Pizza! Pizza!

Many years ago we went to a great pizza place in what used to be the K Mart shopping center on the Northshore in Mandeville. It was New York-style, but at that time Neapolitan pizza hadn’t made its way here yet, so it was just called pizza. To my taste, real  New York pizza has to be made by a New Yorker, and the father/son duo behind Roma Pizza were real New Yorkers, right down to the surly attitude. 

All acerbic interchanges between the proprietors of Roma Pizza and their customers were immediately forgiven because the pizza was just so perfectly New York. Perfect thin crust, perfect toppings, perfect slices, all warmed in what is to me the hallmark of the New York pizza…a slamming door oven.

And then one day it was over. They left. I knew they were closing but I was too afraid to ask them why or where they were going. Lots of pizza places have arrived on the scene since then, and some have gone, but nothing offered around here in Pizza World even comes close to pulling on my pizza heartstrings like Roma. It was an authentic New York pizza joint.

So it was a thrill when one of The Food Show’s unofficial roaming reporters emailed me about Pomodori, about to set up shop not in the exact space vacated by Roma, but two doors down in the same stretch of the nondescript shopping strip mall. (Since Roma’s departure K Mart has been torn down and replaced with what I call a “fake town” made up of a cohesive group of shops that resemble a town that popped up overnight. These are definitely not objectionable. They are usually beautiful and seen in places like Birmingham, Atlanta, and the DC area, but we have smaller versions in Baton Rouge and even in Hammond. The one that replaced K Mart is much smaller than most, but still a lonely development for the area.)

Pomodori is a small little Italian restaurant primarily focused on pizza. I would describe the pizza here as part of the “hybrid” group, which takes elements from New York and Neapolitan styles and combines them into this third style. Usually, the elements taken improve physical characteristics like a crust that holds up, etc., but the pizza itself is dull. 

Pomodori is different. The pizza is hybrid but it takes the best elements of both Neapolitan and New York-style pizza and incorporates them into a delicious whole. There is Mozzarella di bufala in the house but you have to ask for it, meaning that a few pizzas come with it but most don’t. Since I find this particular ingredient annoying, my opinion of Pomodori shot up instantly to see regular mozzarella pizzas coming out of the oven.

Owner Lee Webb is an interesting story. Like so many people who cook for their neighbors, family, and friends to much acclaim, he actually did listen to their chorus of encouragement to “open his own place.” He owns four brick ovens  (it’s a mild obsession) and somehow came to be such a fan of Pauli Gee ( a noted pizza maker from NYC) that a pizza is named for him, and his pictures line the wall of the tiny Mandeville space.

With no restaurant experience at all, he is driving this thing with pure passion and a healthy dose of self-confidence. Many of the encouraging neighbors comprise the staff at Pomodori. It is all well-deserved.

Pomodori is delicious. The service is friendly and pretty competent and the place nothing extraordinary but quite fine for what it is. The menu is larger than one would expect, but not so large that everything is carried out without compromise.

We started with the focaccia and meatballs, and we got some large shells stuffed with short rib, but mostly we stuck with pizza. We got a pepperoni, Margherita, and Quattro Formaggio. There were a few others on that pizza menu that seemed intriguing, but we do have to reign it in.

When the pizzas arrived I realized what the waitress asked us about ricotta. Soft ricotta is sometimes served with Italian food, but I had only seen it once at a really hip place in L.A.  I had also seen it in the center of a plate of Bolognese. It was that image that I remembered when the question was asked. I said yes, but here it came as a few dozen little piped dollops all over the pizza. This was too much for me.  The picture in my mind was like the Bolognese pasta in which it was centered in the middle, melting its richness into the dish. Here it just sat until I scraped it off. Now that I think about it, the hip place in L.A. did it in dollops.

None of this colored my opinion of this pizza, which is that it is excellent. Sort of my dream. If I can’t have the likes of Roma, and I am only presented with Neapolitan or sub-Roma New York-style pizza, along with dull hybrids, I can get excited about this Pomodori version. Never a fan of Margherita anywhere, including the Naples restaurant of its origin, I have to say this Pomodori could make me love Margherita. I did love it. Made with whole milk American-style Mozzarella, this was incredibly tasty with a pronounced red sauce and perky basil. Good stuff.

The same is true of the pepperoni, which uses a lot (thank you!) of my favorite little pepperoni that cup on the edges to hold a puddle of grease. This is not a complaint, and the grease thing is easily fixable with a napkin. All very desirable.

The whole Quatro Formaggio thing usually annoys me, but this Quatro Formaggio pizza was excellent. The olive oil base had the perfect garlic infusion, and the four cheeses blended into a wonderful harmony. This was so good I had to stop myself from eating more of it.

A couple of pizzas on the menu intrigued me. One was named for the aforementioned Pauli Gee, an interesting pizza guy of some renown. Somehow he became a mentor to Lee Webb and a pizza is named for him. And the Landrum is named for the brick oven guy Lee Webb came to know through their passion for brick ovens.

Our appetizers were also good. The meatballs were firmer than my ultimate texture but were not offensively firm. The sauce was very good, and I liked this version of polpette rather well, but not at the upper end of versions I have had. The focaccia was forgettable, which diminishes the dish. I am a crumbly-meatball-in-chunky-rich-red-sauce-with-a-healthy-sprinkling-of-Parmesan-and-no-bread-needed-girl, so our ideas just didn’t jive. No reflection on the goodness of the dish.

The conchiglie with short ribs and more ricotta was good but came to the table almost cold. I wished I could have focused more on this dish as it deserved, but pizzas were coming.

We had no salads or desserts, giving us ample reason to return to Pomodori, not that we needed one. Even though nothing can replace Roma, Pomodori is a wonderful addition to the Northshore dining scene.