Sherman's Food Adventures: Firecrust Neapolitan Pizzeria

Firecrust Neapolitan Pizzeria

For all the types of pizza out there, my personal favourite is Neapolitan-style sporting its thin crust and signature leoparding.  Within the last 5 years, we've seen a run of establishments offering this type of pizza with varying degrees of success.  Naturally, it still comes down to everyone's subjective tastes, but there are generally ones that are better than others.  One thing that I've noticed is that the prices are creeping up there for essentially dough, tomato sauce and cheese.  Yes, I do realize the quality of the ingredients, cost of doing business and other intangibles add to the price.  Firecrust, the newest player in town, bucks the trend by offering up a made-to-order Margherita Pizza for $8.95.

Due to building restrictions, their custom-made oven had to be gas-burning rather than wood-buring.  No matter, it still got plenty hot enough to create a lightly crispy crust (that had a good chewiness) throughout on the Margherita.  I would've liked to see a touch more leoparding along the edges, but the bottom was decently nutty and smoky.  The San Marzano tomato sauce was bright and vibrant with only a light tanginess.  Personally, I would've liked to see the basil added on afterwards, but you could definitely request this.  From the basic to the meaty, we moved onto the Siciliana sporting Italian sausage, prosciutto, fior di latte and romano.  This was naturally more robust and flavourful due to the salty meats.  I was pleasantly surprised that the crust held up to the ingredients and only softened slightly in the middle.  There was more leoparding on the edges which also meant the smokiness was apparent.

Moving in another direction, we had a white pizza in the Prosciutto Arugula with romano, EVOO, fior di latte, garlic, prosciutto and finished with arugula.  Due to the absence of any sauce, the pizza crust was extra crispy and drier.  This in turn helped highlight the cheeses more as well as the garlic.  The complimentary combination of the salty prosciutto and peppery arugula helped add enough impact to a fairly light-tasting pizza.  Lastly, we were able Build-Our-Own-Pizza with choice of sauce, toppings and cheeses.  Therefore, we did something different with white alfredo sauce, garlic, EVOO, fior di latte, gorgonzola, chicken, mushrooms, grape tomatoes, chili flakes and finished with fresh basil.  As you can imagine, the crust was a lot softer due to the amount of toppings.  That was our doing and people have to realize less is better with this type of pizza.

I guess with all of the available ingredients around, it was easy to try some salads too.  We got the Firecrust Chopped (Romaine Lettuce, Soppressata, Fire Roasted Chicken, Feta, Marinated Grape Tomatoes and Balsamic Vinaigrette) and Caprese (Diced Mixed Greens, Fior Di Latte, Tomatoes, Basil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar) salads and the former ate more like a meal due to the meat content.  Lastly, the Italian Wedding Soup was quite good with meaty meatballs and a flavorful broth (which wasn't too salty).  If I had to rate Firecrust pizza against all of the others in town, it would be somewhere in the middle.  But due to their reasonable pricing, it does make them rather accessible.

*All food and beverages were complimentary*

The Good:
- Inexpensive
- Lots of choice for BYOP

The Bad:
- Leoparding is not consistent
- Turn around can be slow during peak times

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