Review: MidiCi - King of Prussia PA

Chain pizza has a mixed reputation. It's fast, it's cheap, it's filling, generally good but rarely great. In my view, it was the big chains like Pizza Hut and Domino's and Papa John's that destroyed the mom and pop franchises. Some dropped out due to the price competition, others changed to inferior mass-sourced ingredients to compete on price.

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Having said that, there are some chains making pretty good pizza. Some great regional pie makers include Bertucci's (mostly New England), Monical's (midwest states) and Grotto (Delaware). The most amazing chain is Anthony's Coal-Fired Pizza, which has grown quite large but still makes a great pie.

More recently, there has been a move to fast-food style assembly-line versions of Neapolitan pizzas that cook in 1 or 2 minutes. Chains like SNAP, MOD, Blaze, and others are bringing good Neapolitan facsimile pizzas to the masses at modest prices. All of them are miles better than the soft doughy white bread pizzas from the traditional big chains.

An emerging and ambitious new chain is MidiCi, begun by the same crew that launched Menchie's Frozen Yogurt, which has more than 400 locations. MidiCi sold more than 300 franchises before a single location was open, but now dozens are in operation, including the spot I visited in the swanky new upscale suburban dining village, the King of Prussia Town Center.

Open kitchen with Neapolitan ovens at MidiCi

The idea here is to make "real" (but not Naples-certified VPN) Neapolitan pizza. Pies are made with "signature Neapolitan dough – light, thin, soft and chewy, with a high crust" containing only 00 Neapolitan flour, water, sea salt, and yeast. Tomatoes are not San Marzanos, but Ciao Pomodorodi Napoli peeled tomatoes.

We arrived for dinner at 6:30 on a Monday night. As usual, the big parking lots around the restaurants in the Town Center were jammed, but traffic in MidiCi was light. The dining room was large, modern, and comfortable with a choice of bar, high-boy, or regular table seating. The grand Neapolitan ovens, finished in gold, were the center display of the open kitchen.

Cheese board appetizer

Unlike the paper-plates and plastic utensils of the assembly-line quasi-Neapolitan chains, everything about MidiCi had a more elegant feel and finish. Table cloths, nice silverware, modern white plates, and a host of culinary additions for your pizza. This location is a BYOB. Despite the nice trappings, prices for 12" pies ranged from $8 for the marinara pizza to just over $14 for one with truffles.

The double pepperoni pie

We ordered two pies to share. One was the Double Pepperoni ($10.95) made with the Ciao Pomodorodi tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, pepperoni, and spicy Italian Calabrese salami. Our other pie was the Egg N Bacon, with fresh mozzarella, applewood smoked bacon, house made spicy sausage, garlic, oregano, and topped with a freshly cracked egg (no tomato sauce). I'm very fond of eggs on Neapolitan pizzas, such as the remarkable breakfast pizza at La Brea Bakery Cafe, on the Disney property in Anaheim, CA.

The egg and bacon pizza

On this slow night, some of the crew was taking publicity photos of menu items, and kindly offered us the $10 cheese board for free when they had finished. Cheese and bread as appetizer is a bit redundant to the pizza coming later, but it was excellent toasted crusty bread with a lot of olive oil and an artistic drizzle of balsamic vinegar, paired with a nice mix of cheeses, dried apricots, dates, and walnuts. Pretty to look at and delicious to eat. Also worth noting was that my lime-flavored seltzer was served in an attractive glass and the staff was quick to replace empties.

Pepperoni slice with barely-melted cheese

So -- how was the pizza? Both of these pies were beautiful in presentation, with a big puffy and charred cornicione framing some well-presented interiors. The egg was cooked perfectly (solid white, runny yolk) in a way that I can't master at home. The egg and bacon pie was nicely balanced with an ideal mix of meats, egg, and cheese.

Egg and bacon slice

The double pepperoni pizza was surprisingly spicy from the Calabrese salami. The meat toppings were plentiful and tasty and clearly high quality. However, the slices of cured meat blanketed the pie almost completely, with the undesired side effect that the sauce did not get any direct oven heat. That lead to a steaming and slippery layer of watery sauce beneath the cheese and meat, eager to slide off the crust. Even though the menu indicates that knife and fork are appropriate for a Neapolitan pie, this pie was softer and wetter than it should have been.

Pretty good color underneath side of crust

The egg and bacon pie held together much better. Both of these pies were very good, but there was something not quite on point. Neither delivered the magic of the most recent Neapolitans I had eaten at Paulie Gee's in Baltimore, and the shortcoming was the crust. I found that I agree with other reviews I've seen, that the pizza seems undercooked even as a visual inspection does not suggest it.

On the pepperoni pie, the cheese hadn't melted, and the pie was soft and rubbery where it should have been a bit crisper and chewy. That was less of a problem on the egg and bacon pie, and I suspect that the pie came together better without the added moisture of tomato sauce. I'm not sure if the ovens aren't as hot as they should be or if the pizzaioli-in-training haven't mastered the craft yet.

It's important to note that despite the flaws, these were very good pizzas, and truly excellent fare in this price range. Just ten years ago, this would have been the best pizza in a fifty mile radius. Today, the bar is higher. Still, MidiCi is a very positive step forward. If places like this can help crowd out all the mediocre pizza we eat from the big chains, we're all better for it. And for now, it's not good enough to push out the great Neapolitan at places like Zavino, Capofitto, and Paulie Gee's.

A better-cooked pie, from the MidiCi website

Final tally says that this is very good pizza - with the potential to be much better - in an upscale BYOB setting at a downscale price. Thumbs up for MidiCi in King of Prussia.