Sunday, December 16, 2012

Village Tavern Pizza (aka Village Pizza)

Last Tuesday, Tricia and I took the day off to do some Christmas shopping.  Since I was due to host pizza night, we decided to see wherever our Christmas shopping took us in the afternoon and pick up pizza from around there.  It ended up that we were out by Eastgate Mall around 5 in the evening and decided to fire up the Google Maps App (thank goodness we don't have to rely on the Apple Map app anymore!).  Unfortunately, it didn't seem like there were very many good choices beyond Domino's, Pizza Hut and the like (leave a comment if you have recommendations from out that way!).  So we decided to see if there was anything between Eastgate and our place in Mt. Lookout.  Tricia remembered seeing a place with a sign of Village Pizza on our way out to Eastgate.  So we googled and found Village Pizza (I'm also seeing it listed as Village Tavern Pizza) in Newtown.

Unfortunately we couldn't find a website, but we were able to find a menu that someone posted on Urban Spoon. So we looked it over and called in to place our order.  Unfortunately as soon as I started to place my order I ran into problems.  Most of the things listed on the menu weren't served any more (yes I realize I'm using 'unfortunate' a lot!).  They no longer had their largest size pizzas.  The guy on the phone (who sounded like he may have been in high school), wasn't particularly helpful when I asked if he could provide me with what they did have.  Eventually we did get an order placed though (One Pepperoni, one Hawaiian, one Meat Lover's, and one Sausage and Banana Peppers).

Fortunately, there were no snafus in picking up the pizza.  Village Pizza is a carry out (or delivery) only place.  There is no place to sit inside the pizza joint. However, it is in a building attached to the Newtown Village Tavern.  It looked like the pub food for the tavern was made by Village Pizza and then carried over. I didn't actually go into the Tavern, but it's there if you wanted to try a dine-in experience. After paying, we drove the rest of the way home and stuck the pizzas in the oven at 200F to keep them warm (we are a perpetually late group of people.  Folks arrived about 20 minutes after  I put the pizzas in the oven.  We pulled them out, Dan snapped some photos and we ate!

Hawaiian

Meat Lovers
Pepperoni (with the pepperoni under the cheese)
Sausage and Banana Pepper

Overall, Village Pizza went down well.  Everyone talked about enjoying the pizza, and in particular the toppings.  I think for a place that serves as a kitchen for a bar, they did a great job on the toppings.  As you can see from the pictures, the pizzas were cooked very well - cheese is well melted with just a bit of caramelization.  In an interesting move, the Hawaiian was prepared as pineapple and bacon instead of pineapple and ham.  This struck me because the Meat Lovers has both bacon and ham.  I think it was a good move though as the bacon was my favorite topping.  It's bacon how I remember it growing up, cut small, cooked so that it is crispy and recognizes that it is bacon and doesn't try to be pretentious about it.  Guillaume pointed out that he was also a fan of the bacon being cooked to the point of being a little crunch.

Several folks pointed out that the pizza sauce was quite good.  It was in the 'sweet' variety of pizza sauces (as opposed to the spicy).  This really came through on the pepperoni pizza, which was good but really had a minimal amount of spice to it because the pepperoni itself was not overwhelming and nor was the sauce.  In some ways, the pepperoni probably didn't taste too differently from what a cheese pizza might have tasted like,

Since the crust was thin, it suffered from a common problem of most thin crust pizzas in that it's quality degraded as the pizza cooled.  Tricia noted that while she liked the crust it became a bit doughy in the center and Maud described it as "chewy" as it cooled.  Having taken some leftovers in with me for lunch, I can say that the crust would be the weak part of the pizza.  That being said, I really thought this was a solid pizza overall, especially coming from a bar setting.  That assessment is upheld when we look at the numbers.

Appearance 3.200
Aroma 3.302
Taste (Overall) 3.30
Crust 3.002
Cheese 3.093
Toppings 3.362
Sauce 3.250
Pepperoni Pizza (Overall) 3.210
Specialty Pizza 3.357
X-factor 2.917
Menu 3.250

Overall, you're looking a good but not great pizza.  Would I get it again though?  Certainly if I were in the area.