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| - Somewhere, right now, in a New England liberal arts college, there's a badass cook who has been working on her pizza dough recipe for a few semesters telling her friends over good wine in terrible Ikea glasses that she wants to open a third wave-feminist, mod, pizza joint that has a decent selection of wine. She probably won't. She'll probably finish her degree in architecture and go on to design green buildings. Which is sort of a shame, because if she followed this dream, there would be more places like Dinette, and that'd be a good thing.
Dinette does one thing (Neapolitan pizza + fresh ingredients) and does it really really well. You won't find ground breaking pairings of ingredients, but honestly, I don't think you can really improve on prosciutto + arugula or squash + sage. (This part of Penn Circle has really become a hotspot for Pittsburgh dining in the last few years, every time Belle and I were going to one of the nearby places without a reservation, she would "hint" that if the wait was too long, we could go to Dinette and see if the squash and sage pie was on the menu) One of Dinette's strengths is knowing when discipline and restraint are called for. It's pizza, good antipasto, and maybe 4 other items from cooking school. If you don't like thin crust pizza, Dinette isn't for you. If you want a generic pepperoni and mushroom, Dinette isn't for you. Otherwise, go for it.
Another positive sign is that one of Dinette's early weaknesses, an uneven wine selection, has been addressed and is becoming a strength. Specialty restaurants only have so many ways that they can distinguish themselves from one another. Dinette's selection of wines by the glass is one and its decor (a take on mod Scandinavian) is another. Both work to make Dinette stand out from the pack.
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