Pizzaiolo Fires Up the Oven

This past Tuesday night the long-anticipated (well, long anticipated by me anyway, I drove by there EVERY weekend for the past 2 months!!!) Pizzaiolo opened in Oakland's Temescal District, on an increasingly swank little strip that also includes Dona Tomas, Article Pract -- a fabulous knit shop, Porch Light, and a soon-to-open bakery (if anyone knows who is opening this bakery please let me know, it looks fabulous!). And a special thank you to Greg, the chef at BayWolf, for notifying me the second he found out about the opening!

Sadly (well, not too sadly), I had unchangeable plans (for a massive bachelorette party at Alma, yum yum!) on Tuesday, but Wednesday evening, we made a beeline for the place. Fortunately I decided to call ahead as they take same day reservations. [Actually, this has since changed, they no longer take reservations.] Even though this was only their second night, the place was packed when we arrived at 7:30pm. Remember, this was a Wednesday night.

Owner and chef Charlie Hallowell, a veteran of Chez Panisse, reinvented the space, transforming it into a beautiful, upscale yet comfortable neighborhood pizzeria, complete with a huge tiled wood-burning pizza oven set back at the end of the open kitchen. We were warmly welcomed by the hosts and seated in a roomy wooden booth quickly. And while there were a few minor service mishaps, being the second night and all, the service was exceedingly warm, friendly, and fun. Our waitress happily let us try 3 of the red wines by the glass before we decided to opt for a rose and a pint of Boont Amber beer. We were looking for a nice juicy full-bodied red, but the options seemed limited to bright, dry reds. At any rate, they are still awaiting some of their wines, so that shouldn't dissuade you from trying their current options.

Once we'd settled on our drinks, become friends with our waitress, and said hello to other friends seated at a nearby table (this is a neighborhood restaurant after all!), we checked out the menu. Short, seasonal, and changing daily, the menu is a mouth-watering combination of primi salads, pizza, and a sprinkling of pasta, rice, and side dishes.

Although I could have ordered nearly everything on the menu (it all sounded amazing) we opted for the rocket salad with hazelnuts and pecorino and the salad of the day: farro with cucumbers, beets, and mint. The rocket salad was light, fresh, peppery, and had just the right amount of toasted hazelnuts and shavings of salty pecorino. After one bite of the farro salad, I was disappointed that I had agreed to share. It was perfection. With two kinds of roasted beets, crisp cubes of cucumber, a sprinkling of mint, and nutty farro, this was my kind of salad: salty, sweet, nutty, fresh, yum.

Moving on to the pizza, the main event of course, we opted for 3 to share (um, there were only 3 of us at the table mind you, and these pizzas are not small): the Margherita (always my fave); a sausage, greens, and red onion; and morel mushroom with gremolata. The waiter explained that the marinara pizza and the Margherita pizza would be regulars but the other two pizzas would change seasonally. You can also add rocket and prosciutto to any pizza.

The pizzas arrived hot and blistered from the wood-burning oven. The Margherita pizza was simple and delicious. I would probably put it on par with Dopo and Pizzetta 211. The sausage pizza was good, but it actually was covered with broccoli rabe, a vegetable which I have not yet grown to love. I was a little disappointed and wished that it had been listed on the menu. It also seemed to suffer from too many toppings, making the otherwise flavorful crust a bit soggy (actually that seemed to happen across the board as the pizzas cooled, the crust became floppy when we wanted it to stay crisp). The morel pizza was over the top with generous amounts of freshly sauteed, deeply flavorful morels.

The dessert menu, while short, was filled with exactly the kinds of desserts I love: affogato, almond-olive oil cake, Frog Hollow cherries (an ode to Chez Panisse?), and a simple bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream (you know how I feel about vanilla) and strawberry sorbet. The desserts were okay, but definitely needed some work. The cake was surprisingly tiny (not that we needed much after all that pizza!) and served with only 3 cherries. It was also a bit on the chewy side. The affogato was fantastic, but when we got to the bottom of the bowl there were butter-like chunks in the ice cream.

All in all, for the second night of business, we were definitely happy, and although we agreed there were still some kinks to be worked out, we would absolutely return.

Pizzaiolo
5008 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, CA
510.652.4888
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 5:30-10pm