Puddletown's not short on great pizza, but when it comes to my "short list" Al Forno Feruzza is tops. This is not to say it's better than Ken's Artisan, Apizza Scholls, Bella Faccia, Wy'east, or Pizza Oasis as each has its own merits (I gots love for them all), merely a statement that when I'm hungry this seems to come to mind first.
Perhaps my stomach is sentient enough to conceptualize wait times. While good food's definitely worth waiting for, it's nice that here you don't have to. Unlike a few of its more popular peers there's no hour wait to get in. No need to arrive 15 minutes before opening. Just show up whenever, walk right in. Sure there's a little wait for your pizza, but that time's easily passed relaxing in their indie dining room watching Stephen and the crew hand tossing fresh dough discs, and besides who'd want pizza that's been already cooked? Lots I guess, but not I (at least not usually).
Of course while their pizzas are great, hand tossed, San Marzano tomatoes, air bubbles, slight charring (the mark of a good high heat oven), fresh mozzarella, etc....it's the Scarpetta that I've come to crave.
The Scarpetta aka "The Sicilian Slipper" is "All of Today's ingredients made into an open faced baked sandwich"(there's a list written on their menu board). Upon my last visit those ingredients were Handcut crimini mushrooms, roasted Italian black olives, fire roasted red peppers, natural sheep milk feta, carmelized walla walla onions, infused sun dried tomato, baby arugula, anchovy, pepperoni, salame, and clam. I generally prefer sparse one or two topping pizzas, but the abundant flavor combinations of the Scarpetta offer a fun, finger licking sensory overload that's not to be missed by the epicuriously adventurous.
Additionally they offer family-secret-recipe Sicilian cookies, fresh baked bread, calzones, and cannoli (which only last year I found out is actually the plural of cannolo). "Cannoli" always make think of three things: Rome, Mike's Pastry in Boston's North End, and this classic scene from the Godfather.
Al Forno Feruzza. Once a Barney purple PSU food cart now an Alberta Arts brick and mortar. Chill. Casual. Indie. Authentic. Sicilian. Delicious.
Al Forno Feruzza Sicilian Pizzeria Bakery Cafe
2738 NE Alberta St Portland, OR 97211
(503) 253-6766
I need to try the Scarpetta. I keep getting sucked into the calzones.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I have the opposite problem. :)
ReplyDelete