Stuzzi Review

If you’ve read the blog reviews of Stuzzi, the new Neapolitan-style pizzeria/bar in the old 1 North Belmont, then you’ve read about their uncomfortably-warm dining room. Let me quiet the rumor that the pizza oven is too hot to handle.

The AC issues have been fixed. The dining room is cool. The hot air is coming from an owner, not the lava rocks firing dough.

I like bread and circuses. So, I dined at Stuzzi opening week. I sat at the bar, observed the dining crowd and watched the pizza maker go. On that first visit, I ordered the regal margherita, $12.95, listed under pizze D.O.C.

It consisted of only San Marzano tomato sauce (fresh and uncooked), bufala mozzarella, grape tomato, basil and EVOO. The pie arrived in less than five minutes. The owner arrived in less than six. He roughly grabbed my arm; his eyes dilated wider than the pizza in front of me, and said, "This is the real stuff. You don’t see this quality in Richmond. We had someone in here from Zagat yesterday and he told me that this was the second best pizza in America right now. Unofficially, of course."

Someone from Zagat came in on your first week of business and told you were making silver medal pizza? Unofficially, sir, please tell me what you’re snorting. It might explain the crazy peepers and why you’ve just grabbed me like a farm animal.

Weeks later, I return. This time, the paper menu states, right on its cover, "True Neopolitan pizza (or D.O.C. pizza, which stands for ‘Denominazione di Origine Controllata’) is so pure, there are only a handful of restaurants in the U.S. to make it! Stuzzi creates that authentic product."

There are about a dozen organizations in Italy with specific guidelines for making pizza Napoletana. The best known of these associations, and arguably the most prestigious one, is the VPN (in the U.S., that’s Verace Pizza Napoletana Americas, a separate group). In 2004, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN Italy) sought protective status from the European Union for their simply-formed pizza, made with a handful of specified ingredients, via the support of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture.

Like chianti or Parmigiano-Reggiano, the EU granted this pizza DOC status, declaring it a regional specialty. DOC status does not mean that a governing board goes from restaurant to restaurant certifying pizza, and lots of Italian pizzerias that list their pizza, correctly, as DOC, do not have VPN status, which is much more difficult to obtain.

In the United States about two dozen pizzerias have been certified by the VPN Americas, which is based on the west coast.

Stuzzi might have the correct pizza oven, marble work surface and ingredient list for DOC pizza, but they don’t have the technique for VPN certification. I mention this because the next statement suggests the VPN and not the DOC.

Stuzzi’s menu continues, "This movement has been gathering steam over the nation in a dozen or so pizzerias and has reached a zenith in Richmond with Stuzzi."

Confusing. Lots of U.S. restaurants list their pizza as DOC; but, there is only a handful (or two) of places certified by the VPN in this country.

If it seems like I’m splitting crusts here I guess I am. I hate braggadocio and misleading statements on menus almost as much as I hate quotation marks, the word "deconstructed" and overly cutesy descriptions on them.

Remember the place in the fan that called one of their mains, a lamb dish, "Mary Had a Little Lamb"? It’s gone.

Why this crud about the DOC and the VPN matters is that instead of opening a pretty little pizzeria in the Museum District, with an inviting, modern bar and shiny new fire hydrant of a pizza oven — with the second bar surrounding the oven as the focal point of the young, vibrant room — blessed with fast and friendly staff attired in cute v-necked, baby doll T’s and a well-thought-out, short menu of reasonably priced pizza, pastas and starters, and saying: "Come try us out. We want to do good. We care about food. We’re new, but we're trying. We want to be neighbors." Stuzzi opened all swagger.

"We are the best around," the menu says. "We’re on the short list for best in the US." Well, when a place opens and swaggers like that, it asks to be looked at critically. Diners don’t swallow everything spoon fed to them from menu mission statements.

So, while I enjoy the taglioini siracusa, $9.99, for its sweet tomato sauce, smoky eggplant, and piquant capers and olives, as well the rigatoni with meat sauce, $9.99, which is spicy and sausage studded, I don’t get that excited about the pizza. I’ve had Naples-style pizza before at places that did it better and didn’t brag about it like John Holmes at a condom convention. I can’t love Stuzzi’s pie after the way it’s been hyped on the menu. And, to add salt to the wound, the pizza, which started out as pretty good, has morphed into just okay.

Maybe it was the initial ruckus about the moistness of the slices or the puffy crust at Stuzzi, both of which are standard for this kind of pizza, but the pizza is constantly changing here, and not for the better. I like it a little wet. I admit it, flipping a damp slice, spilling buttery bufala mozzarella into a manageable roll, a loose cigar, or "libretto" and eating the fleshy base, was better the first few trips.

Recently, I’ve noticed two new pizzaioli (pizza makers) shaping the pizza and they have a rough touch. The crust is tough now, but the toppings are still tasty. The pizza isn’t bad — it just isn’t at an "apex." These guys aren’t using the practiced slap technique of Naples pizzaioli (not to be confused with the "pizza slap") which yields a high rim that is tender to the tooth. Instead they work it and stretch it like they’re giving the dough a thorough breast exam. The crust suffers for it.

Pizza, pasta, et al is good here, but it doesn’t reach the Vesuvian heights suggested by the menu dictum. The scungilli starter, $8,which, Peter Caserta, an owner, says he put on the menu for himself, not thinking people would order it, consists of green olives, crisp sweet pepper, and conch; the familiar conchy smell, like the inside of a Band-Aid box, brightened by a smiling slice of lemon, is feral, tasty. But, the arancini (rice balls), $5, are mealy and cold in the center. The midget-sized salad of portobello and ricotta salata, $5, over field greens is boring — and a better version can be had at Azzurro — but there’s nothing to complain about.

The tastiest little thing at Stuzzi, so far, has been the tiramisu, $5, the creamy, coffee-soaked lady fingers sidle up to my mocha-toned Illy espresso, 1.75 and together, dessert climbs to the mountain top. Maybe it’ll find someone truly passionate about pizza, instead of menu sound bites, up there.

Stuzzi **1/2

1 N. Belmont

(804) 308-3294

What’s in the Stars:

0—don’t go

*-average

** above average

*** very good

**** excellent dining experience

Imagine learning to process caviar in Russia after a childhood of Cup-a-Soup. Needless to say, Varmit Pickeral was inspired. Thus began 20 years of restaurant gypsy-hood, beginning with Varmit’s first job as a dishwasher in an institutional kitchen and then trying out most any job Varmit could get in the hospitality industry, including; NC BBQ pit line-cook, cheese steward at Artisanal in Manhattan, grape picker, and specialty buyer for Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market in Northern Virginia.