Pies To Delight

Downtown Covington has a lot of great restaurants. If we didn’t do this for a living, there would be no need to cross the lake for wonderful food in all genres and price ranges.

A few years ago the people who own one of the most delicious of these restaurants, Del Porto, took over a peculiar space adjacent to Goodyear Tires in downtown Covington and transformed it into The Greyhound. I have a love/hate, or rather a love/?? relationship with The Greyhound. It is a beautiful place, with sort of two vibes going on. The light and airy bar features a wood-burning pizza oven, and the back dining room goes on forever, getting darker the further you get into it. We never venture past the bar.

But it is the menu at The Greyhound that puzzles us the most. Billed as a gastropub, the menu is very global. My understanding of a gastropub is a hip version of a pub, but there is nothing pub-like about The Greyhound. It is Napa, California. The only thing at The Greyhound that has ever reminded me of the UK is the fantastic beef stew they served once as a special on St. Patrick’s Day. And the fish and chips from the regular menu are credible.

What I find so puzzling about The Greyhound is that there have been few tweaks to this menu. Someone must love the idea that four people can occupy a table and eat around the world. One can have fish and chips, another a pot pie, kebabs on the next plate, and schnitzel. 

We go to The Greyhound for their pizza, which is the best on the Northshore. (Yes, I prefer New York-style) but this Neapolitan pie is excellent.) So when they posted a sign that we passed each day advertising their Happy Hour, we had to go. I assumed there would be the usual half-price pizza and half-price apps, plus beer and wine, etc.

We arrived to learn that it was only beer and wine and pizza available at Happy Hour. The pizzas were half-price. In such instances, I order several pizzas mainly to assuage my guilt. We take the rest home and freeze it.

As I have said many times on The Food Show, I don’t consider pizza that isn’t Italian as pizza. But there was one that intrigued me, so we got it. We ordered three pizzas: pepperoni, fennel sausage, and this oven-roasted chicken pizza with four cheeses and spinach.

We always get the fennel sausage pizza here because it is fantastic. And of course pepperoni,... because. But this Oven Roasted Chicken Florentine Quattro Formaggio pizza I objected to on principle. I’m glad my need to order more than two pizzas eclipsed my pizza prejudices.

This chicken pizza was superb. It had a base of oil and garlic and wood oven-roasted chicken with a lot of spinach. Billed as a Chicken Florentine Quattro Formaggio pie, Gorgonzola, Mozzarella, Feta, and Parmesan filled in the places where the spinach wasn’t. I couldn’t get over how delicious this pizza was. We ate all of this pizza and barely touched the others. That’s not to diminish their goodness but to illustrate how extraordinary this one was.

We did have to eat a bit of the others. The pepperoni featured the spicy large version of sliced pepperoni with the classic red sauce and mozzarella. It was also excellent.

And the fennel sausage pizza is always on our table because we think it’s fantastic. It was hardly touched. Even though fennel sausage has become ubiquitous on menus around town, we particularly like the version here. This housemade sausage is exceptional.

Regardless of what is on top of these pizzas, I love the crust here more than any other. It is typical Neapolitan: flimsy in the center and chewy on the edges, replete with bubbles and char marks throughout. And I like the actual taste of the crust.

I’m glad they are doing this Happy Hour with their pizzas. Even though we didn’t do any drinking, the pizza is always a winner. And since I’m not much of a fan of the rest of the menu, it gives us an excuse to sit in this beautiful place.