Gianni Mazia's, Clarence

 OK, so a bit out of the geographic scope for a Rochester, NY Pizza Blog, but really not all that far, and this is a blog, after all, meaning a web log of my personal pizza experiences, wherever they happen.

My wife and I recently drove to Clarence to hit some antique stores. If you're not familiar with it, Clarence, which is about 20 miles east of Buffalo, is for reasons unknown to me a center for antique shops. You'll find antique malls and individual shops. Well worth the drive if you're looking for vintage items.

We thought we should grab some lunch, and my maps app came up with Gianni Mazia's On Main. We arrived about !2:45.

I was intrigued to see that Gianni Mazia's offers two basic pizza options:  "traditional" and wood-fired. I was tempted to get one of each, but we were thinking of going out for dinner later, so we decided to share just one pizza for lunch.

But which? That was a tough call, but we settled on a wood-fired "Native New Yorker," described as "sliced tomatoes and fresh basil on top of red sauce and fresh mozzarella."

It took some time to arrive--I wasn't timing it, but it seemed like a long time, considering that they weren't busy and that wood-fired pizza typically bakes very quickly--but that gave me a chance to take a peek at the oven. 

I saw a gas flame, and a temperature reading of 744 degrees, which is certainly high though well below what wood-fired ovens are capable of. There was a large wood pile outside, so I don't doubt that they use wood, but I didn't see any, nor did I pick up any whiff of wood smoke. I can't say for certain that there was no wood flame at the time, as I didn't see the entire interior of the oven, just that I neither saw nor smelled any indication of one. I suppose I could've asked, probably should have, but I'm naturally reticent so I didn't. Something I need to work on.

It hardly mattered, though, as the pizza was quite good. My one complaint is that is was extremely thin. Paper thin. I like thin crust pizza, and I expect wood-fired pizza to be thin, but this was as thin as could be. A teeny bit of interior would've been welcome.

That aside, it was still good. The underside showed some "leopard spotting," meaning blistered but not burnt. The outer edge was also nicely charred, which gave it an added depth of flavor. While insubstantial in terms of its weight and volume, the crust made a nice base for the toppings. 

Which were very good. I always say that pizza is all about balance, meaning all the components must complement and balance each other. This pizza was unbalanced, in the sense that the toppings were far more substantial than the crust, but it was still good. That doesn't necessarily disprove my premise, as I think I would've liked this even better had the crust been a bit thicker, to add some chewy substance. But it was the fact that the crust was good that made me want more of it.

Oh yes, the toppings. I don't know why they decided to call this the Native New Yorker, as I didn't see much particularly New Yorkish about it, but I'm not going to get too hung about about labels.

I'm a tomato guy. Red over white pizza every time. Red sauce vs. Alfredo? No contest. I'm even one of the few who prefer Manhattan clam chowder over New England. 

So while the crust fell short of greatness by my standards, the toppings largely made up for it. The sauce and tomato slices and fresh mozzarella (baked just to the edge of rubbery), and basil, were very tasty. Was it a Platonic ideal of pizza? No. Was it good? Well, I gobbled it up, so yes.

In evaluating pizza, I have to remind myself once in a while to stop thinking in terms of categories. It's not all about "authenticity," or how close the pizza came to some predetermined standard. Bottom line, did you like it? Yes, and I hope I've described it well enough that others can decide whether they might like it. 

As we go antiquing pretty often, and we find ourselves in Clarence now and then. Next time I want to go back and try the "traditional" pizza. One of these days.

Gianni Mazia's on Main

10325 Main St, Clarence, NY 14031

Mon. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 9 p.m.

Sun. 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. 

REDD

Even before I resumed writing blog posts, REDD had been on my to-do list.  I'd gotten more than one personal recommendation and it gets rave reviews online. After several attempts to book a table a few days out, I realized I was looking at at least a week, but I finally had the forethought to get a table for my wife and me on a Friday evening.

