Review: OTTO Pizza - Copenhagen, Denmark

OTTO Pizza: a Neapolitan standout in a city of castles, kings, and surprisingly uneven pizza.

Pepperoni pizza

Copenhagen is a city with its rich history all around. You wander past Rosenborg Castle, where generations of Frederiks stockpiled crown jewels; you stroll along canals that remind you of Amsterdam; you pause at at open air beer garden for Tuborg on tap; you duck into Tivoli, the world's second oldest amusement park that has the look and feel of a fairy tale. It’s a place where old and new coexist effortlessly.

(Important side note: long ago, I drank Tuborg in college because I watched television ads for Tuborg Gold promising “the golden beer of Danish Kings." I thought it was a fancy import beer but priced in line with ordinary domestic stuff like Pabst and Miller -- although in fact it was brewed in the USA by Carling under a licensing agreement. Later it was sold to another US brewer and lost even more of its character. However, Tuborg in Denmark on tap is wonderful.)

"Proscuitto e funghi"

But let's get on to the Pizza! Copenhagen is still figuring that part out.

The city has world‑class restaurants and a design culture that obsesses over craft, but its pizza scene is uneven — a mix of decent Neapolitans, a few Roman experiments, and some Nordic‑chef reinterpretations that feel more like edible art projects than pizza. You can find good pies, but you have to know where to look. OTTO is one of the places worth looking.

It sits conveniently next to the CitizenM hotel (a Marriott property), which makes it almost too easy to wander in for lunch. And the lunch deal is borderline miraculous: a small pizza plus a drink for 70 kroner (about $11). In Copenhagen, that’s cheaper than a beer at Tivoli.

Modern but spartan interior

The pies show real skill. The crust is the star — great puffy Neapolitan, airy and buoyant, with a rim that rises proudly like it’s auditioning for a royal banquet. The sauce has a zippy brightness that many Copenhagen Neapolitans lack, and the mozzarella, though slightly undercooked, is fresh and mild with good flavor.

Toppings are handled with personality. We ordered two different pizzas. The pepperoni pie uses proper snappy, spicy cup‑and‑char pepperoni, a welcome surprise in a city where “pepperoni” often means thin salami slices that wish they had ambition. The prosciutto e funghi is mislabeled — it’s ham, not prosciutto, and the mushrooms are standard button mushrooms — but the pie still lands as balanced and genuinely tasty.

Proper char underneath

OTTO’s minor flaw is structural if actually more true to Neapolitan standards: they overload the center, and the middle collapses into a soggy zone. It’s a common Neapolitan issue, but more pronounced here than at American shops that understand that flop is not a desirable feature for any style of pie. Still, the crust and sauce are strong enough to keep the experience enjoyable, and the soggy aspect affected only the first bite of each slice.

Tivoli Gardens

In the grand Copenhagen context — a city of kings named Frederik, castles that look like movie sets, and a beer culture that keeps Tuborg flowing — OTTO stands out as one of the better Neapolitans in town. Not a pilgrimage spot, but absolutely a place worth eating, especially if you’re staying at CitizenM. Overall, this was a very welcome find - a lively, tasty Neapolitan with a damp center but a great attitude. 

Review: Di Fara Frozen Pepperoni Pizza

Di Fara is one of those names that carries the kind of weight that made pizza pilgrims stand in the Brooklyn heat for two hours while Dom DeMarco (R.I.P.) snipped basil over a pie that costs as much as a Broadway ticket. The original Pizza Quixote review from 2011 captured that magic: the cramped shop on Avenue J, the ritual, the inefficiency, the oil, the basil, the sense that you were witnessing something closer to performance art than lunch. That aura is difficult to freeze, box, and ship. But Di Fara has tried.

The frozen Di Fara pie is an 11‑inch round, modest in calories but not in sodium (more on that later). The crust is the first surprise, with a genuinely lovely crumb and texture, airy and well‑developed. Mine was a little dry, likely the result of too long a stay in the freezer, but the underlying dough quality still came through. It’s leagues better than the cardboard‑adjacent crusts that dominate the freezer aisle.

Out of the box, still frozen, before baking

The sauce is the star. Deep tomato flavor, concentrated and bright, reminiscent of the San Marzano–forward approach Dom's family uses in Midwood (and, presumably, other brick and mortar locations that have opened in recent years). It doesn’t quite hit the same fresh‑and‑canned hybrid complexity that Scott Wiener has described in his Di Fara tours, but it’s closer than you’d expect from something that spent months in cryogenic stasis.

Fresh out of my oven

Pepperoni lovers will appreciate the thick, cupped slices — hearty, meaty, and unapologetically salty. This is a high‑sodium pizza, no question, but the payoff is big flavor. The cheese blend (mozzarella plus Parmesan) brings a ton of umami in its savory punch. It’s a bold and satisfying frozen pizza.

But is it Di Fara? Not really. And that’s OK.

