Review: La Tela Pizzeria - Kiawah Island, SC

Kiawah Island is a superb beach and golf destination about 40 minutes south of Charleston, SC. Within the sprawling resort, there are plenty of good but pricey dining options. Just outside the resort property is an outdoor mall called Freshfields Village, with a nice mix of shopping and dining options. There we found La Tela, which bills itself as a wood-fired Neapolitan pizzeria.

Opened in 2009, the La Tela website says:

Family-run and operated, we are proud of the relationships we’ve built with the local community and farmers we buy from. Whether it is the pasta made with eggs from SC pasture-raised chickens, wood fired pizza topped with shrimp from SC waters, or a bottle of Barolo from a family-run vineyard in Piedmont, Italy, you can taste the love we have for only sourcing the best.

We stopped in for lunch on a sweltering Monday in July. The dining room was not quite full, but there was a happy bustling of activity. Our waitress was especially friendly in greeting us and gave terrific service throughout our meal.

In a Neapolitan pizzeria, I often feel like I should get a more autentico pie that includes red sauce, but we were intrigued by the Quail Egg pizza, made with olive oil, pancetta, mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiono, Pecorino Romano, and cracked black pepper. The 14" version was $20, pretty modestly priced for resort-area dining.

We began by sharing a dry roasted golden beet salad that included baby arugula, dried apricot, ricotta salata, pistachios, and a vanilla bean vinaigrette. The good news is that we loved it - a terrific mix of fresh flavors, colors, and textures. Scrumptious and good for sharing. The bad news is that we ate it so ravenously that I forgot to get a picture.

The pizza came out looking terrific. I love the "egg on a Neapolitan" concept, but it often seems that one conventional chicken egg doesn't cover much of the pizza surface. It's also a difficult trick to add the egg at the right time to get it cooked perfectly. The quail egg approach is a great solution. I counted nine eggs on this 8-slice pie, so you get an egg on every slice. And the much smaller eggs cook faster.

With the savory pancetta, this was very much an eggs and bacon pizza. The three Italian cheeses blended into a smooth but robust flavor. Everything about the toppings of this pie were spot on in flavor, texture, and balance.

None of that matters if the crust can't measure up and stand up to the toppings. A lot of Neapolitan pies are too soft and too thin to support the toppings; many are soggy in the middle. Purists argue that Neapolitan pizza has a wet center by design, but I want no part of that tradition.

Happily, that was not an issue here. Even though the lack of tomato sauce disqualifies a pizza from being authentically Neapolitan, a white pie is less likely to become soggy due to less moisture on top. I suspect this crust, though, would stand up just fine even with a red sauce. 

Cooked in a wood-fired oven, the crust seems like a Neapolitan hybrid. It was a little thicker, much more sturdy, and the cornicione was downright crunchy. Crisp outside, pillowy inside with great hole structure, this crust also had a wonderful flavor on its own, like a fresh loaf of Italian bread. I often prefer a Neapolitan hybrid crust - like the one at La Porta - over an authentically rendered Neapolitan pie.

This pie was essentially flawless. It was a well-chosen pairing of cheeses, eggs, and pancetta on a delectably crunchy and chewy crust. The amount of toppings were in harmony with the crust, and the whole pie was impeccably balanced. Add in the friendly ambiance, terrific service, and modest pricing and this stands out as an exemplary pizza experience - a delightful surprise in a resort area. Absolutely destination pizza.