Pizzaiolo - Oakland, Ca

Why:
I'd been to Pizzaiolo once before and once underwhelmed. Food was good but not great--flavors were mild. Polenta was mediocre. I had gone fairly soon after they opened and wanted to give it another go. Maybe I was missing something--it was a Bay Area Top 100 after all. It can't just be the reputation.

Who:
Me and Chef Scott.

The Space:
Really Pizzaiolo strongest point is the space--it is beautiful and perfect for the food. It's casual while being well-thought (except for the lack of waiting space on this rainy day). The only oddity is the back dining room which is only another step away from the incredible humid back-kitchen/restroom area.

The Wine:
It's hard to come up with a wine list for a pizzeria, especially a more nuanced California Cuisine pizza establishment. Pizzaiolo's wine list is unremarkable. It's not bad, it's just predictable and uninnovative. It reads like a packing list from Kermit Lynch.

BUT, they do have very good beers on draft (what's better with pizza than beer, anyway?). We had two pints each of the Black Butte porters.

First Course:
First up came the English pea ravioli with speck and parmesan. This dish was extraordinarily odd in that there was about a teaspoon of pea filling in the centers of two inch square pasta. The pea filling was great, but you could barely taste it. There were eight ravioli in the order--why not serve four with twice the filling? Or even two with four times the filling? Why have such a great tasting filling that you can't taste because it's loaded up with dough?

Second was grapefruit, onion, and "wild rocket" salad. Wild rocket is wild arugla folks. It's also called roccola. I have an irrational hatred of the use of the term "rocket" in describing arugula, as it is the habit of dirty Englishmen. This salad was good, fresh--excellent onions (sharp but not pungent) and the roccola was great. Peppery. Excellent dry-cured olives on top.The only bad thing was the timing--it came after the first pizza so we declined it and asked for it to return at the end of the meal. Weird.

Entree:
First pizza up was the prosciutto and artichoke heart pizza. Learning from our last visit, we made sure to request an ample side of crushed red pepper (in this case, ground dried red chiles). It needed it. The prosciutto was cooked to flavorlessness, the artichokes similarly bland. The pepper when added did pique the flavors somewhat, but not much.

Our second pizza, however, was phenomeal. Clams and purple onion pizza with generous drizzles of aioli. This had a nice complexity with layers of complimentary and contrasting flavors--tender clams and sweet onions. One of the best pizzas I've had--if not the best.

Dessert:
We had a dessert billed as a "flourless chocolate cake." What it actually was was a goddammned fallen souffle. Of course a souffle is flourless! But it's not a freakin' cake! The flavor was decent, a bit eggy, and unremarkable.

In Conclusion:
Better than our first visit, sorta. What really made it memorable was that clam pizza. But the ravioli and dessert pissed us off. So it's a wash really. Pizzaiolo is an excellent space and there are a lot of good things going on (great crust), but the flavor just isn't there. Almost everything is fresh, subtle, and oh-so-boring. I honestly can get a more pleasurable pizza (and cheaper, tastier beer) at Lanesplitter for a fraction of the price. I'll probably make it back one more time--Scott and I both want to try some of the Secondi (on the night we visited it was just halibut or the Chez Panisse-style buttermilk fried chicken)--but it's tough with so many other dining options out there.

Pizzaiolo
Cuisine: Pizza/California/Italian
Entrée price range: Pizza: $10-$16, Secondi: $18-$24
HFF's cost for two (two appetizers, two pizzas, one dessert, four beers, tax, 20% tip): $110
Reservations: No.
5008 Telegraph Ave. (at 51st)
Oakland, Ca 94609
www.pizzaiolo.us