Adventure #35 Milto's Mediterranean Cafe (& Pizza Pub)

The wonderful thing about adventuring is that sometimes it transcends the pizza.  The pizza at Milto's Mediterranean Cafe (listed on Yelp and other places as Milto's Pizza Pub) was ok, but when I look back on the evening, the fun and friendship that surrounded the pizza made the experience exceptional.  I offer, as example, this picture where Ian and Girlface are completely mortified at something I've said (drunkenly) at a volume that exceeded that which was necessary to get the point across:

Milto's itself was a cozy place, with cheap wine (it's near a college campus and you can get a carafe of wine [out of a jug] for around $8), a menu full of pizza, pasta, Italian, and Greek food, and friendly staff.

But... to talk about the actual pizza, here it is...

We got the "Lone Star" on Sicilian crust (they have two types of crust, Sicilian thick crust and Neopolitan crust, though we didn't investigate precisely how "Neopolitan" their crust actually is).  The Lone Star has pepperoni, italian sausage, imported ham, onions, and extra cheese.

There was a lot of cheese and it was good cheese, rather salty, but that could have been some of the taste of the meat coming through.  Toppings weren't heavily applied and I can't fault the pizza for that, but given the thick crust, it certainly could have benefited from a touch more meat.

It's hard for me to describe the way the meat just wasn't noticeable on the pizza.  It could have been that with so much cheese and bread, the meat blended in so well.  It could have been that we'd had a little too much holiday cheer and were so hungry that the first could of pieces were eaten with little regard to savoring it.  Either way, when I actually set about to try each ingredient to take measure, they were good.  The sausage is sliced; the pepperoni is standard; and the imported ham, where it wasn't covered by cheese, crisped up to taste a lot like bacon.

The crust was very bready and less oily than I've experienced with other thick crust pizzas.  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't awesome.  I wanted more flavor from it, for it to be more than just a thicker bread on which toppings and cheese were spread.

And last, but certainly not least, I found the sauce to be delicious.  I'd like to go back and try their Neopolitan crust so that I can see how the sauce does on a more traditional pizza.

-Karin

Adventure #34 - Quattro Gatti Ristorante e Pizzeria

Quattro Gatti is the first place we've gone where we've been asked if we have a reservation. We did not, but Thursday night didn't seem to be the time to need one - we were promptly seated.

Was this pizza reservation worthy? Find out after this picture of bruschetta. (This was delicious, a perfect blend of textures and flavors.)

How about the pizza? We chose the Quattro Stagioni: Tomato sauce, mushrooms, Soppressata, artichokes, and olives. Soppressata (we had to look it up) is Italian cured salami. Top notch ingredients - check.

Unfortunately, the sum of the parts was less than what you'd expect on paper.

The ingredients really were great: the mushrooms were slightly exotic and sweet, the olives were the Kalamata variety, the tomato sauce was what it claimed to be - tomatoes (although there was some debate as to whether the tomatoes were just a sweet variety or whether sugar was added to the sauce. I think we agreed that they were just sweet tomatoes.) The salami was slightly crispy and salty, a good balance to the sweet sauce. So . . . where did this pie go wrong?

Crust and balance. Within a minute of arriving at the table, the middle of the crust was soggy enough to warrant very careful movement to your plate. By the end of the meal, I was able to fold a piece vertically. It would take a great pizza to overcome a soggy crust, but the ingredients never seemed to gel - the sauce was a little too sweet, the salami a little too salty, the cheese a little too . . . . not special.

While we're not so sure we'd go back for pizza, the atmosphere is intimate and most of the menu is normal Italian fare. Judging by the bruschetta, you may fare well ordering from that side of the menu.

-Ian

PS (from Karin) - I think this bruschetta will be the bruschetta that all future bruschettas shall be judged by.

Adventure #33: Frank & Angie's Pizzeria

I must admit that I've been avoiding Frank & Angie's. I went there on a date once and it was a good date but the food was disappointing (not necessarily bad, just diappointing, we got the "margherita" which was of the common reinterpreted variety that is really a white pie with tomatoes), and then the boy turned out later to be both a bit of a jerk and rather disappointing, so I didn't really want to go back.

