Review: DeSano Pizzeria Napoletana, Austin TX

A short fifteen years ago, it was hard to get a pizza worth the calories outside of a relative handful of surviving legacy pizza joints (e.g. Totonno's in Coney Island, DeLorenzo's in Trenton, Arturo's and John's in the Village (NYC), Tacconelli’s in Philly, Sally's in New Haven, Vito & Nick's in Chicago, Santarpio in Boston, Conte's in Princeton, & DiFara in Brooklyn). Today, I could rank not just the Top Five in an unlikely city like Austin, but I could name the Top Five Neapolitan pizzas in Austin and all would be worth the time, effort, and calories. 

With DeSano, we will examine another contender, to my surprise and delight. After six and a half years in my adopted hometown of Austin, the food continues to confound any preconceived notions. The BBQ has exceeded my high expectations (though most sides at BBQ joints remain dismal), while the Mexican food trails Arizona, New Mexico, and California by a wide gap.

Meanwhile, Austin has become a hotbed for top-end Japanese restaurants! The New York Times recently listed the 25 top restaurants in Austin, and several of them were Japanese. Regarding the chef's selection menu approach in these places, the NYT said "In 1995, Tyson Cole, a white, Florida-born sushi novice, was hired by a Japanese chef in Austin on the condition that he learn Japanese. That discipline is still evident in the food at Uchi, the restaurant Mr. Cole opened 8 years later. This is how Austin, where Japanese are only 0.2% of the population, became home to one of the country’s most dynamic Japanese restaurant scenes ... Omakase restaurants are to tech-boom Austin what mounted longhorns are to Texas steakhouses: distinguishing features suggestive of achievement."

But let's get on to the pizza! Pizza has been the most surprising revelation. Coming here from Philly/NJ/NY region, I had eaten some of the world's best pizza. Expecting to find little of that here, early on I discovered top shelf Neapolitan at Pieous and the incredible Detroit pizza at Via 313, which has kept its standards high even as it grows the number of locations. Since then, Baldinucci and Allday and Pedroso's are all making pies that rival the best of the northeast.

The Margherita

I had seen the downtown DeSano pizzeria (Lavaca Street) and learned that the Burnet Road location was opened first. I wrongly assumed that they were the (only) two outlets of an Austin-based pizzeria, but in fact the first DeSano was in Nashville. DeSano now has ten locations in Austin, Nashville, North and South Carolina, Florida, and California.

The Pepperoni Doppio

Their website notes their pizza philosophy: "At DeSano Pizzeria, we follow the strict guidelines of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN), preserving the centuries old craft of making authentic Neapolitan pizza." Their dough is made fresh daily using low-gluten flour, and ingredients for everything on the menu are imported from Italy (except for French butter).

We visited the Burnet location for dinner on a hot August night. The interior is a large, airy, welcoming space with large black and white photos of Italian life and a very cool red scooter on display. Although DeSano is proud of following the VPN guidelines, they make a traditional 12in "Napoli" ($22 for the margherita) and a 16 inch "Grande"  version ($28). However, the VPN specifies that a Neapolitan pizza may not exceed 35cm in diameter, which is 13.78 inches. 

Beyond that, my reasoning to be leery of the16" pizza is that a Neapolitan pie is going to have a lot of flop and potential wet center at that larger diameter, so we stuck to the traditional size. We ordered a 12 inch Margherita (San Marzano tomato sauce, mozzarella di bufala, olive oil, basil, & pecorini romano) and a 12 inch Pepperoni Doppio (San marzano tomato sauce, pepperoni, nickel pepperoni, garlic, scamorza, mozzarella di bufala, & pecorini romano).

The crust was textbook Neapolitan, expertly rendered. It was thin and soft with a cornicione that was both dense and puffy. It had the signature leopard spotting on the edges and underneath. Under VPN rules, the red sauce has to be pretty simple, and this seemed to be a thin base of unseasoned tomato sauce. 

