Happy Groundhog's Day! Phil Says to Eat Pizza
International pizza day is next Friday and a new Squirrel Hill pizza place enters the ring.
Murray Ave in Squirrel Hill is home to a handful of pizza juggernauts that define Pittsburgh’s pizza history. You have Mineo’s and Aiello’s next to one another, plus Pizza Napoli up the street. If you keep walking towards Forbes you can find even more pizza shops. It’s a square mile of gooey, goopy pizza. You can eat grease flooded pizza your whole life without leaving the area.
Nestled in-between all these shops is a slightly unassuming bakery. It’s small and serves the whole neighborhood. Innocently sitting on the corner of Hobart and Murray, you can walk in and leave with a hand-made baked good or a vegan treat. Pretty nice resource to have nearby.
When I lived in Squirrel Hill I’d stop in here occasionally, but was never floored by the product. That was years ago and it looks like they’ve evolved tremendously since 2012. The sandwiches look divine, there’s soup and now they’re experimenting with pizza.
Thanks to the advent of mobile ovens, getting into the pizza game has never been easier. I talked about this with Dan of Mun’s Pizza last week. If you make bread the next logical leap is making pizza. It’s basically the same fundamentals you’ve already mastered, but people will line up and door bust you for pizza. Whenever there’s a new, exotic pizza opportunity people will line up in droves. Despite pizza being so formulaic and repetitive, there is still a strong desire to try something new.
The anticipation of a pro-baker developing Pizza 2.0 or dishing out a new spin on dusty classic causes a stampede of excitement.
There’s something so intimate and personal about pizza that differs from a croissant or bread. It’s much more hands on, thoughtful. Sprinkled with cheese and their own personality. It’s exciting to try something new, even if you may have already had it before.
Well Allegro made an announcement on January 22nd, 2024 on their Instagram.
First big announcement is that we're going to be making some pizzas this Friday and Saturday. We've been working on a sourdough pizza recipe for the last year or so, and we're really happy with the way it bakes on our little Gozney Roccbox ovens. The dough is at least a two-day fermentation and is made from Central Milling's Type 00 (90%) and a whole wheat flour - Hi Pro Fine. Setup will be outdoors with a small canopy on the Hobart side of Allegro. Stop by and order, or you can place an order online. They'll likely be available from 11am to 2pm. We'll post the pizza menu on Thursday afternoon. This is semi weather dependent. If it's raining a lot, we'll likely postpone or bake them in our bread oven; still a good pizza, but not ideal.
In their first outing they sold out of their pizza in an hour. Their pizza venture seems to be on hold until the weather is a little nice. If you want to get your hands on this pizza, you better pray that when Punxsutawney Phil is ripped from his stump tomorrow he doesn’t see his shadow.
Thanks to Adam for initially sending me the Instagram post!
Crushing a Large Plain as a Family
One of my favorite family activities is heading to Driftwood Oven to “Crush a large plain.” This is something I propose most Thursdays and every so often everyone is into the idea.
They think “Yeah, I’d live to have a can of wine and slurp down some plain pizza.” Or even “To get a fresh, hot, floppy plain slice, crush it between my teeth and eat until my stomach hurts does sound like a great Thursday night.” And sometimes it comes down to the toppings. Some people in the family see the pizza as a vehicle that delivers ranch dressing into their stomach in a way society has agreed they’re okay with. You can’t eat ranch dressing with a spoon, but it’s okay to dip your pizza into? Uh, okay.
Caught Charlie dipping her slice into the ranch dressing crust first. What a wild child. Anything for a dollop of ranch.
Families are powered by pizza. It’s a centerpiece of outings and levels the playing field when it comes to choosing what’s for dinner. No other cuisine is universally loved in a family like pizza. Without the bonds forged over each greasy pizza, who knows if the idea and concept of family would exist in this modern era. We’d just be groups of people grunting and shrugging in each other’s general direction, wondering what to do next.
National Pizza Day is February 9th
National Pizza Day is not to be confused with “National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies” day which occurs on November 12th. How will you be celebrating National Pizza day? It falls on a Friday this year which is ideal as you were probably planning to grab a Friday pie anyways.
Keep me posted how you’ll celebrate!
Good stuff this week!
Hope you are getting through this Winter and tasting lots of quality pizza. Soon the city will thaw and there will be a list of pizza pop ups to explore. Until then, dream of pizza.
Pizza ya later!
-Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist