Sully's Pub, South Ave. - CLOSED

NOTE: Sully's Pub is now closed.
At long last I made it to Sully’s Pub, which is on the South Avenue extension downtown. It’s the part of South Avenue that dead-ends, next to the on-ramp for 490 East. Maybe because of the warmer weather, Sully’s has just begun opening for lunch on Thursdays and Fridays, which made it easier for me to get over there.
Sully’s rather brief menu features pizza baked in a wood-fired oven. Although the oven is new, it seems like a good fit for this space. Several bars have come and gone in this spot, but the building itself goes way back, and has a charming, vintage industrial feel to it, with high ceilings and brick inside and out. There’s also a courtyard/patio in back, which is where my two companions and I sampled three of Sully’s pizzas: a three-cheese pizza with garlic and tomatoes, a mushroom pie with sauteed onions, and a “margarita” with pepperoni.
As expected, the crusts were thin, but not paper thin. There was a little oil at the center of my three-cheese pizza, and the tips of the slices were a bit floppy, but the crusts were mostly firm and crisp.
The crusts were formed into a thin lip at the edge, which varied in texture from chewy to very crunchy, and were a little puffy here and there. The undersides were nicely browned with a little bit of charring.
All the pizzas had good flavor. The three cheeses on my pie (I neglected to have them identified) were evident, as the pie had a complex blend of cheese flavors, and the garlic came through quite nicely as well. The bland tomatoes seemed like an afterthought, but what do you expect in early April?
I also sampled my companions’ pies. The margarita - which to me seemed more like a standard, cheese, sauce and pepperoni pie than a margherita - had a very “bright” tasting sauce, and the pepperoni slices were well crisped but not dried out.
Surprisingly - since I don’t like mushrooms - I really liked the mushroom and onion pie. The mushrooms didn’t have the rubbery texture that I find particularly offputting about mushrooms, and the onions added quite a bit of flavor that complemented the other components quite well.
As I mentioned, Sully’s menu is pretty short. They do offer burgers, cooked on an outdoor grill, wraps and a few other items, but the star here is the pizza.
And it’s good pizza. Three pizzas is a pretty good sampling, and all three of these were enjoyable, tasty and well made. I would’ve liked just a bit more crispness and maybe some toasty smokiness in the crust, but that’s about my only minor quibble. I’ll rate these an A-.
Sully’s Pub, 242 South Ave. 232-3960
Tue. - Sat. 5 p.m. - 2 a.m., Open for lunch on Thu. and Fri., 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Pizza Boy, N. Clinton Ave. - CLOSED

This establishment is now closed.
Whenever a new pizzeria opens, I’m always torn between wanting to try it right away and wanting to give it time to work the bugs out.
Well, the other day, Pizza Boy Pizza opened on North Clinton Avenue downtown, and this time I decided not to wait, especially after seeing their advertised everyday deal of a large thin crust cheese pizza for $4.97. It seemed highly unlikely that I could get a decent large pizza for that price, but I figured at worst I’d only be out five bucks, so why not?
I went in around lunchtime and ordered my pizza in person. I was told it would be about 30 minutes. I showed up 30 minutes later and was told that because I hadn’t paid in advance, it hadn’t been put in the oven, but had been “half made,” so, once I paid, it would be another 10 minutes. Although nobody had said anything about this rule when I ordered, I was only mildly annoyed, as I figured this is what I get for going in during their first week of operation.
One silver lining was that while I was waiting, they put out samples of their Tex-Mex pizza, so I got to try that. It wasn’t bad, kind of like a taco on a pizza crust.
At last my pizza came out. On inspection, I found that it measured 14 inches across, and had been screen baked. The browned underside had a few charred spots, was fairly crisp, and was not greasy.
This was a cheesy pizza, with relatively little sauce. There was a fair amount of neon orange oil or grease on top, which I imagine oozed out of the cheese. It did after a while soak through to the bottom, especially in the center of the pizza. A few napkins might be advisable here to soak up the oil.
I did detect a faint herbal flavor in there somewhere, from the sauce I guess, but overall the predominant components here were the crust and cheese.
The crust didn’t have an especially great interior, and wasn’t particularly bready, but it wasn’t bad by any means. The thick lip at the edge seemed to have been brushed with oil and was something like a lightly oiled breadstick in both flavor and texture.
Pizza Boy has a pretty standard list of pizza toppings, and eight specialty pizzas, including a Country Sweet Chicken pizza and a breakfast pizza. They also offer calzones, strombolis and breadsticks (aha!), “mega wings” (nine sauces), hot and cold subs, salads, and a handful of packaged refrigerated desserts.
As for the setup, there is just a little seating, with a few chairs and a few stools. There’s no parking to speak of, although there is metered parking nearby, and I was able to park right out front.
The prices here are a little odd - it’s $4.97 for a large thin crust cheese pizza, and $11.95 for a large cheese pizza with a 2-liter soda. I would not pay $7 extra just to get a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi (I guess the latter deal isn’t limited to thin-crust pizza, but I still wouldn’t pay that much extra).
In any event, the $4.97 deal is a good one, and I have no real complaints. Despite the mixup over prepayment, service was friendly and earnest. This was not the best pizza I’ve ever had, but it certainly wasn’t bad, and pizzawise it may be the best value for the money around here. I have to wonder how long a deal like this will last, so get it while you can. I was thinking B- or C+ on this one, so giving them a little boost for the price, I’ll round it up to a B-.
Pizza Boy Pizza, 154 N. Clinton Ave. 454-1934
Mon. - Wed. 11 a.m. - 9 p.m., Thu. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 3 a.m. (no delivery after 10 p.m.), Sun. 2 p.m. - 9 p.m.

