Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My experience was much the same as WikiAdam's. Wish I could find my photos. However, I did find my brief comments on my meal there (from two years ago):

Hit Douglas's Serious Pie after that, his wood oven pizzeria next to Dahlia and Lola. Ho-hum. Tasteless crust that was doughy in the center and never charred or that crusty. Crust tasted like it had oil in it and the crumb was pretty tight and springy. Toppings were better than the crust. Not as good as any of the best places in Portland. About like a good Pizzicatto, I'd say. However, the peach appetizer with fresh mozz and balsamic was tasty. Better than the pizza. Could have used some more balsamic and better or reduced balsamic.

I don't make the trip across town (even from my house it's only 15 minutes, so it's not like you have to take the Lincoln Tunnel) for the pizza. It's good, as you say, but it's at the bottom of my list among the better pizzerias in Portland. However, I do go across town for the calzone which uses their ricotta, which I believe is housemade and very milky and almost floral.

@WikiAdam Yeah, I don't understand why people like Serious Pie. I think it's one of the worst "artisan" pizzas I've had.

I just think that Nostrana, especially with the margherita, isn't trying to give you anything too interesting. They're giving you a very traditional, plain pie. The cheese and sauce are about clean and simple flavors -- the milkiness of the cheese and the straight-forward San Marzano sauce flavor. Mozzarella is boring, kind of, in the same way that mashed potatoes are boring or grilled asparagus is boring. But not everything has to be Thai food.

I'll dissent here a bit. This is a style of pizza I need to explore around the country more, but among places that are at least somewhat in this style that I've tried, I think Nostrana tends to make one of the better versions I've had. Of course, I have the luxury of having eaten there many times and tried the full range of their offerings. But I prefer the pizzas I've had at Nostrana to the pizzas I've had at places like A16, Delfina, and Serious Pie. I'd have to try Mozza again, though, for better comparison. Definitely preferred Mozza to these other three. (Still haven't been to Bianco or UPN.)

I do think that the crust at Nostrana often lacks salt, but not flavor. It uses a sourdough and has a nice tang to it. The sauce is certainly not as complex as many, but it has a really traditional, zippy, fresh tomato flavor, imo. None of these things overwhelm the mild, house-made mozz or fresh basil. While Scholl's margherita is my fav in town, I find Nostrana's to be about perfectly balanced. (Most common fault is it being short on basil.) However, I think several of their other pizzas are actually superior. My favorite is a custom pie with fresh arugula and prosciutto (options always on the menu) or the high quality anchovies they use.

Nostrana does get bonus points for having excellent food from top to bottom. In fact, their desserts might be the hidden gem and the true star of the menu. But I really think their pizzas hold their own for the style and surpass many favorites from the west coast. (That being said, a lot of these pizzas "surpass" each other with very subtle distinctions that may be more a function of palate than actual quality. eg, I think that those who tend towards Ken's over Nostrana generally prefer intensity over balance.)

Unfortunately, the best pie in Brian's repetoire hasn't been on the menu in a long time: the clams casino -- the bacon bianca with littlenecks in shell. Yeah, yeah, it'd be easier to eat if the clams weren't in the shell, but then they wouldn't release their essence to the top of the pie, which is what made it so fantastic. Here's the version Bourdain had when he came:

http://www.extramsg.com/albums/album600/boudain_at_apizza_25.sized.jpg

@ LA Pizza Maven

Well, I'm coming down there in early July (somewhere between the 8th and 12th), so don't come up then!

Wow. I feel special. Makes me want to blow more hot air in the future. ;-)

btw, I added another comment noting Firehouse as well in that post. They use a wood oven and do a really nice job and remind me a lot of A16. The bread comes out less crispy, and more soft, but still mottled with char and great ingredients on top in balance.

If someone from Slice ever wants to come out here, I will gladly tour you around and pay for all your pizza meals.

I'd really be interested to see the 109 pizza joints he went to. It does appear the NW got snubbed.

imo, you get to a certain level of quality and it becomes a question of palate. But prior to that, there are a lot of relatively objective factors that can be referenced along with traditional standards. There's an established language around pizza and some agreement within styles about what makes a good pizza. It's not just up to one man's opinion.

