Review: City House - Nashville TN

Who thinks about finding great pizza in Nashville? During our recent visit to America's second-best music city (after Austin), we indeed were scouting for the top rank pizzas. Our short list included Smith & Lentz, Nicky's Coal-Fired, a branch of Emmy Squared, and Dicey's Tavern. But we ultimately were persuaded to visit City House because they've won a James Beard award.

Beyond that, in June 2024, the New York Times chose "22 of the Best Pizzas in the US" and City House made the list. The article noted:

Can pizza be Southern? Can Italian food? The answer is yes, at least when you’re eating at City House. The restaurant, opened by the chef Tandy Wilson in 2007, helped trailblaze the pizzeria-as-Italian-American-trattoria. At the same time, it showed how well Southern ingredients and recipes take to Italian cuisine. The kitchen is equally adept at handmade pastas and other Italian-inspired dishes.

Photo from New York Times

City House occupies a very nice space in a hip neighborhood in Germantown (North Nashville). On our way in, a local couple passing by told us to be sure to order the "ice box cake." We made a mental note to save room for dessert. We had arrived for an early dinner around 5pm, so the restaurant was quiet. The interior was rustic chic with a pleasant chill vibe. 

We began with a shared seasonal salad ($16) made with gailan (aka Chinese broccoli), chickpeas, roasted tomato, garlic, biscuit crumbs, and parmigiano cheese.  It was a wonderful start; creamy, rich, earthy, hearty. 

Gailan and chickpea salad

We chose one pizza (personal sized Neapolitan) and one pasta to share. The pasta special was homemade cavatelli with roasted local corn and pesto ($27), finished with Pecorino cheese. It was uncomplicated but deeply satisfying.

Cavatelli

From a half-dozen interesting pizza options, we selected one named "Belly Ham and Mozz" ($24), featuring also flakes of Calabrian chiles. The crust is the make-or-break component of any pizza, and especially Neapolitans that bake at 900 degrees or higher in 90 to 120 seconds.

The pizza oven

This crust was made from sourdough, a departure from a typical Neapolitan. It was puffy at the cornicione and nicely leopard spotted. While chewy and soft, it somehow seemed to have more substance and structure than most Neapolitan pies. It was wet in the middle, but not disastrously so; overall the sourdough provided an elevated version of the typically fragile Neapolitan crust.

The mozzarella was creamy and subtly flavored; the belly ham was applied in good measure and was pretty bacon-like (nothing wrong with that!). Overall, a lovely balanced pie sporting an al dente crust with top shelf cheese and belly ham on top. 

Leopard spots

We finished by sharing a slice of the Tennessee Waltz Icebox Cake - layers of buttermilk pecan cake drizzled with espresso syrup, filled with bourbon espresso and sprinkled with chocolate espresso pecan praline crumb. Absolutely as delicious as it sounds.

One pizza, one salad, one pasta, one dessert, one glass of wine, and one cocktail for a total of $102 before tax and tip. A lot to spend on pizza, but perfectly in line with the cost of a fine meal in a hip restaurant. If you like Neapolitan pizzas, City House should be on your radar.

Beyond the pizza scene, you go to Nashville for country music and hot chicken, right? We sure did. If you get there, of course go to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which hasn't sold out like the crassly commercial Rock HoF in Cleveland. Don't skip the add-on of a visit to RCA Studio B, where you can see and hear the details of this famous room where so many great artists cut records, including Elvis. 

Inside RCA Studio B

Make sure you see the Ryman Auditorium! It's the original home of the Grand Old Opry and remains a hallowed place. Get a tour or see a concert. Also, the weekly shows out at the new Opry are not corny tourist schtick, but great acts old and new.

Ryman Auditorium

Nothing wrong with Hattie B's or Prince's hot chicken, but get over to East Nashville for the real deal at Bolton's Spicy Chicken and Fish. When they warn you about selecting your spice level, pay attention and take their advice!

Burton's Spicy Chicken & Fish

Review: Costco "Combo" Take and Bake Kirkland Signature Refrigerated Pizza

Costco's new refrigerated take and bake rectangular pizza - everything you need to know about it. Is it tasty? Is it worth $16.99? Sneak preview: it's shockingly good! 

Every Costco shopper knows the food court pizza - a huge slice for $1.99 in most locations. Read our review here: tinyurl.com/FoodCourtPizza. This offering hasn't changed in years, but the take and bake pizza in the deli section at the back of the store comes and goes. And it hasn't always been very good.

