| rev:text
| - How strange it is to give a restaurant four stars... but plan to never return there again.
As I said in another review, I've never been to Italy, but Settebello's concoctions make it easy to pretend otherwise. Even the flour for their dough comes from Naples!
I ordered the margherita with roasted mushrooms and pine nuts, mindful of the advice on the menu not to get more than two toppings. At this point I realized that the pizzas here were probably of the "pick up a piece and watch the whole slice point south" variety, something I've been trying to get away from since moving to Las Vegas, but - shrug - the restaurant was serene and I like trying new things.
Service was friendly and very fast, the kind where your drink is refilled before it's finished (unless you're my husband, who quaffs his lemonade like a Viking fresh from the pillage), although we were the only ones there for most of the meal, having arrived when it opened. (After shopping, when we walked past again, business seemed much busier.)
When our pizzas arrived, my eyes lit up at the outer crust - mmm, pillowy! The basil leaves were brown around the edges, but the ingredients were so flavourful and fresh that I have to assume it's one of those "professionally wilted" situations that I'm too uncouth to know about.
Sure enough, the pizza was dangly/drippy if you picked it up, but the components were so good that I didn't mind turning to knife and fork for this one. As my husband more or less said in his review, not every pizza is meant to be suitable for eating while on the sofa.
Unfortunately, I have an aversion to anything that tastes burned, even if it's done deliberately. I ended up leaving much of that beautiful outer crust on the plate because the sooty smears underneath weren't to my taste. Others may enjoy this "charred" aspect, though.
When I looked over at my husband's pizza, I noticed that his was a little less soggy than mine. Dang. Mine may as well not have had a crust once you got two-and-a-half inches (I just mentally measured) from the outside rim. This was really regrettable, since crust is very important to me when I eat pizza.
There are only so many mouthfuls of cheese, bit of sauce, and perhaps a pine nut or mushroom that a person can eat. I'd requested my pizza sliced, and the first slice was a true treat. The individual ingredients had a flavour that fills the whole mouth. The second slice was nice. The third slice had me glancing at the dessert menu, eager for variety. (That "torta della nonna" with the lemon cream over pastry with almonds sounds divine.)
I didn't get dessert, though, because no way did I want to take this wet mess - however expertly made - home, so I soldiered on, using up my hunger on that third piece. The final slice I tried to pick at, but while I'm frugal, I'm not a trash can. I gave up. But hey, you can't fault a restaurant for being too generous with their "individual" portion sizes.
Upon reflection, for me Settebello is a case of the pizza not being greater than the sum of its parts. The cheese was salty and savoury, the mushrooms earthy, the pine nuts soft and woody, and the sauce rustic and not sweet.... but without enough crust to pull these tastes together, the dish failed for me.
However, the experience was worth it, and anyone who likes Italian-style pizza that follows the VPN (Vera Pizza Napoletana) guidelines will no doubt be popping by Settebello whenever time and wallet permit.
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