Pizzetta 211

photo - Yelp, Nat L.

Pizzetta 211, Dinner, Outer Richmond
May 9, 2016

P&J:
Sesame Crusted Seared Tuna with Charred Radicchio and Lemon Caper Aioli
Pizzettas: Rosemary, Fiore Sardo Cheese, Pine Nuts; Farm Fresh Egg, Asparagus, Almond Picada, Creme Fraiche: Housemade Sausage, Broccoli di Ciccio, and Chile*
Flourless Chocolate Cake with Fresh Whipped Cream
Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Blueberry Sauce


Notes:
This is probably one of my absolute favorite spots in our neighborhood.  I adore this place.  ADORE!  It's a tiny spot with roughly 20 seats, a few of them at the worn wooden bar that overlooks the even tinier kitchen.  The servers are casual and adequately friendly (though bordering on taking themselves too seriously), but they clearly care about what they do, and that makes me smile.  The wine is served in glass tumblers, which I love for some reason.  And the pizzas (pizzettas) are perfection.

We have never sat anywhere but at the bar.  They're the best seats in the house, in our opinion, and oddly the least desirable, because requesting seats at the bar always gets us in sooner rather than later.  (This also gets us the relatively undivided attention of one of the cooks in that tiny little kitchen, which is a big plus.)  They always have a "special" starter, always a salad in our experience, and always amazing.  This evening it was a seared tuna appetizer, which is pretty 90's of them and almost a turn off for me, but in light of "always amazing", we had to give it a try.  The tuna was perfectly cooked, the delicately crunchy seeds on the surface were nicely toasted and complemented the flavor of the supple fish.  Generous drizzles of lemon caper aioli and the deeply charred, tender greens brought everything together into a harmony of flavors and textures.  Yep; amazing.  We polished the dish off in about 3 minutes.  Classy.

Next were the pizzettas.  They always have a pizza with egg on the menu, a must have, in my view.  If you've never had anything like this before, I implore you, seek it out.  Here, during its last few minutes in the oven, two raw eggs are slipped onto the surface of the pizza, in this case topped with a drizzle of creme fraiche, asparagus coins, crushed almonds and mozzarella.  Moments later, the pizza emerges light golden brown and topped with two perfectly cooked, sunny-side-up eggs.  It's cut in such a way so as to maintain the integrity of the yolk, which is promptly wrecked once it hits the table, with the pieces of pizza flanking the yolk used for dipping.  It's a fabulous and satisfying experience.  The second pizza was the broccoli di ciccio and sausage.  This was quite delicious.  Let me just go on about broccoli di ciccio for a moment.  I absolutely LOVE this vegetable.  Apparently, it's an heirloom broccoli, the ancestor to the giant heads of broccoli we're all familiar with.  Except it's all thin, tender stems and leaves with little florets at the tip of each stem.  And it has more sweet, delicious broccoli flavor than any broccoli I've ever had.  It's one of my favorite things.  I'd never had it before living here, and I've only had it a few times since, when I'm lucky enough to find it.  But, back to the pizza.  So, our second pizza had pieces of this broccoli di ciccio,  a little smattering of fresh Italian sausage and some red chili flake.  Delicious!  (I know, I said that already.)  These flavors really work together - meaty, juicy bits of sausage with sweet, earthy broccoli and a little heat from the chile flake.  Yes, please.  Finally, we had the pizza with Fiore Sardo cheese, rosemary and pine nuts.  This was good, but not my favorite.  The sheep milk's cheese had a nice flavor, but didn't melt nicely - it took on that oily and rubbery state that some cheeses do when melted.  And while the pine nuts and rosemary were a nice compliment to the tangy, salty cheese, the overall texture was less enjoyable, though I'll admit, it was still satisfying in a comfort-food kinda way.  I need to comment on the fact that none of the pizzas we ordered had tomato sauce, which ordinarily is a strike in my book.  To me, pizza is not pizza unless it has tomato sauce.  (White pizza?  Nope, it's good, but it's not pizza.)  Except here - here I don't care.  I never miss it.

Sitting at the bar equals sitting by the dessert.  Invariably, there is a cake stand on the bar holding their flourless chocolate cake.  Chocolaty and rich, but not too rich, and it's served with barely-sweetened, barely-whipped cream.  It's a must, especially after you've been staring at it all night.  Their second dessert is usually something with fruit.  On this particular night it was buttermilk panna cotta with blueberry sauce.  Panna cotta is a dairy-based dessert to which gelatin has been added; it has the texture of a custard, but without the egg.  Now, buttermilk panna cotta is especially good because that tang really lightens things up, and when accompanied by a lovely fresh fruit sauce, it's almost like eating health food.  So of course, we had that too.


Did I tell you I adore this place?  We don't come here every weekend only because there are so many other places around town to try, but we go as often as we can.


*We recently had a couple of friends in town; new friends to Patrick, old friends to me.  This is the last restaurant we visited with one of them before his return to the Deep South, and the last we visited among no less than a dozen within the 5 days before that.  I got a little behind in my writing, as you might imagine, and I can't remember exactly every last detail of what was on those pizzas and the menu at Pizzetta 211 has since changed.  [Sad face.]