Costco's newest take-and-bake option

Some years back, Costco offered a round "Artisinal" take and bake pizza. It was cheap ($9) and with a $3 coupon we got it for just $6. It was huge, but it was pretty ordinary. We didn't buy it again - read about why: tinyurl.com/CostcoArtisan.

Kirkland Signature Combo Pizza, pre-bake

So with Costco's track record of "guilty pleasure" soft floppy food court pizza and a take and bake that was no better than DiGiorno (tinyurl.com/Quixote-DiGiorno), what made us take a shot at the "Combo Pizza" we saw in the refrigerated section back by the rotisserie chickens?

Right out of the oven

Maybe we were hungry? Maybe we just had an expectation that Costco is gonna nail it, even though they had not made any special pizza to date. Certainly, the packaging wasn't selling it, a plain brown box with a tiny typed label, and the crust obscured. But we grabbed one on impulse, and now I'm damn glad.

This is not a huge pizza, given its $16.99 price tag. It's a 14" x 11" rectangle, but I could see it was different as soon as I removed it from the box. The cornicione had some real character - it didn't look machine made. Uneven edges, with some bubbles, and a dusting of flour that separated it from mass produced pies.

Underside of a slice

Costco calls this crust a "Roman Pinsa" style. What's that? It is made with a combination of Italian 00 wheat flour, rice flour, and soy flour to develop a light and airy crust that’s crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. 

Important to note - I've had Roman "al taglio" pizza in Rome, in Philadelphia, and in Austin. It's always been superb, but never made with any flour other than wheat. So this Pinsa style is new to me. Read about Roman pizza here tinyurl.com/AlTaglioPizza or here tinyurl.com/PhillyRoman or here tinyurl.com/AustinRoman.

Roman style from Baldinucci Pizza, Austin TX

We chose the "Combo" (with pepperoni, sausage, and peppers) over the mis-named meatless "Margherita," although both had appeal. For the record, a Margherita is the term for the basic Neapolitan pizza that is baked in a dome oven at 900 degrees or higher. Many pizzerias misuse one or both terms. Here's a primer: thespruceeats.com/what-is-neapolitan-pizza-2708762.

Actual Neapolitan (but not Margherita) from Pizzeria Delfina, San Francisco

I baked the pizza per the instructions, and it sat directly on a rack in the middle of my oven. Don't put it on foil or a pan if you want the crust to get to its optimal texture! I usually bake pizzas to the upper end of the suggested baking time for proper browning.

Kirkland Signature Roman Pinsa Combo

The strength of this pizza is its Pinsa crust. I took notes and recorded that it was like a medium thick focaccia with a terrific chewiness, a crunchy cripsy bottom, and a nice genuine bready flavor. It's the test of any pizza: would I eat this crust without anything on it? For this pie, oh yeah.

The pepperoni was applied in proper proportion; it was nicely spiced but squarely average in terms of its quality. The sausage was another nice meaty element, real chunks and not those gnarly sausage crumbles that some pies have. The peppers were a dull olive color and proved more of a distraction than an addition.

Like the pepperoni, the cheese was ordinary. But it was a proper role player here and was applied in the right amount. The red sauce added some needed acidic kick, but it too was a role player. You put meat and cheese and tomato sauce together, it's going to taste pretty good, even with standard quality stuff.

So this new "Kirkland Signature" take and bake pizza is a great crust topped with ordinary sauce, cheese, and meats. Very nicely balanced, and I enjoyed a few leftover slices on reheat almost as much as the first time, because that Pinsa crust is just so good.

For comparison, the $1.99 Costco Food Court slice

We got 8 decent sized slices from this $17 pizza. It was expensive when compared to the takeout pizza from the food court, but miles better in quality. We will surely get it again; maybe try the "Margherita" and add our own (better) meat toppings.

This is very good pizza that could be elevated to great pizza with better stuff on top, but I suspect that Costco knows it is already pushing the price point at $17. Highly recommended! 

Review: Stracci Pizza - Alexandria VA

Stracci Pizza opened in a trailer during the pandemic in early 2021 to sell their Roman style pizzas, but had grown to become a full brick-and-mortar operation before the end of the year. By 2023, Stracci was ranked #11 in a Washington Post roundup of DC region pizzas, and chosen as #1 by readers of Northern Virginia Magazine.

The Stracci (image from straccipizza.com)

The pizzas are Roman style, where the high-hydration dough is cold-fermented for 72 hours before baking directly on the hearth ("alla palla") in rounded rectangles. Stracci is named for its signature stracciatella cheese; they hand-pull fresh mozzarella, then tatter it and soak it in cream. 