So it seems right that there should be some diversity unless he just wants to call it "Alan Richman's Favorite Pizzas". But, of course, that doesn't sell magazines like "the best in the USA" does.

We currently have 5 strong contenders in the Portland area: Apizza Scholls, Nostrana, Ken's Artisan, Al Forno Ferruzza, and Tastebud. If you extend down to Salem (45 minutes away), there's also a place that does an excellent New Haven style pie. The place is just called Apizza. All of these places use top quality ingredients and hot ovens. They all use long ferments for their doughs. Two of them have all wood ovens. Two of them make their own cheese (one makes a ricotta for calzones, the other mozzarella). I think three or more make their own salumi/charcuterie. Several of the owners were bread bakers before opening their pizza shops. These are classic pies with slightly varying styles, all falling in the Neapolitan, New York Neapolitan, and New Haven range, probably. But they're all just fricking good.

Admittedly, the offerings get thin after this with rather standard-issue stuff, though at least we have a decent number of places making actual pizza rather than just the chains.

But Portland should be on any pizza lover's radar and I have to wonder if Richman came here at all.

There are still a lot of places I'd like to hit. I was talking to a friend today who called to ask me questions about improving efficiency at Great Lake. Sounds like they really have a product they care about and I'm eager to get back to Chicago to try it. I still haven't hit Bianco. And I'm going to Mozza in July.

But I've been to a lot of the best around the country and Portland holds its own really, really well. I'd be surprised if there is any city in the US, except maybe NY, where the craft of pizza is being renewed as strongly -- ie, places that are only a couple years old as opposed to 100 years old. Is there any place that defines the next generation of honest pizzerias better than Portland? Prove it.

@piccola

Gladly. Taco Bell is crap. Chipotle is mediocre. Krispy Kreme is only as good as their fried dough is fresh. Popularity dosn't equate to quality. They don't have hidden gems. There's nothing "hidden" about them. The food is created to maximize profits by giving people something just good enough that they won't bother seeking out something better, largely by focusing on simple, bold flavors. (ie, make it sweet, make it sour, make it salty, put MSG in it, and add some cayenne and mayo. If you can find a way to make it crunchy, do that, too.) Oh, and a 17 year old pothead has to be able to make it.

The gems are at the taco trucks and carnicerias, the little pho shop, and the mom & pop deli that people forgot when they moved out to the suburbs. These places rarely get acknowledged by the print media with their limited dollars and limited space. Meanwhile the pages are filled with Starbucks ads. The power of blogs is as ALTERNATIVE media -- ie, media that gives a voice to those stories, those businesses, and those true gems that the mainstream media ignores.

Do you guys ever feel ashamed that you have a site called "Serious Eats" yet regularly have corporate-chain-fast-food-dreck taste-offs? Can't these guys spend their own ad dollars rather than you pimping junky junkfood?

Totally overrated. Fast? Yes. Cheap? Yes. An institution? Surely. Good? Nope. I might rather go to a Carl's Jr and I'd certainly rather go to In-N-Out if Seattle had one. Fine to soak up alcohol after a night of binge drinking, but a place to search out? Hell no.

LA PIzza Maven, if you come up, I'll happily show you around to all the best pizzas in town and Scholls will be on me. Just contact me through extramsg.com's contact page or through PortlandFood.org.

So I just ate at A16 for the first time the other day. We had two pizzas and both tasted very good. However, I was not impressed with the crust. It had a nice char and blistering and looked like it would be excellent. But I felt it was too soft. Even the charred and blistered spots had no real crispness to them. There was no crunch to the dough at all, though it was clearly cooked through. We're lucky here in Portland to have four terrific hot oven pizzerias that are as good as any I've had in the US, and all get at least some crispness to the edge of their crusts. I've never been to Italy or Naples, however. My guess was the oven was too hot. Talking with the guys on the line, it sounded like, though, that the pizza station was the low-man on the totem pole, the spot to move up from on the line, which seems odd to me.