This time Frank & Angie's had some things going for it that it didn't last time: greatly superior company, an excellent band consisting of a guitar, an accordion, a bass, and some triangle guitar thing that I don't know the name of (Ian, feel free to chime in here with the name of it), and the fact that we were all famished.

We started with the bruscetta (but were too hungry to take any pictures of it before devouring it). I thought the bread was a bit too dense for my liking and Ian wished that it came in a form where he didn't have to put the herbed tomatoes on the bread himself. Taste-wise it wasn't too bad though.

Regarding the pizza, we got the Sergio Leone (and I enjoyed the Ian and Adam nerding out with their encyclopedic knowledge of film directors, he is a director right?). It comes with mozzerella, cajun spiced chicken, pesto, tomatoes, banana peppers, and pizza sauce. I'm not quite sure how the ingredients of the pizza were inspired by Sergio Leone, but we went with it anyway.

It didn't take more than a bite to discover that "cajun spiced chicken" tasted just like any other dry, unspiced chicken chunks. They didn't add anything to pizza and were easy enough to ignore.

Regarding the other toppings, they worked out pretty well. The pizza sauce and pesto combined to make a very saucy pizza. It oozed. I like this, but I can understand why someone who likes less sauce would dislike it. The banana peppers were both deliciously spicy and added a much needed bit of texture to the pizza.


The crust was the star of this pizza. It was sturdy enough to not get soggy under the weight of the pesto, sauce, and tomatoes and still maintained a bit of crunch. The out edges didn't look substantial but they were brushed with oil (or butter) and spices and were surprisingly soft inside.

Overall the pizza came together better than its parts suggest and I would love to try one of their other specialties. I would call this good pizza, but not great pizza.

-Karin

PS. The tiramisu was delicious!

Adventure #32 - Hoboken Pie

I don't know the slightest thing about Hoboken, the New Jersey city that Hoboken Pie is presumably named after. What I do know is that if you want some saucy and delicious 'za, get down to 7th and Red River. Take the Gamboa as an example:

Italian fennel sausage. Artichoke hearts. Pepperoncini pepper slices. Mushrooms. Oregano. Oh, and sauce. Lots and lots of sauce. Not much to say about this pizza aside from the following: the ingredients are top notch, the sauce is solid and abundant (order light sauce if you're not a sauce lover), and the crust is darn good, with what we agreed was pepper sprinkled across the bottom.

Adventure #31 - Rocking Tomato Pizza Company

This is important -> If you go to Rockin Tomato, you need to get the Garlic Bread Twists. They are delicious, well seasoned, generously portioned, and the twisty shape itself is the perfect food to just sit there and snack on. Ian proclaims this to be the best bread appetizer he's had so far while adventuring. I proclaim this to be one of the only pizza-related foods that is allowed to go anywhere near ranch dressing.


Before talking about the pizza, I would like to mention that I really enjoyed the atmosphere at Rockin Tomato*. There was live music (and they were actually entertaining), you order at the counter, and it seems like a great, laid back place to grab a beer and a pizza.

We had a hard time deciding what we wanted. None of the specialties grabbed our attention. I suppose that after 30 of these we're starting to get a sense of what we do and don't like and what might actually be a good idea versus what's on the menu to please the masses (a "supreme" style pizza, a "all the meats" style pizza, a "Hawaiian" pizza, etc). After a lot of deliberation we decided to break a rule, take advantage of a special price on 3 topping pizzas, and choose our own combo. We went with bacon, red onions, and meatballs.


Here's the breakdown from the bottom up:

• Crust - fairly typical and not necessarily the best, it reminds us a lot of Mr Gatti's crust, fairly tastless, no edges but not quite a thin crust, jazzed up along the outer edge with some garlic butter and herbs to make more palatable
• Sauce - subtle when isolated, but was very good when meshing with the cheese
• Cheese - this was good, and also pretty standard, they didn't try to do anything special here
• Toppings - all of them were good. Ian liked the size of the red onion chunks. I thought the meatballs, while not being seasoned enough for my tastes, added a good texture to their bites. The bacon was no-surprises bacony.
  

Overall, this is a solid no-surprises pizza. I would go there again, especially if I was trying to please a diverse group who may be more resistant to adventurous pizza.

-Karin

*The other location in South Austin has a separate website but an almost identical menu.