my pizza. And not the white stuff either (white pie. puh!); I prefer a rich tomato sauce, but San Marzanos (as required by D.O.C. [Denominazione di Origine Controllate] pies, along with mozzarella di bufala, among other requirements) can be okay, too.

But as I walked down Smith Street last weekend, I stopped in my tracks when I saw this scrawled across a chalkboard set up outside Pacific Pizza: “Pizza with potatoes, blue cheese, and vidalia onions.” I like me some starch, but it takes some culinary cajones to put potatoes on top of bread and call it a pizza. I had to try it. As luck would have it, I had invited a couple friends over that very chilly evening to watch a movie at my place. I had planned on making my baked macaroni and cheese with spicy crust, but this instantly changed those plans to delivery instead.

When I called the joint to order, the description of the pizza had improved. In addition to potatoes, blue cheese and onions, the order-taker informed me, there was also mozzarella and rosemary. While it is always risky to order a non-conformist pizza without a back-up-traditional pie, I decided to get just a large special, plus a chopped salad.

The salad was a disappointment. It was a totally uninspired mix of romaine (my bane!), cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and provolone, with a vinegarette that looked and tasted like muddy vinegar. I know that a Caesar isn’t a Caesar without romaine lettuce, but in any other type of salad, why use romaine or iceburg lettuce when there are so many other types of lettuce with more flavor and nutritional punch (red leaf, arugula, raddichio, endive, frisee, etc.)?

The pizza, on the other hand, was delicious. The potatoes were paper-thin, chewy in the center, and perfectly crispy around the edges, and there was a nice balance of cheeses–they were careful not to overwhelm the pie with too much bleu–and it was perfectly seasoned with rosemary and salt. This was a subtle pie, there was no sock-you-in-the face tomato sauce, no peppery piquancy, just pleasant, comforting, mellow flavor and dense, chewy texture. The only thing that kept the pizza from being sublime was the crust, which could be improved upon. It was floury (as in, powder caked on the underside of the crust) and lacked flavor, a complication from under-salting, which I find to be unfortunately common problem among pizza crusts.

There is a dining room at Pacific Pizza, and they have spruced it up a bit since their conversion from the last pizzeria iteration there called La Rosa and Sons (part of a trio of restaurants that dominate the corner of Smith and Pacific Streets, and seem to share a kitchen), so it might be a nice place to eat if you ever find yourself on Smith Street, hankering for pizza. And if you live in the nabe, by all means, order delivery from here, but be sure to ask about the specials!

Pacific Pizza
98 Smith Street (at Pacific)
Brooklyn, NY
718-935-0545