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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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).
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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