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Monday, May 04, 2009 "The Great Pizza Hunt" at Antica Pizzeria and the Battle of Two Neapolitan Pizza Places
Our second appetizer was the timballetto which is a puff pastry filled
with pasta, meat sauce and mozzarella. Hmmm...a puff pastry and rice
as one dish? I never would have thought to put those two together. If
you're watching your calories, this appetizer is definitely heavy on
the carb size. It reminded me of when I was a kid when I'd make
spaghetti sandwiches. Come on, don't tell me you didn't do that
yourself? Anyway, the pastry shell wasn't as flaky as it could have
been, but overall, I'm actually pretty ambivalent about it. I didn't
dislike it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to order the timballetto
again.
I
would order our third appetizer again without a question. It was a
Caprese Salad with sliced fresh mozzarella, tomato and arugula
drizzled with an herb and red pepper infused olive oil. Simple
ingredients, but oh-so-fresh and with a little bit of a kick from the
olive oil.
With the appetizers out of the way, let's start talking pizza, first
about the pizzas in general. Appearance wise, all the pizzas already
looked different from Bollini's pizza in the sense that Antica had a
more pronounced crust edge. While Bollini's crust was more cracker
crisp, Antica's was softer and had more of a chew to it. Another
difference is how cheese was utilized. Bollini's pizzas had the cheese
spread throughout the pizza topped with various toppings and then
cooked until the cheese was melted, similar to how we normally expect
pizzas to be like. At Antica, the cheese were cut in chunks, mixed
together with the ingredients and than placed on top of the pizza
surface without even a tomato sauce as a base plus the cheese wasn't
completed melted through. Please see a picture of a Bollini pizza
below as an example.
Another thing to note is that 11 out of 15 of Antica's pizza have
mozzarella as the only cheese of choice whereas at Bollini's, there
was a selection of cheeses and sauces to choose from. From what I
read, using a buffalo mozzarella seems to be part of being labeled a
Neapolitan pizza. The final difference is that while the toppings at
Bollini's were spread out from center to crust, all the toppings at
Antica were pooled in the middle. Considering that Antica does have
certification from The Verace Pizza Napoletana Association, it's
probably right to assume that their Neapolitan pizzas are more
authentic, but if anyone wants to chime in with their thoughts, I'd
love to hear them.
The next pizza to arrive was the Capricciosa with artichokes,
mushrooms, black olives, mozzarella, prosciutto and tomato sauce. For
this pizza, I wish they had spread out the toppings more evenly.
Depending on which side you pulled your slice from, it would be
comprised mostly of tomato sauce only. Also, if whole olives were
going to be used, they should have put more of them or just use sliced
olives. There were only 4 olives on the whole pie and with about 9
slices, that's really not enough. As for how it tasted, there was
nothing special about it. It was just okay.
As
for the Vegetali Grigliati, which came next, the toppings were a bit
more generous and also spread out a bit more evenly. The ingredients
were comprised of grilled vegetables, smoked mozzarella, chopped
tomatoes and garlic. Actually, the grilled vegetables were really just
grilled eggplant. There definitely needed to be more variety when it
came to the vegetables, which would have added more flavor and color
to this pizza and there also needed to be more garlic. There wasn't
any on my slice, but maybe, it was distributed more heavily on the
other half of the pizza.
Our last pizza, which was the Bianca al Prosciutto, was actually my
favorite of the four we tried. There were only 4 ingredients on this
pizza: mozzarella, Parmesan, prosciutto and arugola. Unlike the other
three pizzas, the mozzarella along with the Parmesan cheese was melted
as the base below the other toppings. I have a feeling that's one of
the reasons I liked it so much. Melted cheese on pizza is just so
right. How can it be wrong? This is also the first time that I had
fresh, uncooked arugula as opposed to it being cooked as a pizza
topping. I loved the use of the fresh arugula because you really get
the full hit of its pepperiness that went perfectly with the saltiness
of the prosciutto.
Between 3 appetizers and 4 pizzas, you'd think we wouldn't have room
for dessert, but somehow we persevered and shared two of them. One was
the Tiramisu which has a base of lady fingers soaked with espresso
coffee and layered with mascarpone and zabaglione cream and dusted
with cocoa. Tiramisu can sometimes be too sweet, but this was just
right. It was light, fluffy and a pleasure to eat.
Last was the Cannolo Siciliano which was a pastry tube filled with a
vanilla flavored cream of ricotta and candied orange peels. I've never
really been that much into cannolis,. I always find that the pastry
shell to be heavy and not light and flaky. That was the case with
Antica's Cannolo Siciliano, but I really did like the filling which
was fresh and citrusy.
To sum up, there were hits and misses for me at Antica. It's
definitely not a destination pizza joint for me, but if someone wanted
to go there for dinner, I wouldn't necessarily talk them out of it.
The one real conclusion I came with is if Antica is supposed to be a
true representation of Neapolitan Pizza, it's not necessarily for me.
I prefer a thin, crispy-cracker like crust and I like having melted
cheese on my pie, both of which I had at Bollini's. In truth, I am a
little confused. I know Antica has the certification and as far as I
know, Bollini's doesn't, but both restaurants refer to their pizzas as
Neapolitan pizzas. So what is the deal with the whole Verace Pizza
Napoletana Association classification and is there more than one kind
of Neapolitan Pizza? If anyone has any insight, I'd love to read about
it. Maybe, I also need to try other certified Neapolitan pizza joints,
but unfortunately, Antica is the only one in LA. If you want to try
Neapolitan Pizza for yourself,
click this link to find a certified restaurant in your part of town.
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