A Tetrad, Yes, a Tetrad, of Pizzerias

In which I venture out, once again, in search of great pizza Buenos Aires.

Did you know there are 44 or more synonyms for “quartet” or “foursome”, a group of four. Strangely, somehow, according to several actually published dictionaries, that includes words like “trio, quintet, sextet, septet, octet”… which respectively mean a group of 3, 5, 6, 7, 8. The rationale apparently being that they’re all just ways of saying “ensemble”. Related, yes, synonyms, no.

I’m out in the streets of Buenos Aires, and on long bus rides, looking for great pizza once again. Today’s post takes us from Recoleta to Chacarita to suburban Adrogué. And I found pizzas great, good, and not so much.

Rao’s New York Style Pizza, Mercado San Nícolas, Av. Córdoba 1750, San Nícolas. Longtime locals and expats will likely remember the short-lived New York Style Pizza place on Gorriti in Palermo. It closed up years ago. My thoughts at the time:

Basically, it falls somewhere between porteño and neuyorquino style pizza – perhaps an attempt to appeal to locals as well as expats. Overall, a good effort – and again, it’s not bad pizza, it’s just not great pizza – if they weren’t billing it as NY style, my only real issue would be the price.

My biggest quibbles were that there wasn’t enough of a quite good tomato sauce to be a NY style pie, it was more like the typical blush on an Argentine one. And the dough, which to me tasted more like soft pretzel dough rather than pizza dough.

And, this is the same place, just in a new location, and adding the infamous name of Rao’s from NYC. The owner, who I chatted with after immediately recognizing, made a vague attempt to pass it off, saying that his nickname since he was a child was Raú, because his name is Raúl. First, that seems a stretch - who’s going to drop the L from the end of a short name like that, but okay. Second, he knew way too much about Rao’s and their reputation for exclusivity and quality, and their line of frozen pizzas, for it to be his claimed “coincidence”.

He’s definitely upped the sauce game - and these slices look closer to a NY style pizza than the former ones did. But the dough, for me, is still an issue. It just doesn’t taste like pizza dough. It’s weird tasting. It’s different from before, it’s almost sweet. And while his pepperoni is tasty - he says he has it made according to a recipe he brought from NY, it’s cut way too thick, and it isn’t nice and browned and cupped like a NY pie would have - it’s just kind of warmed. The plain slice was fine, the bacon and leek slice was fine, albeit I didn’t realize it wouldn’t have sauce. It’s just that dough….

Plain slice is 3000 pesos, the others 4800, or $2.25 and $3.50.

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Santa María, Av. Corrientes 6801, Chacarita - It’s been about eight years since I first tried the pizza at this place. I didn’t go back and read my review on it, and didn’t remember what I’d tried back then, other than a quite good “white pizza” with spinach. I had, it turned out, tried their fugazzeta rellena and thought it was decent. It is the house specialty, actually, both of those are what the place is noted for. Interesting that the two pizzas the place is known for are the ones without tomato sauce.

This place was also one of my “add-ons” to my look at some of the historic pizzerias of Buenos Aires a few months ago.

We ordered a trio of slices - a calabresa, an anchovy, and a fugazzeta rellena, which they offer in a just cheese, or cheese and ham version. It turns out I’d tried the just cheese version previously.

Closeup on the last of those. Good dough, lots of cheese, though seems less than I remember, or than the old photos look like. I don’t know if that’s a change, or because we got the ham and cheese version rather than the just cheese. There’s ham inside and atop. There’s nice layer of onions - better browned than that last time, along with a nice crust of parmesan and a healthy dose of chopped parsley. We liked it a lot. Not enough to supplant one of my top five, but not far off.

The anchovy slice was great - rather than just a simple tomato sauce on this one, since it has no cheese, they go canchera style, with the zesty, heavy on the garlic, almost putanesca style sauce, and a generous striping of anchovies. The calabresa wasn’t our favorite - the longaniza sausage is cut way too thick and just warmed rather than getting nicely browned. We decided we didn’t have enough room to share a fourth slice - which would have been a revisit on the spinach pie. 4800 for the two pizza slices, 5800 for the fugazzeta - $3.50 and $4.25.

Side note: Pizza Canchera. It’s a cheese-less style, generally with a generous amount of tomato sauce that’s then scattered with herbs and garlic. The name, which literally means “streetwise” or “savvy”, refers to a fútbol pitch (soccer field), or cancha, were ambient temperature pizzas that used to be sold outside the stadiums - no cheese to congeal - and often served in oversized slices.