The in‑store pie was defined by Dom’s hands, the olive‑oil deluge, the fresh basil snipped with shears, the blistered crust that somehow stays soft in the center. Adam Kuban has written for years about how the Di Fara experience is inseparable from Dom himself — the slowness, the chaos, the sense that you’re eating something ephemeral and unrepeatable. The frozen version can’t replicate that any more than a postcard can replicate a vacation.

Compared to other “prestige frozen pizzas,” though, Di Fara holds its own. Roberta’s frozen pies — reviewed here in 2018 — set the modern standard: thin, crisp, flavorful, and surprisingly faithful to the Bushwick original. Roberta’s Baby Sinclair was described as “the best frozen pizza I’ve had,” with a crisp wafer‑thin crust and a cheese‑driven flavor profile. Di Fara’s frozen pie isn’t quite as cohesive or as texturally dialed‑in as Roberta’s, but it delivers a richer tomato presence and a more indulgent pepperoni experience.

Bottom line: This is a great frozen pizza but not automatically the best. And it’s not particularly reminiscent of the Midwood shop. What it does capture is the intensity of flavor that defines Di Fara: the deep tomato, the salty richness, the umami‑heavy cheese. It’s a worthy upgrade from the usual freezer fare and a fun way to bring a little Brooklyn legend into your kitchen, even if Dom’s family and those basil shears remain thousands of miles away.

Dom in 2009

If you go in expecting the Di Fara of Avenue J, you’ll be disappointed. If you go in expecting one of the best frozen pizzas on the market, you’ll be delighted. And maybe that’s the right way to honor a legend — not by trying to freeze perfection, but by giving us a taste of what makes it special.

Review: Fire & Hops Pizza — Richmond, VA

Fire & Hops lives comfortably in that hipster‑dense stretch of Richmond's Museum District, a delightful zone on a warm spring day except for the difficulty in finding a parking spot. The space used to be Stuzzi, and the new team (veterans of Sergio’s, Pietro’s, and Arianna’s) has kept the neighborhood‑joint DNA while ditching the hackneyed wood‑fire drama. 

Their dome oven has a rotating floor, a fun bit of pizza‑nerd spectacle that also keeps the pies from developing that one‑side‑burned, one‑side‑pale personality disorder (although we did get some deep char on ours, not a problem for a Neapolitan style).

The vibe is genuinely happy, staff and patrons alike. Service is upbeat without being performative, and the room has that “we’re new, but we already feel like your spot” energy. It’s the kind of place where you order a second beer because the first one went down too easily.

Before the pizza, a quick detour: the Strawberry Kale Salad. The kale is impressively tender and fresh — not the leathery afterthought some places pass off — and the goat cheese adds the right creamy tang. But the dressing is shy. Not absent, just timid. A little more would’ve turned a good salad into a great one.

Beer matters here, and they treat it that way. The craft selection is thoughtful without being pretentious, and it actually earns the “Hops” half of the name. Thoughtfully, there is a nice cider on the menu too.

Drunken Grandma on the gluten-free crust

On to the pies. Fire & Hops calls these Neapolitan, and structurally they are: thin, chewy, nicely blistered, and not soggy. But they’re not chasing the Pizza Bones / Pupatella fermentation‑flex aesthetic. These are competently executed, neighborhood‑friendly Neapolitan crusts, not science projects.

Superb crisping under the GF crust

We chose the gluten‑free crust for our Drunk Grandma pie, and it was beyond cromulent, with more spring than its thin profile suggested, and better than the usual GF cardboard simulacrum. Not a revelation, but absolutely respectable. This pie had the most umami of the selections we had for our party of five pizza eaters.

The Margherita

The sauce on the Drunk Grandma is a standout. It’s basically vodka sauce with an outsized personality — richer, more flavorful, and more assertive than the pale pink stuff many places phone in. On the Margherita, the bright red sauce really pops, though the mozzarella dollops could’ve used another moment in the oven to fully settle.

The Fig & Pig

The Fig & Pig has a great flavor concept with fig jam, gorgonzola, and pork as well as a sublime crust texture. But the balsamic drizzle comes in a bit too hot and overwhelms the subtler elements. Still tasty, still worth ordering, but it’s a pie that would benefit from a lighter hand.

The Prosciutto & Arugula

The Prosciutto & Arugula is the star of the lineup. Perfect balance: peppery greens, salty prosciutto, shaved cheese on top, nothing fighting for dominance. It’s the one that most makes you think, “Yeah, I’d come back for this.”

Underside of the regular crust

At about $17 for an 11‑inch pie (plus $3 for gluten‑free), pricing is right in line with Richmond’s modern pizza economy. Two salads, three adult beverages, four pizzas came to $135 before tip.

Open and airy interior

Fire & Hops isn’t trying to dethrone the city’s artisanal heavyweights. It’s not chasing hype or fermentation glory. It’s aiming for consistency, comfort, and a neighborhood identity — and it hits those marks cleanly. Good service, good energy, good beer, and pizza that’s well‑executed. Not a pilgrimage spot, but absolutely the kind of place you’d be thrilled to have within walking distance.