Review: Caliente Pizza & Draft House - Pittsburgh, PA

Before a 2019 move to Austin Texas, I lived in Pennsylvania for more than 30 years. But it was always in a suburb near Philadelphia; other than one misdirected flight, I had never visited Pittsburgh in any capacity. 

A recent family reunion was the remedy for that, and we rented a house on East Carson Street (in a neighborhood that reminded me of Fishtown in Philly or Bushwick in Brooklyn) to spend 4 days exploring. Naturally, finding a worthy Pittsburgh pizza was a priority.

A scene in the Strip District

Given its rich history with Italian immigrants (no better evidence of that than the remarkable Strip District for dining and food shopping), one would expect a grand assortment of excellent pizza. One silly bit of clickbait rated Pittsburgh as America's 3rd best pizza city, based on dubious metrics like social media posts. 

Caliente, Bloomfield location

A much more reliable source offers a comprehensive listing, with pics and details, of all the pizza that is "good or better" in Pittsburgh. Another go-to source for pizza in any given city is Thrillist, which I frequently consult when traveling.

Interior at Caliente's

Caliente Pizza & Draft House was on both of these "best pizza in Pittsburgh" lists and we targeted it because of its "Mee-Maw" pizza. Their chef Eric Von Hansen went to Parma, Italy to compete in the World Pizza Championship. There, he won the award for "Best Pizza in America" with the Mee-Maw, a grandma-style pan pizza made with olive oil, aged Parmesan, rapini, peppered bacon, shallots, garlic, onion, crushed plum tomatoes, porchetta, and shaved black truffles. 

The Margherita

Caliente has five Pittsburgh locations; I was advised by a native Burgher to chose the flagship Bloomfield store, but we ordered from the Mount Lebanon location. We called ahead on a Saturday night for one Mee-Maw and one Detroit-style pizza with pepperoni, but we got a call back that due to the unavailability of porchetta, we could not get the Mee-Maw. 

Huge disappointment, but we selected a simple Margherita for our second pie, albeit the extra-large because we were a party of six. 

Great crumb, thicker at cornicione

Let's begin with that Margherita. Like many simple red pies with fresh mozzarella, this pizza was mischaracterized as a Margherita, because it's not a Neapolitan style pie. A minor quibble, and in fact the crust shared one feature with Neapolitan pizza - it was very thin in the middle, then it became quite thick near the outer edge, making for a big puffy bready cornicione. 

Underside of Margherita suggests "screen-baked"

The crust was preferable to Neapolitan in some respects; despite its thin sections, it was crisp and rigid, perfectly capable to hold up to the sauce and cheese (and toppings, had we ordered some for this pie). Beyond its excellent texture, the crust had a great bread flavor, and we used the massive cornicione pieces to dip in Italian dressing or simply add butter. 

The crust could have been improved with a little more consistency in its thickness; a puffy cornicione is welcomed, but about a third of the pizza had a massively thick crust and the inner circle was wafer thin. The character of the red sauce was spot-on. Bright, tangy, and a willing role player. However, this pie was woefully under-sauced, such that the sauce-to-crust ratio was way out of balance. Likewise, the mozzarella cheese was fine, but also under-represented here. 

This huge 18" pizza was beautiful to look at - the rich red sauce dotted with white clouds of cheese riding on a rustic style crust, but it was almost as though the sauce was applied with a brush instead of a ladle. The bottom line is that much of the pizza was too dry, lacking the right proportion of toppings for the thickest parts of the crust. I still enjoyed it (not everyone did!) but this was a good pie that could have been pretty spectacular with a more skillful pizzaiolo.

The Detroit pizza

The Detroit pizza was much more successful. A thick pizza baked in a pan, the crust was in the right zone of puffy yet dense, with great flavor and texture. It had a big payload of cheese, sauce, and spicy cup pepperoni, but absolutely in correct proportion to the crust. And the flavors were popping! I'm sure the pepperoni was a contributor, but the cheese mix was excellent. It was quite salty, but in a good way. We demolished this belly bomb, scrapping over the final slices. Not quite as amazing as the ethereal Detroit pizza at Via 313, but a worthy rendition.

This pizza was also imperfect in its construction. A key Detroit-style feature is how the cheese is spread to the edge of the crust, running over the side to create dark caramelization where the crust meets the pan. But in two of the four corners (the best part of any Detroit pizza), the dough had not been stretched to meet the pan edges. Hence, the cheese spilled over to the bottom of the pan to get beyond caramelized to "almost burnt." These are the kinds of mistakes you generally find at secondary locations when a pizzeria has expanded its operations.

Beautiful color and texture under the hood

So we missed the Mee-Maw, got an under-sauced round pizza, and a wonderful yet flawed Detroit style pie. You can perceive the skill that went into the recipe for each, as well as the quality of the ingredients. Perhaps the flaws might be attributed to an overworked kitchen in this Covid era; I'd order Caliente's pizza again and I surely want to try that award-winning Mee-Maw.