New Haven, Connecticut is the home of one of the most famous pizza restaurants in the entire country...Pepe's. However, if you happen to find that the lines outside of Pepe's are too lengthy to bare, make your way over to BAR at 254 Crown Street which features some great brick oven pizza.
Many of you club-hoppin' aficionados may know BAR already...that's because it has a club built into the back known as Bartropolis; a high energy backroom with the essence of the nightlife encompassed in its brick walls.
However, for Belly Busters, we stumbled upon BAR because of a recommendation from a reader...what he described made us squint our eyebrows and ask "Really? On Pizza?" That's right...MASHED POTATO AND BACON PIZZA. At first, the very thought of the combination on pizza would be enough for many pizza-lovin' people to run for the hills. Yet, we knew with something so intriguing in our own backyard, Busters had to give it a try...read on to see how it measured up.
Let's start off with the inside of BAR.
When you come up the ramp and into the dining area, you will be impressed that such a quaint, stylish, and edgy design would be wrapped up in the bare, almost abandoned look of the exterior. On the wall directly at the far end of the dining area, square patterns that accent the dark wood of the ceiling and tables become vibrant with the natural and artificial lighting. It's a nice little place...almost as if you were eating in a refurbished warehouse. Also located in the dining area are two large beer silos because BAR also makes their own beer.Busters took a seat in one of the small booths along the perimeter. Cleverly, to our right there was no wall that blocked our view of the star of the show...the oven.
Just like Pepe's, the brick oven smell and flame were visible and it truly adds to the character of the restaurant. You can see the piles off wood stacked up above the oven, the cooks hooking the pizzas, turning them, and taking them out. There is something about an open kitchen in a restaurant that adds to the authenticity and liveliness of the atmosphere...it's almost like dinner and a show. You'll see with more upscale and newer American restaurants, they want the kitchen and the food to be as visible as possible not only to show the customers that their food and cooking is authentic, but that it is part of the experience as well.The real test came...we ordered the Mashed Potato and Bacon Pizza with cheese. Now, you can have it two ways, Red (with sauce) or White (without). Busters chose White not only because of the waitress' recommendation but also, some pizzas just don't go well with sauce (for example, Clam Pizza and Margarita Pizza should always be ordered white). The anticipated mounted, the doubt set in..."there's now way this can actually taste good". The pizza arrived (click and magnify to truly get a good visual):
This pizza smelled amazing from the moment it was dropped off at the table...almost like a combination between fresh baked bread and Thanksgiving. Let's talk about the crust for a minute: the crust is extremely thin, almost cracker like. This is what they call "New Haven style" or "authentic" pizza as opposed to Chicago which is deep dish or the pizza that you'll find in any ole' pizza store that seems to have a medium type thickness. Yet, the danger sometimes with thin crust in a high temperature oven, like the brick, is often you'll find that parts of the pizza become burnt. What BAR did very nicely was to make sure the pizza, all the way up to the very end of the crust, was NOT burnt and the result is truly an excellent dough...the most important part of any pizza. Also, the sprinkling of some cornmeal (similar to the bottom of Bertuccis' rolls) brought out a lot of flavor.
The bacon was thick and smoked (most likely Virginia), adding a robust flavor you don't normally get in your local diner. And for Bacon, it did not have that much fat on it, further adding to the testament of quality that the ingredients at BAR have. The cheese was also very creamy and rich but it wasn't slavered all over the pizza so as not to overpower any one flavor.
The real curve ball was the Mashed Potatoes. Originally, we didn't know exactly how they would put them on a pizza...would they lay it all out like a cheese? Would it just be in the middle? How much of it would there be? The Mashed Potatoes was put on there in small globs, almost like when you get a pizza with fresh mozzarella on it as opposed to shredded. What was interesting was that the potatoes weren't quite mashed all the way...they were a little chunkier but it worked because if they were too pureed, it would be a mushy mess.
What really worked well for this pizza was that the juice from the cheese, the grease from the bacon, and the butter from the mashed potatoes all blended beautifully creating a really addicting taste. Imagine a loaded backed potato wrapped in a very tasty crust.
VERDICT: In all seriousness, we know this sounds pretty ridiculous, but this is A MUST TRY pizza, especially since for most of you, it's only thirty minutes away. The thin crust pizza rivals competitor Pepe's and ranks up there with some of the best Pizza this reviewer has ever had. All of the flavors worked really well in this...the bacon, the cheese, the mashed potatoes, came together to give a pizza experience that is unique, fun, and most importantly, absolutely delicious. Get your ass down to BAR in New Haven and we guarantee, you'll feel the same. *
3 1/2 Belly Bustins out of 4
*Thanks to Cody Maresh for the suggestion and Nick Melillo for outside pic
