When it comes to pizza, we all have our favorite styles. Some like deep dish with tons of dough. Others are picky about the quality or quantity of toppings. Then there are the thin-crust lovers. We require that the pizza crust not only be thin but crispy from its blistered, preferably wood-fired outer rims, to the center of the pie where the cheese blobs up. And homemade pizza dough. Please.
The quest for perfectly executed thin-crust pizza in Houston has been a long, hot, dusty and mostly disappointing trail for me with a few exceptions. Dolce Vita has always been numero uno in my little black pizza book with its insanely divine creative combos and crisp crust, smoking with flavor from the wood-fired oven. The Tasting Room also turns out a reliably crisp thin-crust pizza from its wood-fired brick oven.
So, I was excited to hear my ’hood was getting a new pizza joint, Pizzeria Alto in the West Ave shopping center. Well, I discovered when it opened a few weeks ago, that pizza joint is clearly the wrong noun. Try sweeping and gorgeous tree-top views of upper Kirby, striking design-it-up interiors and high-end tabletop superfluities.
In Schiller Del Grande style, the thin-crust pizzas are presented chicly at your table on tall metal stands along with little porcelain bowls of spices like crushed red pepper. A dozen or so 10-inch irresistible sounding pies fill the menu. A few include Italian sausage with broccoli rabe and garlic, little neck clam, and a terrific gorgonzola with mission fig, arugula and bacon number, which are cooked in a massive gold dome wood-burning pizza oven. On my first visit, some of the pizzas I tried were super crispy. Others were not completely crispy, probably due to the slightly sweet sourdough mix in the crust. I’m confident that over time, practice will make perfect when it comes to firing these pies consistently.
Newbies like chef Philippe Schmit’s Philippe Restaurant + Lounge also has jumped on the pizza bandwagon with a smoked salmon thin-crust pie on the appetizer menu. The pizza I sampled recently was cracker-thin and looked crispy but turned out to be partly limp with the cheese sliding off. Additionally, the dough lacked flavor.
Not new but new to those like me who haven’t tried its pizza is Tiny Boxwood’s, the chichi garden-meets-boutique River Oaks cafe (W. Alabama) where lamb burgers, for instance, wear the proud price of $22. I never considered TB a place to grab pizza until I eyed my first one at breakfast recently. It looked like the thin-crust pizza I’d been searching for: matzo-thin, blistered and bubbly-edged from the wood-burning pizza oven (with a fried egg on top). So, I went back at dinner to try the Margherita pie. Every bite was crunchy. The dough is homemade – you can even watch the pizza Missy roll out the homemade dough into fresh 10-inch discs – and the final crust tasted like it had been brushed with herb olive oil. She’s mastered the art of firing a pizza in a wood-burning oven, which can be tricky, sort of like roasting green coffee beans to the perfect roast.
The Margherita pizza had a rich combo of mozzarella and fontina, tiny diced marinated tomatoes, and a generous mound of freshly chopped basil on top. Nice. Only problem? Something was super salty. It was either salt sprinkled on the tomatoes or dusted on the pizza crust but it did put a damper on the delight. If they can nix the salt, I might go back for the 10-inch May pizza special: crabmeat, fontina, cherry tomatoes and capers – about eight small pieces of pizza – for a mere $18.
My neighbor tells me Domino’s has even rolled out a new thin-crust pizza and it’s pretty good. Okay, back on the thin-crust trail …
DOLCE VITA, 500 Westheimer, 713-520-8222
THE TASTING ROOM, 818 Town & Country Blvd., 281-822-1500
PIZZERIA ALTO in the West Ave shopping center, 2800 Kirby, 713-386-6460
PHILIPPE RESTAURANT + LOUNGE, 1800 Post Oak Blvd., 713-439-1000
TINY BOXWOOD’S, 3614 W. Alabama, 713-622-4224