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Ti Amo Pizzeria Secreta, Diag. Toll 1420, Adrogué - Off the southern suburbs of BA and a visit to a pizzeria you’d think I’d have gotten to by now, given that it’s regularly made it onto the lists of top pizzerias here in the BA area, including the 50 Top Pizza folk in Italy having given it #40 in the world, #2 in Latin America, and #1 in Argentina. But it’s also a nearly two hour bus ride each way (and for my dining companion, due to a bus delay, three hours coming out). I’ve just kept putting it off.

Adrogué itself - for the moment I’ll leave to two past posts from my old blog, SaltShaker - here and here.

Given my friend’s delay, I ordered an empanada while I waited. Decent, but nothing exciting. Ground beef, well spiced, and served with lemon and a tomato sauce. It all worked, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. 4000 pesos, about $3.

Pizza being something that Argentines demand to eat with knife and fork, and generally find appalling that so much of the rest of the world picks up their slices to eat them, I was surprised when this turned out to be all they offer in the way of tableware. The pies are served, uncut, and it’s left to you to cut them, though we were instructed that four is “the best” in order to get the right size when picked up and folded.

The menu has a nice array of pizzas, and even the classics seem to have little twists to them. The mushroom pie is made with oyster mushrooms over a thin coating of mascarpone and fresh mozzarella cheese and is then topped with parmesan and… peanut butter. It works. It seriously works. The bacon and onion pie is equally good, with the same trio of cheeses, plus chives. Both pizzas priced at 20000 pesos, just under $15 each.

Now, if this place was close to home, I’d be a regular. But I’m honestly not up for adding 3-4 hours to my meal just to get there and back, even though it’s great pizza. So, I was quite happy to find out, in chatting with one of the owners, that they’re opening a restaurant in Palermo, here in town, to be called, I think, Capretto, Italian for a little goat. It’s supposed to open in September or at the latest, early October. The plan is to offer the same sorts of pizzas, plus pastas, and burgers. We look forward to trying it.

Edit: it’s Caprichito, and due to open October 2nd. News announced on a local online site, Cucinare on September 23rd.

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Andiamo, Montevideo 1088, Recoleta - I reviewed this place a couple of years ago, not long after it opened. My thoughts at the time:

Although noted as being “inside the Colegio Marista Champagnat”, it’s not. It may be in a commercial space rented out at the corner of that building, but it’s got its own storefront, and as best I can tell, has no other connection to the college. I’m sure it gets a good number of students, though, being both a bit pricier than most pizzerias in the area, and being more Italian style than Argentine, who knows? There weren’t any the day I went – the age range was primarily in the mid-30s and up. Recently, this place has been getting some hot press as one of the best pizzas around.

I don’t know about that. It’s got a great crust, though too much of it – it’s really thick and puffy, and the crust to cheese and toppings ratio is just off for me. It’s really big for an individual sized pie – more like what most places make as a six-piece small/medium, just cut into four slices. I got their highly touted four cheese pizza, which I didn’t realize had no sauce on it, just the cheeses. And it’s drizzled with a lemon zest syrup and walnuts are scattered over it. The drizzle was just too sweet for me. And, bizarrely, the tomato sauce is delivered on the side, “for dipping the crust into, the way Italians do it” I was informed. Umm, no, they don’t. And the sauce tastes like plain tomato puree from a supermarket carton – unseasoned. Now, maybe I should have tried a more classic pizza, but if that’s the sauce they use, I can’t imagine that I’m going to be impressed.

I can’t say that much has changed. I sort of tried it again on a whim, and to try their fugazzeta rellena. The pizza is still way too crust heavy, and the balance of things is just off. There are so many onions piled on this that although the top is nicely browned there’s like a half-inch thick layer of raw onion beneath it, barely even warmed. The cheese is decent, but there’s not enough of it in relation to either onions or dough. There’s a huge amount of dried oregano in their somewhere, presumably under the onions, and they still serve that silly dipping sauce “like in Italy”. Not. I managed about a piece and a half and gave up. Not worth the 23,000 pesos ($17)… for an “individual” pizza.

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And that’s my pizza roundup for today! Ti Amo has a shot at moving into my top pizzerias, though I’d want to try it again, or maybe I’ll just wait for their Palermo branch to open.