106 Hume Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22301

I'm generally wary of fresh mozz on pizza, because 1) it can be bland compared to dry mozzarella or other pizza cheeses, and more importantly 2) it is heavy and wet, adding unwanted moisture that can make for a soggy crust. How would this pizzeria handle fresh mozz bathed in cream?

Our party of four arrived around 7pm on a warm Thursday in early October; there were as many patrons dining outside as inside. We chose an inside table and ordered three of their 12" x 8.5" pizzas for sharing.

The Three Cheese & 'Chovy (image from straccipizza.com)

We began with two (identical) salads; each was a lovely platter of mixed greens with  roasted delicata squash, Thomcord grapes, gorgonzola, pumpkin seed vinaigrette, and toasted pumpkin seeds. It was fresh, well-balanced, and deeply flavorful, which was a true omen of what was to come.

Image from straccipizza.com

Our pizza choices included The Nico (cured and marinated heirloom cherry tomatoes, guanciale, red onion, black pepper, pecorino, and stracciatella), The Stracci (tomato sauce, basil, stracciatella), and The Three Cheese & 'Chovy (stracciatella, Sicilian anchovies, ricotta, pecorino, salsa verde, and garlic).

The Nico (L) and The Three Cheese & 'Chovy (R)

Let's begin with the elements common to all three pizzas: the stracciatella cheese and the crust. 

The crust was one of the best I've had on any type of pizza; in my notes I described it as "impeccable." It had an ideal toothful chewiness inside, a lightly crisp topside, and an impossibly crispy bottom - a textural delight. I'd have been very happy with just that crust and some butter or olive oil.

A slice of the anchovy pizza

The stracciatella cheese was wonderful. In flavor, it was superior to the typical fresh mozzarella used on some good pizzas. It was much better suited for pizza than burrata, which is really just cottage cheese that visited Italy. As expected, the stracciatella cheese was wet, and it would swamp a normal pizza. Even on this great sturdy crust, it would be a problem except that the small size of the slices made it manageable to eat without a knife and fork. A little messy, but so worth it.

The Stracci

The anchovy pie, always a bold choice, was the best anchovy pizza I've ever had. The Sicilian anchovies were big and, pardon the pun, swimming in umami. The anchovies played nicely against the creaminess of the stracciatella and the added ricotta. That said, it probably had too much anchovy, making for a very salty pie. Hard to quibble with too much of a good topping, though.

Crispy underside

The Nico was made with some very fatty guanciale (jowl bacon) which cooked on the pie. The meat was nearly invisible, but the melted fat put a decadent greasy gloss on the pie. Two in our group thought it was too greasy; for the other two (including me), it was our favorite of all three pizzas. The salt of the cheeses, the acid of the tomatoes, and the fat from the guanciale made a potent combo. All of that goodness riding on that brilliant crust, it was swoonworthy pizza.

Many big anchovies!

The Stracci was the simplest pizza; my notes say that I found it "pure and perfect." The cheese and the crust, with a modicum of red sauce, got to shine even more than in the other more full flavored pizzas. We all loved it. 

Undercarriage with some guanciale fat

Beyond this fabulous pizza, we had some inventive cocktails and really enjoyed the design of the inside space as well as the vibe of a restaurant serving its very happy customers. La dolce vita!

For a tony DC suburb, prices were quite reasonable. The Stracci was $16, The anchovy pie was $18, and The Nico was $20. For comparison purposes, I recently paid $17 for a Costco take-and-bake pizza. For our group of four, the three pizzas, two salads, 2 glasses of wine, 1 cocktail and 1 mocktail came to $130 before tax and tip.   

Thirteen years into authoring a pizza blog, I enjoy pizza as much as ever. However, the problem (good problem, yeah) is that it's hard for a pizza joint to stand out because there is such an abundance of great pizza around. A decade ago, there was real excitement around the opening of a Neapolitan pizza place, cooked to exacting standards in a dome oven at temps above 900 degrees. Today, that kind of pie is the norm, not the exception.

Bottom line is that if you do just a little research, you rarely will find yourself eating mediocre pizza, but it's rare that a pizza will wow me. Then I went to Stracci Pizza, and the pies there created the level of pizza magic usually found only in hallowed joints like Brooklyn's DiFara or Trenton's DeLorenzo's. Easily the best pizza I found so far this year. Don't pass it up if you are nearby!