The lost meals entries consist of meals that occurred at various times throughout 2012 which, for any number of reasons, escaped my documentation – some due to a cross country move and a new job, some due to the Los Angeles Kings run to the Stanley Cup, and some simply as a result of too much travel. Having enjoyed many of these meals with friends or family and with some of them amongst the year’s very best the reality is that with time my memory has deteriorated and as life moves forward I’ve realized there is little hope to ever “catch up” or document these experiences as well as I’d hope, yet in order to preserve them I present these pictures, notes, and thoughts on the experience.
Medium Red Pie – half artichoke, half sautéed Mushroom
Chocolate Pizza – house chocolate hazelnut sauce, mascarpone cheese.
Looking for a place to watch The Buckeyes game and never one to pass up a good pizza Piece seemed like a solid choice – a large brewery and New Haven style pizzeria with plenty of space, solid reviews, and a number of televisions – yet in reality what Piece actually turned out to be was a decent pie in a city where good-to-great pizza is the rule, a copious beer list that I’m told was exorbitantly priced, and service that existed somewhere between bizarre and disastrous as a young woman (with truly odd mannerisms) named Vivian first asked us to move to a different table across the room nearly fifteen minutes after we were seated so that they could squeeze in a larger group, and then proceeded to largely ignore our table, once forcing me to stand up to fill my own glass of water.
Moving onto the pizzas, one savory and one sweet, our first choice of a red pie with parmesan, mozzarella, red sauce, and half mushroom/half artichoke was decent though undercooked – the dough soft but lacking much chew while the sauce was bright and flavorful, thankfully not overly sweet and thus allowing the fresh, tender artichoke hearts and garlicky mushrooms to shine. Better cooked, and actually quite delicious, the dessert pizza “inspired by Rick Nielsen and Rachael Ray” featured a crust that would have greatly benefitted the tomato pie and with a bit of char adding a smoky note to the toothsome dough the dense lacquer of chocolate hazelnut sauce intermingled with mascarpone was sweet but not overly so – a nice ending (along with an OSU win) to an otherwise underwhelming experience.