Under the hood

For those accustomed to the bold umami flavors of New York, New Haven, Detroit, and other American styles, this sauce might seem bland. It serves mostly as a role player. I suspect the cheeseless Marinara pie has more pop to the tomato sauce because it is seasoned with garlic, oregano, and salt.

I preferred the pepperoni pizza to the traditional Margherita, precisely because that pepperoni delivered on the umami. Both of these pizzas were essentially flawless in execution, but they drove home an opinion that has been growing in my pizza perception: pizza may have been invented in Naples, but it was perfected in America. On most days, I'll take a well-executed Trenton, Old Forge, New York, Detroit, or New Haven pizza over a Neapolitan because the flavors are so much bigger.

Having said that, we had three slices left over, and they spent two months in my freezer. We reheated them in a toaster oven and they were fresh, soft, and tasty. A Neapolitan that survives a freezer journey and still tastes great? Sign of a particularly well made pie with superior ingredients. If Neapolitan is your jam, DeSano is about as good as it gets. 

Review: Urban Pie Pinzza Roman Style Pizza (Frozen)

 Let's begin with a mildly controversial statement: You can get good - maybe great - pizza at Costco and in your grocer's freezer.

If you're not yet tuned in to the regfrigerated take-and-bake "Pinsa" style pizza at Costco, get some soon. It's better than 90% of pizzerias. Our full review is HERE. Don't confuse this "take and bake" Pinsa pie with the tasty but ordinary floppy greasy pizza that Costco sells hot up front with the hot dogs and a few other snacks.

But let's get on to the main topic here - frozen pizza. For decades, it ranged from bad to mediocre. It was elevated with the advent of the DiGiorno rising crust pies, which are better than a lot of generic mom and pop shops and better than most of the big chains like Domino's and Papa John's. 

Inside the box

More recently, true gourmet pizzas have made it into the freezer section, led by top-shelf brick-and-mortar pizzerias making a frozen version of their pies. The one that first got my attention was the Neapolitan pizza from Roberta's (review HERE), which was in the freezer section at Whole Foods. I've been to Roberta's in Brooklyn (review HERE), and I found the frozen version to be, at a minimum, a solid reminder of how good that pie is fresh out of the oven.

Fresh out of the oven

A few weeks ago, we reviewed the Table 87 Coal Oven Slice (also found at Whole Foods). It's pricey, but we concluded that "Despite some room for improvement, this is as good as frozen pizza gets; it's at least as good as the frozen Roberta's pizza."

On the same trip when I bought the Table 87 slice, I also bought the Urban Pie "Pinzza" Roman Style Pizza. Because the Costco Pinsa style pizza is so good, I was eager to try this frozen pie with a similar crust. Costco calls their crust a "Roman Pinsa" style. What's that? It is made with a combination of Italian 00 wheat flour, rice flour, and soy flour to develop a light and airy crust that’s crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. 

This particular pizza ("Pepperoni Burrata") spent a few months in my freezer, and somewhere in its journey it seems to have partially thawed, because the generous pepperoni topping was skewed to one side. It's a pretty small pie, an oval roughly 11" long and 7" wide, weighing in at 15 ounces. Like the Costco pizza, the crust has wheat, rice, and soy flours. 

Nice crisp undercarriage

Although the label says Burrata, the ingredients show whole milk mozzarella and stracciatella cheeses as well as a tiny amount of Parmesan. Perhaps it's just cheese semantics; stracciatella is a fresh Italian cheese with a creamy texture and rich flavor, made by soaking shredded mozzarella in fresh cream, and often used as the filling for burrata.

Nice structure, light and airy crust

Out of the package, the pizza was not particularly pretty, and it looked ordinary out of the oven, too (baked at 450 on the center rack for 15-17 minutes). It was done after 16 minutes and the pepperoni was getting dark on the edges. I cut it into six small slices.

