Voice-Tribune review by Robin Garr
Coals Brings The Heat To Make A Fine Pizza
If you grew up eating pizza in Louisville - or for that matter just about anywhere in the U.S. outside, possibly, the urban Northeast - you may be excused for believing that pizza is all about the toppings.
Sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, bacon and pineapple and even anchovies, oh, my: Pile 'em high! And don't forget to dollop on the sweet, sweet tomato sauce and a lake of molten, stringy cheese. This is certainly the construction of the iconic Louisville pie, the Big Thick made famous by such old-line local temples of pizza as Impellizzeri's, Clifton's and Wick's.
The crust - let's be frank - is pretty much an afterthought for fanciers of this style of pie. It's a substrate, an easily-ignored base that serves little purpose other than to hold the contents on, so forgettable that it's commonplace to see the bready crust edges left discarded on the plate.
But trust me, it's not like that in Italy, the home of pizza; or at better pizzerias in New York City, where immigrants just off the boat from Southern Italy introduced this great pleasure of fine living to America back in Ellis Island days.
No, pizza as Italians know it, and savvy Americans, too, is about the bread. Turn your thinking upside down and imagine a taste of crusty, chewy, firm Italian bread rolled out paper-thin, then topped with just enough quality ingredients, painted with just enough herbal, tangy tomato sauce, topped with creamy rounds of silken fior di latte Mozzarella, then popped into a searing oven flaming at nearly 1,000 degrees for just long enough to get the toppings sizzling and to blister - never burn - that artisanal bread with sweet flakes of tasty char.
That, my friends, is an Italian pizza as imagined through New York's original pizzaioli, and it's the kind of pizza that comes bubbling out of the coal-burning ovens at Coals Artisan Pizza in St. Matthews, going strong after two years in business.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes.com:
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/coals ... fine-pizza
and in the Voice-Tribune:
http://www.voice-tribune.com/life-style ... ine-pizza/
Coals Artisan Pizza
3730 Frankfort Ave.
742-8200
www.coalsartisanpizza.com
