Boca Pizza
My cousin Mario is good for excitement. Ant and I don’t get to see him and Nikki (Mario’s wife, my blood cousin, that’s the connection) all that often. I love their kids, Meggie and Molly to death, they maybe the cutest on earth. I am sure that will go highly contested but lets not get off topic. On our last day in Florida Mario was hell bent on taking us to his favorite Boca Raton pizza joint. Mario was born in Brooklyn and comes from, I am sure you guessed this already, a huge Italian family. So, the Gentile’s (jen-teal-ehhy-z) know their Italian food. The but is…Mario has lived in Florida for the last 20 years and I actually live in Brooklyn right now. As in any Italian family, this became a friendly argument and bone of contention. All we heard all day was “When we are going to La Pizza”, “What we are getting at La Pizza” and “Who is coming with us to La Pizza”.
A few hours later, 12 of us piled into the small pizza shop in a non-descript strip mall just off of Boca Raton Blvd. As soon as we walked in, Mario in front, Pinot and his wife greeted us with big smiles. Meggie and Molly were instantly picked up and paraded into the kitchen, which is open to most of the restaurant. After a few laps they were put down at the table in their favorite seat and given special drinks straight from the kitchen. Pinot is a big “specials” kind of guy. The rest of us settled in at the 5-four tops that made up our table for 12+. They were just pushed together by Pinot as we walked from the cars across the parking lot in an effort to show that the restaurant was ours. There was only one other table for four left in the whole place after he did that. You get a sense of size now, don’t you?
Once settled in, Mario retrieved a wine corkscrew from the kitchen. I forgot to mention earlier that La Pizza is BYOW(wine). A nice treat for any restaurant in my opinion but an especially good treat for keeping this meal economical as well as, what was promised, delicious. With in 5 minutes of sitting Pinot came out with our first dish. An experimental spinach flat role.
After that Mario took charge and ordered the list of dishes he had been dreaming a bout all day. Among his choices was an unbelievable, napolitano pizza with basil and ricotta. (pictured at top). Below is the grandma slice. This Sicilian shaped slice contains thin sliced tomatoes in place of the sauce with a healthy dose of mozzerella and parmesean cheese over that.
Pinot’s real stand out was this meatball and pepperoni roll. We watched him craft if from beginning to end from our perfect observation seat just off the side of the kitchen. Fist he rolled out a huge piece of dough making sure it was even and thin through out. Then he started building. A layer of sauce, cheese, meatballs and pepperoni was followed by some parsley and parmasean cheese. This was repeated a second time and was then slowly rolled into a 3 and a half foot long monster roll. Pinot then grabbed a pizza cutter, raised it above his head and began violently stabbing the roll as if it had wronged him and his family in a way that warrented this abuse. The sauce began to bleed from the wounds as Pinot introduced the roll to its fiery , 600 degree, fate. Below is shot taken seconds after the bludgeoning.
15 minutes later the roll was removed from the caldren of crustisity and laeyd out for final cutting. It had formed a crispy brown cust and now had cheese oozing from its wounds along with teh sauce we mentioned earlier.
Pinot made quick work with the final lacerations and served it to the table in two heapping trays of Meatball and cheese tastyness.
(Above) Pinot and his creation. Ant and I on BYOW.
It is safe to say that Ant and I were totally satiated after this meal. Mario was as happy as a man could be and the rest of the family I think had their fill as well. We waddled out of there about an hour later ready for much needed horizontal resting.
If you are interested in the full Florida set, check it out here.