The key to a successful pizza - any style, fresh or frozen - is the crust. Always the crust. And the pinsa crust on this pizza is very very good - almost great. Crispy, chewy, yet light and airy, and very tasty. It shares many characteristics with the terrific Costco take-and-bake pinsa style pizza.

The sauce and cheese were good quality, but unremarkable. They served as role players here, melding nicely while letting the crust do the heavy lifting. The pepperoni added an important umami boost; would have liked the slices to be a little thicker. Spicy cup would really lift up the overall profile!

Overall, one of the best frozen pizzas you can get. It's very good, and can get to great with some tweaks to the sauce and cheeses. $14 is cheap for a pizzeria pizza, but expensive for a smallish frozen pizza; still, I'd buy again. It's a damn good pizza to have on hand in your freezer, right next to your Table 87 pizza.

Review: Allday Pizza - Austin TX

How do you find the best pizza places? 

Slice mix at Allday Pizza

For the decades during which I lived within an hour or two of New York City, I was skeptical of the claims about how New York pizza is terrific. But my "research" generally involved being hungry somewhere in Manhattan and grabbing a slice from the nearest pizzeria. But, most pizza everywhere, including NYC, is mediocre stuff coming from bad chains like Sbarro or mom'n'pop joints using cheap Sysco ingredients.

Allday Pizza, Hyde Park

The internet changed all that, and I was able to discover the pizzerias in New York making the top-flight pies, such as Lombardi's and Totonno's and John's and Joe's and Denino's. While there are plenty of online sources for New York pizza, it gets more difficult in places like Little Rock, San Diego, and Austin.

Allday interior, Hyde Park

When I travel and want to try the local pizza, I rely most often on two sources: Eater and The Infatuation. They both have genuine professional food writers who can describe the pizza in sufficient detail to help you decide where to go. With those as my guide, I found that Allday Pizza kept appearing on the "best pizza in Austin" lists. When they expanded from a trailer operation to a brick-and-mortar restaurant in the Hyde Park section of town, I rounded up four friends for a visit. 

Allday Pizza was launched in March 2023 by east coast natives Dan Sorg (NJ) and Townsend Smith (CT).  Allday crafts their pies with dough that is cold-fermented for 48 hours from a blend of organic flours (including Austin's Barton Springs Mill flour). A helpful counter person shared with me that the sauce is made with Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes grown in California. Some pizzas contain decadently rich stracciatella house-made cheese; other cheese is from Wisconsin.

Allday is primarily a slice joint, offering huge slices (each pie makes six slices) that range from $4 for the no-cheese "Tomato Tomatoe" to $6 for slices featuring pepperoni, sausage, or the house-made stracciatella cheese. They offer a slight discount if you buy a whole pie of one type, but no discount if you order 6 mixed slices.

For our diverse tastes and dietary preferences (including two vegetarians), we chose to assemble two pies with these 12 slices:

• 2 Stracciatella (tomato sauce, mozzarella, fresh basil, Grana Padano, olive oil, stracciatella)

• 2 Classic Cheese (tomato sauce, mozzarella)

• 2 Vodka Baby (vodka sauce, mozzarella, Grana Padano, fresh basil, sesame seed crust)

• 2 Pep & Pepp (tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, pepperoncini peppers, Grana Padano)

• 1 Spicy Margh (Calabrian tomato sauce, stracciatella, basil, olive oil, Tajín crust)

• 1 Industry (mozzarella, Verde sauce, pistachio dust)

• 1 Sweet Sausage (Ricotta cream, mozzarella, crumbled sausage, soppressata, red onion, Calabrian honey)

• 1 Pepperoni (tomato sauce, shredded aged mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, pepperoni

Based on the pics and review from The Infatuation, we also split a Goo-Mah sandwich ($15) three ways (mortadella, soppressata, stracciatella, Calabrian mayo, Allday relish on a house-made sesame-seeded roll). The sandwich was terrific, bursting with flavors. The bread was very good -- could be improved only with a sturdier/crisper outer crust. It was a little messy due to the stracciatella, but worth the struggle.

