#81 Pi Pizza

May 22nd, 2016

St. Louis, MO

It was easy for us to drive around the Northeast to try the pizzas on the Daily Meal list. We took the opportunity to fly to the West Coast to visit friends, and drove down to Florida to visit Eric’s brother. So, that just left the Midwest. And there were A LOT of pizza places in the Midwest. There were a couple of problems here:

  1. We didn’t have money to fly every weekend to a different city in the Midwest.
  2. Doing this would have taken too much time and too many weekends.
  3. We don’t know anyone who lives in these cities.

So, our solution? We planned an epic pizza cross-country road trip. We decided to hit all of the major cities in the Midwest that had pizza places on the list, most for only a night or so. It was going to be a lot of driving. It was going to be A LOT of pizza. It was going to be awesome.

We left from NJ on a Friday night and drove out to stay in Pittsburgh overnight with friends before we made it to the first city on our pizza list, St. Louis.

We got to St. Louis late in the evening. It was about 9 hours from Pittsburgh, and we had to make a few stops along the way. We made it to town in time for a late dinner, which we had at Pizzeoli. This place wasn’t on the list, but they follow our Instagram and their pizzas always looked really good. It didn’t disappoint – they serve good Neapolitan pies!

We checked in to our hotel for the evening and then woke up bright and early to check out the city. We walked to the Arch, went to the original Panera for coffee, and then made our first pizza stop from the list at Pi Pizza. There are a few locations of Pi around the city, but we had tickets to the Cardinals game at 1 pm, so we stopped at the location right downtown.

Pi has a nice selection of pizzas, both thin crust and deep dish. We figured that we’d be eating enough deep dish when we stopped in Chicago, so we went with the traditional thin crust here. The pizza that sounded really interesting to us was the Lincoln Park. This one had mozz, zucchini, tomato, and feta. We’d never had feta on a pizza. We loved the thin crust and were pleasantly surprised how much we liked the feta on the pizza. It was the perfect light lunch before the baseball game.

We made it over to the stadium for the start of the game. Unfortunately, the Cards were losing. It was not a good day for them. Around the 6th or 7th inning, we had had enough of the game and the sun, and Eric had a *brilliant* idea. You’ll have to wait until our next post to hear all about it 🙂

St. Louis was a great place to start our road trip. We really liked the two pizzas we tried here. On a side note, the pizzeolis at Pizzeoli have a new place they just opened in St. Louis that is serving New York-style slices, Pizza Head. It looks awesome, and if we ever find ourselves back in St. Louis we will definitely be stopping there.

Also, fun fact: Pi Pizza is supposedly one of Obama’s favorites. You have good taste, Obama.

To visit:

Pi Pizza
610 Washington Ave
St. Louis, MO 63101

#58 Matchbox

February 6th, 2016

Washington, D.C.

We drove down to Washington, D.C. for a baby shower one Saturday last year, and figured we’d might as well knock off one of the D.C. pizza places from the list. Washington D.C. isn’t really known for any particular style of pizza, so we were interested to see what kinds of pizzas made the list here.

This first trip to D.C., we decided to go to Matchbox, for the primary reason that it was the closest to the location of the baby shower, and we didn’t have to drive any further around the city. We went to the Chinatown location, but they have two other locations around the city.

The Chinatown location is the original restaurant that was started back in 2002. It looks small from the outside because it is really a narrow brick townhouse (that looks like a tall, skinny matchbox) that has been refashioned into a restaurant. There was plenty of seating inside, though, and we were seated up on the second story balcony.

 

Matchbox may be known for their brick oven pizzas, but their menu is pretty extensive, with good-looking salads and sandwiches, and specialty cocktails. They also serve brunch, which looked like it would be AMAZING.

We ended up splitting a pizza, since they let you pick half-and-half from their menu, and we really wanted to try more than one combination. We ended up going with half of the Fire+Smoke (roasted red peppers, onion, garlic, smoked gouda, and chipotle pepper) and half of the special veggie white pesto pizza.

We both preferred the Fire+Smoke, although they weren’t kidding when they warned us about the spice!

Apparently, Matchbox is trying to break out into the national chain market, so there may be one popping up near you. They currently also have restaurants in Virginia, Texas, and Maryland.

It would certainly be worth going back here for some of that Brunch pizza.

To visit:

Matchbox
713 H St NW
Washington, D.C. 20001

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#49 Harry’s Pizzeria

January 16th, 2016

Miami, FL

We made it down to West Palm Beach without any major issues. In between seeing alligators, going to see a cool LEGO exhibit at the nature reserve, and visiting a brewery, we managed to trek down to Miami, just for this pizza at Harry’s. This probably wouldn’t have been Jordon and Renee’s first choice of restaurants, but we are glad that they humored us and drove us all the way to Miami so we didn’t have to drive any more.

   

Since there were four of us, we tried a variety of pies. We tried the Short Rib, which had caramelized onions, arugula, and gruyère. It scored major points for flavor. We also tried the pesto pie with homemade ricotta and fresh tomato. The crust on the pesto was a little heavier than the short rib, but maybe because it had to carry more toppings? We probably wouldn’t have ranked Harry’s quite so high, if not for the fantastic flavor on the short rib. Who would have thought that we’d like short ribs on our pizza? We have to credit the Daily Meal for suggesting that we try this one.

Harry’s location is a little off the path in Miami, in the Design District, and we didn’t really want to walk around the neighborhood at all. Harry’s has also opened one other location near Miami, and has two more in the works (Cleveland!). If you check out their instagram  you’ll see that they have new specials almost every night. They make us want to drive back down to Florida!

We were glad to grab a table outside to get as much nice Florida weather as we could. We had to take advantage of wearing short sleeves in January!

Our long weekend down to Florida ended too soon. We left late Sunday night after dinner and drove non-stop back to NJ. To stay awake, we counted Cracker Barrels off the highway, stopped in Denny’s for 2 am milkshakes, took turns driving and powernapping, and may have had a red bull or two (something neither of us had tasted since college!). It was a long drive, but we did it. We think it was worth it.

To visit:

Harry’s Pizzeria
3918 N. Miami Ave
Miami, FL 33127