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| - When it comes to Neapolitan pizza, Phoenix has an embarrassment of riches, with lots of great restaurants specializing in authentic pies, including many VPN certified establishments. I've got my favorites, but I am always keen to explore new pizza spots when the pictures look on point and the menus have hallmarks of authenticity. So it was that I took my family there Thursday evening.
MidiCi has been open nearly a year, sufficient time to work out bugs in restaurant layout, flow, and service, but it was a confusing first experience.
The restaurant is open, spacious, and full of light. As you enter, there is no one to great you, but a stand with menus on offer. The only path forward takes you past a worker shaping dough and another tending to well-labeled ingredients. It seems at first like a customized pizza line where you order your sauces and toppings, like Fired Pie, but no, these people can't help you. Two awkward interactions later, we arrived at a register in the center of the restaurant where someone can take your order. It was a strange experience that could be made better perhaps by locating this person closer to the entrance, or maybe an "order here" sign.
The order-taker had a tough time getting even the simplest custom order into the system (we have a cow's milk allergy in the family, and a simple pizza with red sauce and goat cheese took a number of attempts to enter).
We sat down and only when food arrived did we realize that we had to fetch our own silverware and napkins, located at a station at the far end of the restaurant and not a place you're likely to go or even notice until you have to seek it out. There were self-service soda machines, and then an unlabeled silver canister assumed to be water that actually contained iced tea.
The pizzas exhibit good understanding of the concepts of quality ingredients and proper technique. However, the pizza I order suffered from an over-abundance of toppings. A Diavola typically consists of tomato sauce, mozzarella, and spicy salami. This pizza added spicy sausage and Calabrian peppers. Honestly, it was a tasty combination of flavors, but the volume of toppings weighed down the light, well-risen crust. Less is more.
The appetizers also suffered from lack of restraint. The Burrata was creamy and delicious, with a drizzle of olive oil and a twist of fresh pepper, but the accompanying bread was laden with more olive oil, garlic, and balsamic, and it all overpowered the refreshing Burrata. Plain bread would have better highlighted the centerpiece ingredient.
My wife's salad was similarly overdressed. The theme of each dish was excess where restraint would have been better.
On the positive side, the food was fresh, fast, and reasonably priced. If we return, I'm sure we can have a better experience by requesting them to go light on the toppings and dressings.
One last note, they are the first restaurant I have seen in the valley that offers Aglianico wine by the glass (or at all). This is a tragically under-recognized red wine native to the Campania region (home of Napoli, home of pizza). If not for the inclusion of this wine on the menu, this would be a two-star review.
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