Flatbread!

Flatbread has been the place of employment for many of my close friends, so I have tried a wide variety of their variations, from red onion feta to gorgonzola pesto, blah blah blah.  Suffice to say, I’ve grown well-accustomed to the staffers, the one free pizza everyone gets a week for working there.  Now, my atmosphere contextualization is a bit different than the normal pizza attendee.  Flatbread is known as a place you go, sit, have some pizza, a salad, a beer and maybe a dessert.  These are the only things on their menu and they don’t do delivery, the idea being that Flatbread is more of a classy, slow-food pizza.  But that is not my experience of the pizza.  My experience is someone bringing Flatbread to a party.  My experience is eating a cold slice before running off to work because that’s all that’s in our fridge.  My experience with Flatbread has been the quintessential pizza experience, despite their efforts to dress it up with arugula or what-have-you.  So, I will not be considering the atmosphere of Flatbread in this review, I’m sorry to say. Flatbread is late-night party pizza to me, and that is what I will rate it as.

Smell : Linsey busted into a game night exclaiming she got cheese pizza for her staffers for the purposes of my study.  And I took a giant whiff and was only marginally excited.  2.5/5

Appearance : This is a good looking pizza, I must say. I do enjoy the long, rectangular slices.  Not only are they very aesthetically appealing, but you get more flavorful bites in this system.  The shape is rustic, I will give it that, and it certainly looks like an appetizing pizza.  4.5/5 

Cheese: I expected to be rather impressed by the cheese, but the flavor did not completely hold up.  The consistency was near perfect; not too stringy but with a nice bite.  Personally, I like a lot of stringiness, but given the structure of the crust and the way of the cut, too much stringiness would have not worked to its advantage.  It may have been their unique and daring (!) inclusion of parmesan cheese as part of the base.  This nulled the saltiness and the stringiness of the mozzarella, the former being a loss whereas the latter was appreciated for textural purposes (although, as we learned at Pizza Joint, provolone packs a lot of flavor which mediating consistency).  I’m giving the cheese 2.5/5.

Crust:  The crust was the main point of contention.  The crust had such an overpowering taste, and was really the star of the whole pizza (hence the name Flatbread).  However, it didn’t have anything to it for taste.  No earthy wheatiness, no small kicks of flavor from spices.  There was a lot of olive oil worked it, which added some nice olive-y notes, but the crust almost had an overdone/burnt flavor to parts of it.  Now, it’s one thing to make the crust the star, but it’s quite another to work under the pretense of making the crust to star only to cover it up later with powerfully flavored ingredients to mask the lack of flavor, and I think this may be Flatbread’s evil plan. 2/5

Sauce: The tomato-y ness of the sauce was not really exemplified by any of the other elements.  I mean, the menu touts the “wood-smoked” ness of the tomatoes, which I will admit adds a nice roundness to the flavor.  But the sauce itself was not bright or flavorful, tasting a bit…overdone?  It had no heart or freshness to it, and given this is a restaurant that touts the slow-food movement, local ingredients and fresh techniques, you would think they would know better than to leaving the sauce simmering on high.  Tomato sauce is a very fucking sensitive endeavor, because it’s so subtle.  It was pretty good, but I like a little more kick to my sauce, a little more brightness.  2.5/5

Overall experience:  My friend Sherwin, whose house we were game night-ing, also worked at Flatbread, and asked me if situations like the use of organic flour, local ingrediants, etc., earn it points.  To adopt such a system would be a disservice to organic food; it’s totally fucking possible to make organic goods way, wicked yummy, and if we said “It’s good FOR BEING ORGANIC”, that’s not only not a true assessment, but it’s just a mean thing to say to cute little grains that grow up all by themselves without the use of soul-killing chemicals. 

That being said, I really love the cut and the cheese is pretty good.  I’m giving this pizza a nice and solid 3.  It’s pretty good, but it’s too haughty and aspires to be more than it is, and just doesn’t bring it home on individual points.  This pizza is the kid in high school who won’t stop talking about how Velvet Underground is the greatest band ever but doesn’t know the words to Sweet Jane.

But still, the kid is right.  Velvet Underground *is* pretty good, and this pizza is certainly edible. 

Math says that brings this total up to 5.8, with a solid 3 for the overall experience and 2.8 being the average of individual components.  That’s not the worst, guys!  I’m thinking 5.5-7 is the range of “Adequate”  whereas anything before 5.5 is a serious “Needs Improvement For The Sake Of Humanity”.  Flatbread can just keep doing what they’re doing.  I don’t care.  They are on the waterfront, so it’s not like their business is ever going to be seriously in jeopardy.  Doesn’t mean I have to eat their pizza.  Unless it’s free, and I’m drunk.  It’s so weird that when I’m sober, I’m like “Hmmm, Pizza Joint really delicately coaxed the provolone flavors out” whereas when I’m drunk I’m like “HOLY FUCKING SHIT.  KA-LA-MA-TA OLIVES!”.