Via Tribunali Portland

Only two stops left on The Great Neapolitan Pizza Quest!  Visit our intro to Neapolitan Pizza and check out the other pizzerias we’ve visited to get caught up!



Via Tribunali Portland

Our second to last stop was to Via Tribunali in Portland.  The first Via Tribunali opened in 2004 in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, and since turned into six different locations across the country.



Per each stop, we ordered a marinara and margherita DOC pizza:

Marinara: pomodoro, oregano, garlic, olive oil
Margherita DOC: pomodoro, mozzarella di bufala, grana padano, olive oil, basil

The cook time during our visit at Via Tribunali was about a minute and fifty seconds.



We’ll just go ahead and keep this simple … these pies were our absolute favorites of the journey! (See below notes for more details).
 
 

The Quick Stats (Erik’s notes)

Cook Time: Approximately 1 minute, 50 seconds

Dough:  Was using Caputo Blue at the time of our visit. The dough was warm risen between four and twelve hours and though I don’t believe one was used, the taste had a sense of a poolish to it. Moderate hydration and rose well.

Taste: The taste was utter perfection. Every ingredient seemed to burst with flavor. On a day towards the end of our pizza journey where the last thing we felt like eating was more Neapolitan pizza, we quickly changed our minds and found all the flavors that we had grown to love on our trip all in these two amazing pies. Truly this was a place that got every aspect completely right!

So basically, we love you, Via Tribunali!

Tony's Pizza Napoletana

Time to get the rest of The Great Neapolitan Pizza Quest online! I’ve been trying to get back into a nice routine of working as we got home from our road trip and life gotten a little bit busy. It’s quite evident that my posts have suffered!!

So without further ado, I bring to you the next stop on The Great Neapolitan Pizza Quest.

 
Tony's Pizza Napoletana
 
Our next stop in San Francisco brought us to Tony’s Pizza Napoletana. Erik has been a faithful follower of owner Tony Gemignani online, so it was certainly one of the stops we were looking forward to the most!



Tony has been in the pizza industry since 1991 winning numerous awards:

• Best Pizza Margherita at the World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy (First American and non Neapolitan to win this award)

• Best Pizza Romana at the World Championship of Pizza Makers in 2011

• 9 Time World Pizza Champion

• 8 Time World Champion Pizza Acrobat 1995,1996,1997,2000,2001,2005,2006,2007

• 1 Time World Champion Pizza Maker 2007

• President of the World Pizza Champions Inc.

• 2 Time Food Network Gold medalist

• 2 Time Guinness Book World Record Holder

What is a pizza acrobat, you ask?? Check out this video of Tony on The Rachel Ray show for a preview. It’s pretty awesome!

Tony’s pizzeria is a full service restaurant and is unique in that it offers several styles of pizzas other than Neapolitan including Classic American, Italian, Sicilian, Pizza Romana, Gluten Free and New York, Detroit and St. Louis Style with seven different pizza ovens. They import authentic Neapolitan and Italian products each week and support several locally grown organic farmers and artisan cheese makers.



And his pizza definitely lived up to its hype. We were certainly not one bit disappointed!  Per usual, we ordered the Margherita and Marinara pizzas.

Marinara: dough made with caputo flour, san marzano tomatoes D.O.P., sea salt, oregano, garlic
Marherita: world pizza cup winner naples, italy -- dough mixed by hand using san felice flour then proofed in napoletana wood boxes, san marzano tomatoes D.O.P., sea salt, mozzarella fior di latte

 
Our pizzas cooked in approximately 80 seconds and were quickly devoured in what seemed like just about the same amount of time, ha!   

 
We got a chance to talk with Tony after our meal and just as on all his online videos, he’s always so eager to help others learn more about and cultivate their own pizza skills!

If you’re in the San Francisco area, you MUST stop at Tony’s Pizza! His wide variety menu of awesome pizza will certainly cater to making any taste bud happy!

 

Cheese Slipper Saturday

Time to blog? I think so!

I have not been a very good blogger since getting back from our trip, but I vow to get all caught up very shortly! But first … I wanted to share a new addition to Saturday nights in the Westside neighborhood that is …

Cheese Slipper Saturday

Cheese Slipper Saturday is a delicious collaboration between Fervere and Little Freshie.

As Little Freshie’s Facebook put it best, “start at Fervere, place your order, get your cheese slipper, then walk around the corner to Little Freshie for a place to sit and quench your thirst with a handcrafted beverage, after dinner coffee or an all natural snow cone for dessert!”

Details: Fervere for fresh cheese slippers, then Little Freshie for drinks // Westside neighborhood near 17th and Summit // Starts at 6:30, open until they sell out.



We have taken advantage of this the past few Saturdays and have not been disappointed!

 

iPhone pictured below is the “heirloom tomato & basil with fontina, provolone, and kasseri cheeses” as well as the “mushroom, onion, and fresh basil with gorgonzola, provolone, and kasseri cheeses”

Both are fantastic! But I must say, the mushroom onion version has been by far my favorite (which is no surprise, since I’m a mushroom and onion freak)!

 

And it’s probably more than obvious that you just can’t go wrong with Little Freshie! There’s not one soda, shrub, snow cone, or coffee I’ve tried of theirs that I haven’t liked.



