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Newbies at Garage Bar

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Eve Lee

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Newbies at Garage Bar

by Eve Lee » Sat Nov 15, 2014 3:40 pm

Looking for something new to us outside our usual Highlands-Crescent Hill orbit, my husband and I decided to check out Garage Bar last night.

Once you get beyond the two artfully(?) smashed cars out front and the feeling that 'Hey, we're in a garage!' the main attraction is the pizza, so that's what we went for. They were of the coal-fired variety—thin crust, light feeling. He ordered the sausage pizza. Being a vegetarian, I was pleasantly surprised at the selection of nonmeat offerings, and so I went with the one that struck me as most unusual: the icicle radish-forward pizzetto. This amused and slightly alarmed me, as I recognized the word 'pizzetto' as meaning 'beard' in Italian, but our server speculated it might mean 'radish.' (And who was I to say? In high school French class, I learned the word for avocado and lawyer are the same in that language.) She later came back and informed me that I was close: The kitchen staff, intrigued, Googled it and learned 'pizzetto' means 'goatee'—perhaps a nod to 'the hipster craze,' as she put it. I told her as long as there was no beard hair in my pizza, I was fine with whatever they wanted to call it.

Anyway, the food arrived, and the sausage pizza looked pretty well covered, with the starring topping generously scattered across the surface. The pizzetto featured icicle radishes sliced paper thin and three very large basil leaves baked across the pie, which was a white pizza in that it had no tomato but instead a cream-and-mozzarella base. From the very first bite, I got a warm, spicy kick. Although the pizzetto claims to have garlic oil, I suspected perhaps pepper oil, but for all I know it came from the light but flavorful radishes, too. I wanted more, more! But alas, there weren't that many of the radish slices on the pizza.

To accompany our pizzas, my husband had the Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald porter (appropriate for November, we noted, leading to a discussion of possible reasons for the freighter's sinking) and I had a Unibroue La Fin du Monde, which had almost a candy-like finish and a rather high ABV, as typical of many tripels. It was pleasant, but not the best match for the pizza I chose.

Overall, we prefer Coals—which is not to say I'm not willing to give Garage Bar a second try. However, next time we might opt for splitting a pizza and filling in the gap with an appetizer or two, such as the roasted beets (I'm always up for beets) or assorted pickles. I know coal-fired pizzas are thin, but these felt more like appetizers than full meals.

And oh—we'd heard Garage Bar is a hipster/millennial hangout. Was it? Well, aside from two gray-haired gents at the bar, we, being in our early forties, were older than everyone else. But not by much. It wasn't uncomfortable, though. Our total for two pizzas and two beers came to $41 and change, with a 20 percent tip for our friendly and attentive server.
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Robin Garr

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Re: Newbies at Garage Bar

by Robin Garr » Sat Nov 15, 2014 4:03 pm

Excellent review, Eve. Thanks for posting. Extra cred for the linguistic analysis. I love it that the kitchen learned something that they didn't know.

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