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| - Italian Village is a growing chain and with good reason. In Pittsburgh they make the closest to a traditional NY style good pizza, on their good days. I have eaten at many of the Italian Villages in the Pittsburgh region and I would rank this one in about the middle of all of them. The best Italian Village in the city may be the McKnight Rd location. The worst would definitely be the Hazlewood location (where a dirty pill junkie of an employee actually lit up his cigarette in the middle of the filthy shop while taking a phone order). Unfortunately it is really hard to make consistent good pizza the right way and this Mt. Lebanon location is a good example of a shop lacking in consistency.
Usually when I order from here they cook the pizzas directly on the brick but every once in a while you will get a pie that was cooked on a screen and it tastes like wet butt. In their defense, I have sent some wet butt pies back to them and they were happy to replace it and were very apologetic about it...but its always a hassle to have to do that. I will try to judge them on their better pies here because I do think that they really do try hard to make a good product but its hard to find good help in Pittsburgh. (On a side note, Pittsburgh needs more Mexicans...they are like God's gift to pizza shop owners. I would have 300 unemployed yinzers homeless under a bridge for the sake of good pizza, survival of the fittest! )
When made well the pizzas are perfectly round and the cheese is distributed well across the whole pie, the crust is perfectly puffed on the outside all around. The sauce is distributed very lightly but evenly across the whole pie. If you get a good pie from them it will be pretty close to perfectly made.
When the pies are cooked directly on the brick the crust is pretty dang good. It has a bit of a nice tough chewiness to it and the edges are crispy. The taste of the dough isn't too salty or sweet, it has a nice medium bready taste which is unoffensive and at times quite tasty. This Mt. Lebanon location specifically does that thing where they brush garlic butter onto the crust, which is pretty stupid and gross and does not taste good. Its a shame because they actually have a pretty good tasting crust too, I don't know why they feel the need to "pimp it out" like its their 1995 Dodge Neon. If you ask for them not to do that they are happy to oblige. The crust is usually on the thinner side but still thick enough to support everything. If they let the dough ferment a bit longer it would probably taste pretty awesome and I have had pies from there that were exceptionally good tasting its just not totally consistent.
The sauce is safe but good, unfortunately they do not put very much on the pie and what they do put on is fairly watered down. Garlic is the main player in the sauce with slight accents of spice and herbs, the tomatoes seem to be of decent quality. I think some parmesan may be in the mix too. If this sauce wasn't as watered down and there were some chunks of tomato than I think it would be excellent but as it stands its still not bad and I actually think it may be better than most other sauces in the city.
They go a little bit heavy on the cheese for how thin the pie is but it's not too bad usually. It is applied evenly across the pie. They are claiming that they are a 100% Grande cheese shop but you can tell from the taste and consistency of the cheese that it is definitely not all Grande. It doesn't have the super salty taste of all Grande or the gummyness. I am thinking they are using half Grande and half cheaper, there may be some provolone involved too. The cheese is kind of a letdown for me, if it were more flavorful it would really do a lot for the whole taste of the pie.
In general this shop is trying really hard to offer a NY style pizza to the people on Pittsburgh for a decent price but they are using the traditional cheap-ass pizzeria tricks (watered sauce, blended cheese) to do it. I still recommend giving them a try though because in a city full of blind pizza the one eyed pie is king.
6 out of 10
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