All that is by way of background. When I hear and read that much good about a place, part of me is thinking, "this is going to be great!," and part of me is thinking, "don't believe the hype." But I try to keep an open mind.

 We got seated and served promptly. I'd been here years ago when it was 2 Vine, and it seemed better laid out and less noisy, despite being busy. 

After sharing a beet salad, which was quite good, my wife and I shared two pizzas:  a mozzarella pizza, with tomato, basil and Parmesan, and a prosciutto pizza with fontina, arugula and Parmesan. So a red and a white pizza.

I knew that REDD uses a wood-fired oven for their pizza, and my immediate impression was that the cornicione (edge) didn't have the blackened blistering that I usually see with wood-fired pizza. A check of the underside showed it to be a little spotted but not much.

That in itself didn't raise alarm bells. I've had too many "wood-fired" pizzas where they just briefly expose the outer edge to a flame to get it blackened, but the crust still sucks. It's not all about blackening.

But wood-fired or otherwise, it starts with the crust. And this was, well ... hmm.

Quite thin, up until I reached the cornicione, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn't enough to sustain or balance the toppings. It was floppy and more significantly, it wasn't interesting.

What I mean is, with great pizza, the crust should be so good that I'd be happy to eat it with no toppings at all. This wasn't that.

Nor did it improve as I worked my way to the cornicione. Again, with top-notch pizza, that's almost the best part, as you get to enjoy the texture and flavor, unadorned. This was reminiscent of supermarket Italian bread. Not "bad," exactly, but bland and lifeless.

I don't claim to be an expert baker, but to quote one of my favorite bands, Lynyrd Skynyrd, "I know a little," and my first reaction was that it goes back to the intitial fermentation process, i.e. the rise. Use enough yeast, rise at warm temperatures, and you can have pizza or bread dough ready in no time. But it won't be particularly good. Low and slow and (somewhat) cold is the way to go, to develop more complex flavors and an interior structure in the crust, with more gluten development. But that takes time. I got the sense this was a crust made from a dough that wasn't given enough time.

I also know that the best wood-fired pizzerias I've been to get their ovens to a very high temperature, often 800 or above. A thin-crust pizza can bake in 90 seconds or so. REDD's was at 655 degrees, hotter than a typical home oven but not what you want for getting the most out of a wood-fired oven.

 I also noticed that the crust of the prosciutto pizza had separated between the top and the bottom. When properly done, that shouldn't happen. There are reasons why that might happen, but I'm not diagnosing the problem, just identifying it.

 OK. Enough about the crust. Let's move on to the toppings.

 They were good, although I must say not great.

The mozzarella pizza was well-laden with tomato sauce, but to me the sauce was over-applied. Pizza is also about balance and there was too much sauce, for my taste, on such a thin crust.

Nor was the sauce especially interesting. It tasted like sauce you'd get out of a jar. Not that you can't get good sauce from a jar, but this wasn't it. It tasted to me like generic spaghetti sauce. 

I was expecting a salty kick from the prosciutto on the prosciutto pizza, and I didn't get it. The pie was bland. I like a nice white pizza now and then, but without tomato sauce I'd like a bit of a flavor boost from the toppings, and this didn't deliver.

Not to drag my wife into this, but she agreed with me on all these points, and I can assure you she is unafraid to disagree with me, so I am pretty sure she was being honest. Toward the end of our dinner, I mentioned to her a thought that had just occurred to me:  as a bcnchmark, could I make a better pizza at home? I have had the good fortune to have pizza at various pizzerias that I couldn't possibly hope to match, due to the limitations of my home oven and my pizza-making skills. But we both agreed that I can make and have made better pizza at home, than what we had here.

Now all this sounds as if I've been trashing and bashing REDD. I suppose I have, but that was not my intent. Despite all I've said, I liked the pizza.

Not too many years ago I would've been amazed to get pizza this good anywhere around here, much less at a restaurant, where pizza is just an add-on to the menu. But the bar has been raised. That's a good thing, as the general level of quality and the range of options have both gone up. 