On to the pizza! Let's talk first about the most important element of any pizza - the crust. This was a perfect and brilliant rendition of a New York style crust. It had a crisped yet airy big cornicione that appealed to both the eye and the palate. The main body of the crust was thin and crispy, but pliable in that classic New York way that makes people want to fold it. (For the record, folding your pizza turns it into a sandwich and destroys the taste and texture profile. Don't do it! A slight V-shaped bend at the cornicione is fine to create rigidity.)

Permissable fold at cornicione

OH HELL NO

My first slice sampled (we cut several into smaller slices to taste more varieties) was the Pep & Pepp. Riding on that idyllic crust was a fresh tasting sauce, a generous but proportionate amount of mozzarella, and some top-line cup-and-char style pepperoni. Scattered on top was a sprinking of minced pepperoncini, adding a salty/spicy/vinegary note. It was a burst of umami on top of the pepperoni umami. This was one of the more conventional slices we tried and it was terrific.

The Pep & Pepp

The Sweet Sausage had the most eye appeal - a white pie with crumbled sausage and a big round of thinly sliced soppressata, and a Jackson Pollock-ish smattering of thinly sliced red onion. This was wonderful stuff, but a bit overly sweet (from the honey) for some in our group. This pie could be improved by using pinched Italian sausage that cooks on the pie instead of pre-cooked crumbles, and by dialing back the honey. But still a great slice!

The Sweet Sausage

The "slice that most tasted different than it looked" was the Industry Plant with the verde sauce and pistachio dust. I was expecting a straight-up basil pesto flavor, but I was getting a distinctly different herbal note. My guess was mint, but the helpful counter person shared that the verde sauce is made with green herbs basil, parsley, chives, and dill in addition to capers, miso, lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I loved this slice but probably wouldn't want an entire pie that way.

The Industry Plant

The "slice I never would have chosen but blew me away" was, hands down, the Vodka Baby. We ordered two in the mix of slices our vegetarians could eat. I think it was my favorite; the flavor of that vodka sauce was jumpin'. The sauce was so good that I didn't notice the mozzarella (apparently under the sauce). Bonus - a sesame seed crust! I didn't get a picture of a Vodka Baby slice on its own, but you can see it above on in one of the pics with all the slices on the serving tray.

More evidence of a perfectly crafted crust

I relish a regular cornicione on well crafted pizzas, but I also welcome some twists (yeah, I confess to enjoying a pretzel crust). Insider tip - you can get the Vodka Chicken Parm sandwich on that same excellent bread as the Goo-mah, but with a chicken cutlet, stracciatella, and that awesome vodka sauce.

Stracciatella slice showing off that airy cornicione

The Stracciatella was essentially their regular cheese slice, topped with a dollop of stracciatella cheese and a leaf of fresh basil. Great pizza, but in general I'm not keen on heavy and wet cheese on a pie. I'd prefer this wonderful cheese on a salad or with some other bread/cracker vehicle. There's only been one exception to this - the astounding Roman-style pies at Stracci Pizza in Arlington VA.

It's not easy to find good New York pizza outside of New York and New Jersey. Until now, the best New York pizza in Austin has been Home Slice, the venerable slice joint on South Congress Avenue. But Allday is Great Pizza, not only in the conversation for "best New York pizza in Austin" but also "Best Pizza in Austin."

Happy pizza eaters

It's not easy (or fair, really) to draw comparisons between the top Austin pizzas of different styles, such as the Detroit pizza at Via 313, the New York at Allday, the Roman style at Baldinucci, the Sicilian at Pedroso's, or the Neapolitan pizza at Jester King. But Allday is crafting brilliant and tasty pies; all five of us loved this pizza. Service was terrific and the interior had a pleasant vibe only mildly compromised by the drone of industrial synth pop played too loudly.

Six years into my Austin journey and still amazed that it's easier to get great pizza than great Mexican food here in the heart of Texas.