jersey city | Barb and Eric's Pizza Adventures

October 27th, 2019

Jersey City, NJ

If you hear “Jersey City” and “pizza” in the same sentence, you probably think immediately of Razza. Razza broke on to the Daily Meal list in 2017, and then bumped up immediately to #2 last year. There was a pretty famous NYT article about it being the “best pizza in NY”. We’ve never quite agreed. The pizza is fine, but it’s not better than many places in NYC, and we don’t think that it belongs in the top 10 of the Daily Meal list. We’ve gone back to try it subsequent times and are still not impressed. The point is, we won’t go back out to Jersey City for their pizza, specifically.

However, there is a new addition to the 2019 list from Jersey City, and this is one that we’d go back for. Bread and Salt opened in June of this year. It’s not in the main strip downtown Jersey City, which makes parking a lot easier, although it would be harder to get to from the PATH.

Bread and Salt is the third iteration of this restaurant from pizzaiolo Rick Easton. Previously, he opened in Crown Heights and then later in Pittsburgh, before coming to Jersey City. These aren’t traditional NY slices – they are Roman style, al taglio. If you’ve read my post on our trip to Italy, we got really into this style of pizza. Here, there are a variety of slices that rotate depending on the day. Constants are the rosso (back slices in the pic above), and the margherita (in the middle).

We came here on a Sunday, around 3 pm, for a late lunch. Our friends were visiting from London, and since they always bring me to try new pizza when I visit the UK, we figured that we should do the same. There were 4 of us, so we got to try a large variety of slices. Aside from the tomato pie and margherita, we also tried the mushroom slice, a calzone-like slice with ham and cheese, and the front right seasonal slice, which is a butternut squash sauce with sausage. They kindly cut the slices in half for us so that we could all share.

Our favorites were probably the margherita and the mushroom, but James was really into the pumpkin slice. I think we all would have liked a little more sauce on the rosso. The slices are small and light, so you can definitely try a selection of slices. Even better, they are reasonably priced (unlike Razza). And don’t forget about dessert! We tried a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of fig leaf and quince ice cream (on the house), and they were delicious. We actually had to keep James from eating it all.

The space itself is really open and friendly – the tables are almost family-style, and the whole front is open to the street. So even though it was raining outside, James still felt like he was running around in the fresh air. We’d definitely come back for these slices. They’re open on the weekends for lunch, but only for dinner on the weekdays.

To visit:

Bread and Salt
435 Palisade Ave
Jersey City, NJ 07307

September 16th

Jersey City, NJ

So, funny story: One day about three years ago I was preparing to leave New Haven and move down to Princeton, NJ. My friend in New Haven, knowing how much I liked pizza, told me about this restaurant, Razza, and said that he heard that it was very good. I saved the website in my bookmarks, but we never ended up going. Partly because we didn’t feel like driving to Jersey City, and partly because we started exploring the New York pizza scene instead.

Now, three years later, we read this article, which made the very bold claim that the best pizza in New York is actually in New Jersey. Well, we knew that we had to try it as soon as possible to see what all the hype was.

We drove out to Jersey City on a Friday night last month. The restaurant was packed. It was right after the review came out, so I guess everyone wanted to see what the big deal was. There were certainly some locals who stopped by and were a little annoyed that all of these people from New York City had come and taken over their restaurant.

Eric dropped me off and I put our name in. It was a 2 hour wait.

A cautious note to anyone thinking of driving to check Razza out: parking is near impossible to find on a weekend or evening here. We spent over an hour driving around trying to find a spot. Luckily, we had plenty of time to kill before we were going to get to try the pizza.

We were finally seated at the bar and ordered our pizza and also the bread and butter appetizer, because we were quite hungry at this point. The bread is homemade, and the butter is cultured from “grass-fed Pennsylvania cows”. For pizza, we tried the Bosco, with mushrooms, and the Garden State Margherita. The food took a while to come out, probably because they were so busy and weren’t used to the large number of customers.

The pizzas were OK, really. After all the hype, we were slightly disappointed. You can hopefully see in the photo (sorry about the horrible lighting!) that the crust was a little bit burnt and there wasn’t much sauce OR cheese on the margherita. I’m not sure if the pies are usually this toasty, and we generally do like a little char, but this was a bit too much.

Also, while it was great that the restaurant stresses local, in-season ingredients, they really sell this hard on the menu. We LOVE to see local ingredients being used, but also appreciate when restaurants do it in an unpretentious way. That being said, though, the ingredients did taste fresh and the bread and butter was actually very good.

Overall, we don’t think that this pizza is better than many pizzas in NYC. If you are looking for a Neapolitan pizza, we could list several that we liked better than this one. I mean, the pizza was good, for sure, but didn’t live up to the review. It is also completely possible that the night we tried Razza, the chefs were overwhelmed by the high volume of people. So, maybe the pizza wasn’t the best they’ve ever made. We’d be willing to try it again to see (after we get through the rest of the new list, of course!).

To visit:

Razza Pizza Artigianale
275 Grove Street
Jersey City, NJ 07302

Tag: jersey city

#55 Bread and Salt

#46 Razza