So if you’re looking for something to do on Saturday nights … go enjoy the nicer weather and some delicious food with Cheese Slipper Saturdays. Fervere doors open at 6:30, and they usually sell out fast!

Through the Redwood Forest

Hope everyone is having a wonderful start to your week!

I thought I’d take a quick break from finishing all those pizza posts and bring some more non food photos from our road trip. One of my absolute favorite parts of the drive was the redwood trees. We drove on Avenue of the Giants highway on our way up the coast and it was so incredibly beautiful. It’s crazy how huge some of those trees are, not only wide but tall!



Since I’m all nerdy like that … some fun facts about the redwoods:

• California used to be home to over two million acres of redwoods but after a lot of logging since 1850, only 4%, or 85,000 acres of that old growth is still standing.
• A large redwood can hold approximately 34,000 pounds of water.
• Currently, the largest redwood tree discovered, named Hyperion, is 378.1 feet tall and is in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
• Redwoods can grow up to 22 feet in diameter and their bark is as thick as 12 inches which helps protect the trees.
• Coastal redwoods survive to be over 2,000 years old and average probably 500 to 700 years.
• Despite how tall they are, redwood tree roots are very shallow, often only five or six feet deep.

And now some more pictures!

Una Pizza Napoletana

Once again, time for some more pizza! If you’re just tuning in, feel free to visit this page to see what The Great Neapolitan Pizza Quest is all about!



I think one of the main highlights for Erik was the anticipation of going to Una Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco because of the following it has. It’s somewhat of an enigma, and yet it seems like wherever we go and mention Neapolitan pizza, people ask, did you go to Una Pizza Napoletana?

The owner, Anthony Mangieri, originally from New Jersey, opened Una sometime ago in Manhattan, developed a large following there, and then moved his business to the bay area, where he currently resides. If you’ve ever read or seen anything about Anthony, you’ll know right away this guy is serious about pizza. It seems like many people either love him or hate him, but as Erik says, he’s just a typical New Yorker who’s passionate about what he does.



Una is famous for their limited, high priced menu based around tradition that typically baulks at any changes or substitutions. At Una Pizza Neapolitana, you will find zero salads, zero appetizers, and zero desserts. Also, if you go during the week, you will find zero pizzas with meat; something not many places can get away with, yet Anthony seems to have found his niche.

As you can see below, the menu simply has six pizzas, all $20 or higher, and drinks. That’s it.

 

The décor is ultra minimalistic, simple, and revolves completely around the pizza oven and pizza itself. Besides a couple servers, Anthony is a one man show, making all the pizzas himself each day.

We actually quite like the simplicity of style and the menu. It's very to the point, and completely focused on the art of Anthony's pizza making.

 

Per usual, we got the Marinara and Margherita pizzas and they were cooked in about 77 seconds.


 

The Quick Stats (erik’s notes)

Oven: Stefano Ferrara

Cook Time:   About 77 seconds

Dough: Una’s dough had a very big rise, crazy amounts of crust. Was denser than a cake yeast based pizza. It appears that he definitely uses a poolish.

Taste: Here’s the truth. It’s one of those things when you follow somebody for so long, you read and listen to so much about them, you form such a high expectation. To say we were let down was far from the truth, but it did not live up to what we expected, and perhaps nothing could have. The bufala was very tough, the sauce was dense in some places and very sparse in others, and it’s the first time I’ve had to salt a pizza. But how could we complain about the Godfather of Neapolitan pizza in America? Really, he has earned the right to do whatever he wants (and at $20 a pie, the right to charge whatever he wants). That being said, we couldn’t complain about our pizzas. He’s in there every day by himself doing what he loves, and doing very well at that. If we lived nearby, we would still eat there, I’m positive on a very regular basis. It was just really not what we expected, and in a league completely of its own.

Del Popolo

On with the pizza journey! If you’re just tuning in, please visit this page for more details.

One pizza stop that we’ve been excited to experience is Del Popolo, “a mobile pizzeria committed to creating rustic Neapolitan-inspired pizza using ingredients sourced from small, generational producers”.

They certainly take the popular term “food truck” to a completely different level! It was created using a 20 foot shipping container with one side completely carved out with glass doors. It cost about $180,000 and weighs about 14 tons. As you may be able to see from the photos, the pizza oven and prep station are above street level, and the person taking orders is at street level. 



They write their menu for each day on the window, which is simply several pies and a few drinks, and once your order is placed, your pizza is prepped and put into the beautiful wood fired oven. I love the wall of glass doors and how it enables customers to see their pizzas being fired.

 

We caught up with Del Popolo at the SoMa StrEat Food Park for lunch, and split the margherita pizza. Despite how full of pizza we were becoming on our trip, we really enjoyed this pie! It had a really beautiful char and cooked in approximately 82 seconds. Delicious!

 

The Quick Stats (erik’s notes)

Oven: Stefano Ferrara

Cook Time:  About 82 seconds

Dough: Dough preparation is unknown. From the consistency, I would assume a warm rise for 8 or more hours and I believe they use a high quality local flour.

Taste: We both missed the bufala, as their margherita is served with Fior di Latte but the taste was still very good. The pizza was seasoned very well and had a nice char and was very light and fluffy.

Best food truck in the world?? We think so!