A conversation with John Gallo

In 1990, John and Alfia Gallo opened their eponymous pizzeria on Stone Road in Greece. They eventually sold the business and headed west to Las Vegas, where for seven years they ran a full-service restaurant, Gallo's Pizza Kitchen.
The tug of home and family eventually proved irresistible, however, and in 2007 the Gallos sold the Vegas restaurant - which is still operating under the Gallo's name, and still getting rave reviews on the internet - and headed back to Greece. They were able to buy back their original pizzeria, which fortunately had also kept the Gallo's name, so this year they've been able to celebrate the pizzeria's twentieth anniversary.
Whether you're talking takeout joint or high-end restaurant, twenty years is a long time in the food service industry. On a recent visit to Gallo's, I spoke for a few minutes with John Gallo (that's him on the right in the photo, which I lifted from the Gallo's website), and I think I got some clues to the pizzeria's longevity.
Gallo is a native of Gaeta, an Italian seacoast city roughly midway between Rome and Naples. (You’ll find a large photo of it on the wall inside the pizzeria.) His family emigrated when Gallo was five years old, and while he's been back many times - that's where he and Alfia met - it was here that Gallo learned the fundamentals of his current trade, while working at Petrillo’s Bakery on Lyell Avenue some forty-plus years ago.
Gallo’s experience at Petrillo’s proved to be formative, and led to what he describes as a lifelong passion. He particularly recalled the time when “I was a boy, about 12 or 13, old Mrs. Petrillo said to me in Italian, ‘Son, you’ve learned the trade, you’ll never starve to death. So you know how young boys are, they’re very impressionable. That kind of stuck in my head, and now here I am, forty, forty-five years later, still at it.”
I had to ask Gallo about Gallo's Old World Style pizza, one of which I'd devoured just a week earlier. As he explained it, "That was what the old timers used to call ‘wedding pizza,’ because that was what they used to serve at weddings - that and homemade cookies." At first, Gallo's menu listed these under the name "wedding pizza," but "people just weren’t catching on to the name. So [Gallo] changed it to ‘Old World,’ because it is traditional, from the Old World. That’s the way it’s made [in Italy].”
The mozzarella-laden pies most Americans think of as pizza "came afterwards," Gallo says. "Pizza originally was just the grated cheese, black pepper, oil, and then they would just blotch a little bit of mozzarella here and there. Then the chains came and started layering everything all over."
Sad to say, I’ve never been to Italy, but from what I’ve read and seen, pizza in Italy is a very simple dish, in contrast to the American, more-is-better approach. Gallo agreed, saying "It is simple [in Italy]. With [typical Italian pizza], you’re tasting the sauce and the spices. Sometimes if you want, you might put a few olives. Something so simple but so tasty."
By this time I was ready for a couple of slices, so I finished our conversation by asking Gallo to name the worst, and best, parts of running a pizzeria. Both answers came quickly.
The hardest part, he said, is the hours, and the difficulty of managing to find time to attend family functions or to take vacations, which are "short if any." Gallo learned early on, he says, that "You don’t own a business, the business owns you."
The best part? “The people. The satisfaction of putting out a good product, and just enjoying people, coming into contact with people, meeting new people."
This is just a guess, but I imagine that's an attitude shared by most good cooks, chefs and restaurateurs. The product - the food - is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, which is to create something that can nourish, be shared, and provide some pleasure as well. So "putting out a good product" and "enjoying people" really go hand in hand. It's an attitude that you'll find at Gallo's, and a big part of why this pizzeria is now entering its third decade of serving its customers.