But if you're running a high-end restaurant, and you want to include pizza on the menu, I think it's incumbent on you to make sure it's damn good pizza. I can't honestly say that this was.

REDD Rochester

24 Winthrop St.

Rochester, NY 14607 

 https://reddrochester.com/

Mon. - Thu. 5 pm - 10 pm

Fri. 11:30 am - 2:30 pm, 5 pm - 10 pm

Sun. closed 

Strangebird Brewery

It took a while, but I finally made it to Strangebird Brewery recently.  Strangebird, which focuses on two things I love - pizza and beer - opened in 2021, but it took resuming this blog to get me over there.

 I went with my wife on a Thursday evening at about 5:30. They don't accept reservations, but I was hoping at that relatively early hour it wouldn't be too difficult to get a table.

 That was a false hope. There were a few vacant tables outside, but they were reserved. Inside, the place was pretty close to packed.

Which was fine, I get it, it was happy hour and I was glad they were doing well. But the setup was rather odd - we were told we could order food at the food counter, drinks at the bar, and grab seats when, where and if we could find them. Which presented a bit of a quandary as to what to do first. 

We ended up ordering two pizzas at the pizza/food counter, where they gave us a number. We headed back to the bar, where fortuitously two stools opened up, and got drinks. So it worked out but it was odd and a little inconvenient from my perspective. Surely there's a more orderly way to do this (in fact other restaurants and bars have various means of doing so).

At the bar, I ordered a Gouden Boom, which is described as a Belgian-style golden ale. Quite good. 

 Not too long (20 minutes?) afterwards, our pizzas showed up. In a departure from my usual rule, I didn't order the simplest pizza, which would've been the cheese pizza (from the description, basically a Margherita). Instead, we shared a "Greens" pizza (roasted garlic, kale, pickled chilis, mozzarella, ricotta and Parmesan) and a Mortadella, with its eponymous pork sausage, roasted garlic, pickled onion, salsa verde, and mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. 

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 The only part of me that regrets not sticking to my keep-it-simple-rule is that it was hard to evaluate the crust on its own or to set a benchmark. But both of these were very tasty pizzas.

Let's start with the crust. It was very thin. The cornicione was well formed and chewy, but the rest of the crust, where the toppings were, was so thin as to have almost no interior chew. That was a bit of a shame as the cornicione tasted quite good, and I could tell it was good, well-made dough. I would've liked it a tad thicker.

As I said, the toppings were very good. I'm a pepperhead, and put hot sauce on just about everything but ice cream (hmm ...?). The pickled chilis added a nice kick for me, but weren't too much for my wife, who has a low tolerance for heat. The entire ensemble was very good, with a medley of flavors that worked well together.

 Same for the Mortadella. The salty, thin-sliced sausage, pickled onion (I need to keep "pickled" in mind for pizza toppings) and garlic were terrific together. I love garlic almost as much as I love hot peppers, so it doesn't take much to convince me once you put garlic on a pizza.

Complaints? Well, again I would've liked a bit thicker crust.  To nitpick, a bit more charring underneath would've been welcome. The top side on both was nicely done, but the underside was a bit pale. I know it's a tricky thing to get it just right, but the point of this blog is to record my impressions, and that's one of them. 

I got a photo of the oven, but I couldn't see the interior. I was told that it is gas-fired, not wood-fired, but is clay-lined and heated to 800 degrees, which is certainly comparable to a lot of wood-fired ovens. And though I generally love wood-fired pizza, in the end what matters to me is the product.  Electric, gas, wood, coal, whatever. 

I liked this, a lot.  A bit thicker and a bit more done underneath and I would've loved it. But it was good, and I need to go back and try the cheese pizza. I think I'll try a different night of the week and/or a different time of day, though.

Strangebird  Brewing

62 Marshall Street
Rochester, NY 14607
585-505-8700

Thu. - Mon., 12 p.m. - 11 p.m. (Kitchen closes at 9 p.m.)

Closed Tue. & Wed.