Review: Sorellina Pizzeria, Spicewood, TX

Spicewood, TX is a town along Highway 71 about 40 minutes west of Austin. Perhaps best known as the home of Willie Nelson, it boasts shoreline on Lake Travis, cypress trees, and the Krause Springs swimming hole.

You'd expect to find some good smoked brisket or Texas-style burgers at places like Opie's BBQ and Poodie's Hilltop Roadhouse. But this is 2019 - can you get a great pizza out here in Texas Hill Country?

Bucolic Spicewood, Texas

A local alerted us to Sorellina Pizzeria, which is an offshoot of upscale Apis Restaurant and Apiary. The two restaurants share an unpaved parking lot on a six-acre property overlooking the Pedernales River. Chef and owner Taylor Hall has roots in Texas, San Francisco, and New Orleans.

Sorellina's website says:

"We focus on milling our own grains, shaping and stretching our own cheeses, cultivating and processing, curing, and aging all of our own wild boar salumi on site. Our pizza is a made with sourdough crust utilizing a 10-year old starter culture and a mixture of house milled red wheat, rye, and traditional Italian pizza flours. The dough has no added yeast and takes 2-3 days to develop into the pizza it becomes when it meets our custom wood fired oven."

View of the kitchen from bar seating

The interior has a stone and light wood theme; it's open and airy with community tables and a short bar. We opted to sit at the bar, which afforded a view of the kitchen operation and pizza oven. 

Insalata di Anguria

We came for the pizza, of course, but the salads and appetizers were especially intriguing. We chose the Insalata di Anguria ($8), made with compressed watermelon, watermelon radish, spiced coconut foam, brined blueberries, habanero oil, macadamia nut crumb, and snippings of basil flowers. It was incredibly creative mix of flavors and textures.

All the pizzas are 12" personal size, cut into 6 pieces. We ordered two pies:

• N’duja sausage pie ($18) with Calabrian chili, cherry tomato, sausage and other pepperoni-ish salumi, and stracciatella cheese
• Verde ($12) with pea and walnut pesto, arrowleaf spinach, ricotta salata, and lemon (we added speck ham, $3, as a topping)

N'duja sausage pie

Sorellina has beer, wine, and a small cocktail selection; we enjoyed a nice pecan porter and the "Bee, Please!" made with vodka, aperol, lime, grapefruit, & lychee.

The pizzas arrived simultaneously and made an instant visual impression. These Neapolitan hybrid pies sported a nice golden cornicione with a bit of leopard spotting. Underneath, the crust took on a cooked-but-not-charred tone that seemed to contain a hint of that red wheat.

Verde pizza

For every pizza, and especially Neapolitan types, the crust is key. Here, it was exceptional. Uniformly thin and crisp right to the edge, where the crumb expanded a bit into idea handles. There was a depth of flavor to that crust, more than the usual bready goodness of well-made dough.

The toppings of each pie matched the quality of that impeccable crust. I've had a lot of pies where the Calabrian chiles burn too hotly and overwhelm the other flavors, but on the N'duja pie, all the flavor were in harmony, and there was a warm zing from the peppers. The presence of two cured meats seemed like a lot, but they worked well together.

Underside of the crust

The Verde, too, was a revelation. The pea & walnut pesto gave each slice a deep and rich flavor. It was a very different experience from the N'duja pizza, but equally delicious; they were a perfect pairing.

Wood oven roasted cauliflower

Nine days later (Father's Day, in fact) we returned for a late dinner. For appetizer, we got the wood oven roasted cauliflower ($8), with cashew yogurt, Moorish spices, and torn herbs. Not surprisingly, it was scrumptious. Like everything else coming out of that oven, it was ideal in taste and texture.

Margherita pizza

We tried two more kinds of pizza: 

• Margherita, with Italian tomato, yesterday’s mozzarella, and Thai basil (we added bacon)
• Oyster mushroom, with fermented and dried shiitake, taleggio cream, garlic roasted oyster mushroom, speck ham, and fried rosemary

Oyster mushroom pizza

The truest test of any Neapolitan pizzaiolo is the Margherita, and this was spot-on. Superb, deeply flavorful yet fresh-tasting sauce, creamy pillows of mozzarella, all riding on that delicate crust. 

The crust had a different character than on our prior visit; it was a little softer, thicker, and puffier. This may be due to natural variation in the dough, or the oven temp, or simply the style of the pizzaiolo. It was different, but equally delicious.

Of the four pies we tried on two visits, the mushroom pizza was the most remarkable. Due to the dull grayish brown of the mushrooms, it had the least visual appeal. But the mushrooms were layered deeply and had a meaty depth, yielding a distinctly savory note on each bite. Magical stuff.

Sometimes, when I discover a pizzeria this good, I hesitate to share the news so that I'm not helping it become so insanely popular that I can't get a table, like Beddia in Philly or DeLorenzo's in Trenton or DiFara in Brooklyn. Pizzeria Sorellina stands with those giants, and you should be eating this pizza.

On a Friday night, the kitchen was busy with takeout orders, and the dining room was about half full when we arrived around 6:30. In Philly, in New York, in downtown Austin there would be lines out the door for pizza (and appetizers) this good. On Father's Day, we walked right in and sat down to enjoy a fabulous meal.

Austin and Hill Country people, whatever pizza you are eating is not this good (unless it's Via 313). I moved from the Philly burbs to the Austin burbs expecting great BBQ and Mexican food, but not good pizza. This is not only great pizza, it's world class. I'll be there often - and I can't wait to try its sister restaurant, Apis.