Pizzology - Revisit

Sometimes you just have to go back to places you like so you don’t go totally insane you know? So it was a Saturday night, and we had just finished my son’s birthday party with like twelve 4 and 5 year olds running wild. We needed wine. Fast. Luckily, I had planned ahead and realized by the end of this day, we would certainly need some adult time, so I had wisely planned for a babysitter. We were so brain dead we couldn’t decide where to go but we knew we wanted something causal and good. We decided Pizzology sounded like a plan.

I really enjoy the wine list at Pizzology. I know I don’t usually talk about the wine, but Pizzology has a great menu of Italian wines that you don’t often see in restaurants (thanks mainly, I think, to Neal Brown's wife Lindy who is a Certified Sommelier). We knew we would be happy in this regard and we weren’t disappointed. We quickly ordered a bottle and began the debate over what to eat.

We started with “Tony’s Fritters.” These were something that, up to now, we hadn’t tried, but always meant to. They are zucchini fritters with fresh parmesan grated over the top and served swimming in a little bath of truffle oil. These were superb. We really liked them. The zucchini flavor was delicate and nicely highlighted by the truffle oil. There wasn’t so much of the oil that you were annoyed by it overtaking the other flavors and the fritters had just the right amount of crispness on the edges, but were still moist and light in the middle. These little fritters would be hard to pass up in the future.

We also shared a large chop salad (we were informed you get much more “bang for your buck” sharing one large ($8) rather than getting two smalls (at $4 each)). So I really enjoy the acidity in this salad mixed with the ingredients that come together to make what is essentially an ideal chop in my mind (because I really like the ingredients). There is chopped romaine, prosciutto, blue cheese, shallot, olives, and roasted tomatoes with a citrus vinaigrette with a nice kick. I will say though, this salad is not always super consistent. While 75% of the time, this salad is dead on, I have had one that was so acidic I couldn’t finish it and I have also noticed a change in the proportion of other ingredients to lettuce. It used to be that there was almost too much of the other ingredients as compared to the lettuce. Now, there is a lot less of everything else (other than maybe the blue cheese) and much more of the well dressed leaves. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing; I am just still trying to figure out exactly where the salad is going to end up.

Anyhow, it was also a tribute night to Jimi Hendrix at Pizzology. Certainly something I can get behind, so we went with the special pizza created in his honor. It included Purple Haze goat cheese with lavender and fennel pollen, purple basil, and two kinds of mushrooms... roasted trumpet and portobello I believe. It sounded interesting so we went for it since it was only offered that night. It was good. Maybe not my favorite pizza toppings ever, but quite tasty. I liked the way you got a kick of the goat cheese along with the mellow richness of the mushrooms. The purple basil added a super fresh herby crunch. But really, the real star of this show is the crust. The freshly baked, slightly irregular and a little charred crust is what makes this pizza for me. It is chewy and crunchy at the same time. The pizza is consistently good at Pizzology.

So the place was quite busy, although we got a table as soon as we walked in (one of the last though). The service was a little stressed, but ours did not suffer too much. But like I said, sitting with our bottle of wine, we were perfectly content after the day we had. As we sat there though, we discussed the fact that hubby had not yet been to Napolese (the other Neapolitan style pizza place in Indy) and that I really needed to do a revisit there as well. So guess what? That is exactly what we decided to do. Look for my revisit to Napolese next week. But in the meantime, what are your favorite Pizzology menu items or pizza toppings? I was so glad I expanded my horizons on this visit, I want to try something else new next time.

Pizzology

13190 Hazel Dell Parkway

Carmel, IN 46032

317-844-2554

http://www.pizzologyindy.com/