THIRD STOP: FRITTI

(Guest post by Jenn)

Our third installment of Atlanta Pizza Quest 2014 (APQ14) brought us to Fritti at 309 North Highland Avenue in Inman Park. This was the first pizza joint of APQ14 that we’ve all been to and already had positive feelings about. We were interested to see how it would score when our feet were actually held to the fire (so to speak). Guests for this week’s Quest were Jason, Kerri, Jen, Greg and Beth.

We chose to visit Fritti this week because it was on our list (obviously), but more importantly because it was part of Inman Park Restaurant Week. They were offering $15 and $25 menus that included one appetizer, pizza and dessert per person. The difference between the two levels of menus was basically a wider selection of appetizers and more pizzas with meat on the $25 menu. Any way you look at it, this was a lot of food for a bargain price (everyone loves a bargain).  Winning!

We arrived for a 7 p.m. reservation and were shown to one of the better street view tables in the enclosed patio – off to a great start! The only bummer – a laser-like beam of afternoon sun was piercing Jason in the face and threatening to melt him down like Russell in True Blood. Our friendly server did offer to close the blinds for us, which was very thoughtful (“overall dining experience” points for Fritti!), but thankfully the sun settled down behind a building. Crisis averted.

After settling in and recovering from the sun drama, we went over some quick housekeeping topics, including – most importantly – whether we were all drinking (YES) and how we were splitting the bill (equally, thank god). These topics have caused some strife in earlier editions of APQ. I won’t go into it because I don’t want to ruin the positive juju we’ve got going on here so far.

And so onto the food, which is why we’re all here…

Since we don’t usually order appetizers or dessert as part of APQ14, I won’t go into detail on those because we don’t want to unfairly bias Fritti over the other restaurants in the Quest, so I will just say – YUM – and move on.

The rules of APQ14 dictate that we always order a margherita pizza and the pizza the restaurant is known for or has been written up about (by the likes of Thrillist or Eater Atlanta). In this case, it was the Maialona, which is basically Fritti’s version of a meat lover’s pizza (hot salame, cotto ham, sausage and pancetta with black olives). A little much for us girls, but the boys were happy.

So we ordered:

-          the Maialona (I just told you about it!)

-          the Regina Margherita (self-explanatory)

-          the Salame Picante (Jen’s personal favorite: spicy salame and black olives)

-          the Funghi di Bosco (Beth and Kerri’s fave: 2 kinds of mushrooms and white truffle oil)

-          the Robiola e Pesto (a “white” pizza with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and arugula pesto)

The pizzas came out pretty quick – but not too quick, i.e. we had time to enjoy our apps and leisurely drink some wine, so it was perfect timing. It is definitely a pet peeve of mine when a restaurant rushes you or brings your meal while you’re still munching on your appetizer(s). It makes the diner feel like a fat bastard who ordered a gluttonous amount of food (which may be true, but we can shame ourselves on our own time, can't we?). So basically, Fritti’s “overall dining experience” points were already through the roof.

So on to the pizza. We dove right in and each had our own methodology for trying each pizza. Some of us enjoyed and finished one slice at a time; others employed strategery (see Bush, G. W.) and sampled a couple bites of each right off the bat and then finished those he/she liked best. Any way you went about it, it was still pizza overload (not a bad thing).

The consensus: we have always enjoyed Fritti’s pizza and it didn’t disappoint this time. There was some disagreement on which pizza was the best – some thought my fave, the Salame Picante, was way too salty (I respectfully disagree); some liked the goat cheese/pesto, some didn’t at all (Kerri and I thought the pesto tasted “raw”). Everyone (except Greg who is an anti-funghite) loved the Funghi di Bosco (mushrooms, truffle oil – what’s not to love?). Most thought the margherita was “eh” (sporadic basil placement and too much cheese). But everyone LOVED the Maialona. The combination of all those delicious meats together totally worked. Yummy.  And in conclusion, everyone thought the sauce and crust were damn good on all the pies.

Pizza comas ensued……until we realized five desserts were on their way. Yikes. But no worries, we rallied and scarfed them all down. We are professionals after all.  Anyway, five appetizers, five pizzas, five desserts and a bottle of wine – all for $35 a person including tip. Not bad.

Scoring time: Everyone rated Fritti in the categories of sauce, cheese, crust, toppings, overall dining experience and overall score for a total possible score of 60 points. Our rule is to eliminate the highest and lowest score and then average the rest – which I’m not sure is a real mathematical formula or if we made it up (I spent a few minutes researching this and gave up, fully admitting that I would lose in a battle of “Are you Smarter than a 5^th Grader?”).  Fritti scored a solid 49 out of 60 – which to all you statisticians out there – is 81.66%. I think most of us thought they would come out scoring higher, but we realized we have to rate conservatively since we have a long list of great pizza joints still ahead, including Antico Pizza, Verasano’s and Ammazza…not to mention Varuni-Napoli which is opening soon in Morningside and whose chef is straight from Naples by way of Antico Pizza. Lots of pizza to look forward to! Next stop: Buckhead. Stay gold, pizza eaters…

SECOND STOP: CUCINA ASELLINA

After too long of a hiatus, we finally made it out for our second stop on the now re-named Pizza Quest 2014 (that was poor planning naming it PQ 2013 when we only had two months left in the year)  We had two guest questers with us this time, Trish's brand new fiance Matt who was visiting from Chicago and Robin's brand new boyfriend Tom.  Since Matt was in town we decided to dine on a Friday night instead of our usual Sunday and chose Cucina Asselina.   Prior to our meal and at the request of some of the other questers, I sent out a list of Ground Rules (which apparently no one read).  The rules mainly came out of the cluster at the end of the last meal regarding our bill, as well as some contention about what type of pizza we should order.  We decided on the following Ground Rules:

• We will ask the wait staff to split the food evenly and give us each separate checks (that way we can each pay for our own drinks and won't have a cluster with splitting the check like we did at the inaugural quest)
• We will order at least one margherita pizza at each establishment so that we can compare apples to apples
• We will order the pie that the restaurant is known for as long as it is sounds appealing to most
• We will then order whatever other food we want to try

The restaurant was located in Midtown and definitely had the vibe of a cool, midtown spot.  There were four pizzas on the menu and two specials.  Apparently, one of the specials (prosciutto, black truffle and farmers egg)  was at first off the menu, then on the menu and now its back off as solely as a special.  They also had a prosciutto on the menu and the whole time we were there we thought the menu prosciutto was the pizza Cucina Asellina was known for, but turns out it was the special.  This  makes sense because that special was definitely my favorite pizza by far.   We ordered one of each of the pies and tasted the following: Margherita, sausage, proscuitto, and wild mushroom, along with the farmers eggs proscuitto special and a carmellized pear, onion and blue cheese pizza.   The pizza's came out on rectangular boards with the pizza in oblong shapes matching the boards. 

Mushroom pizza (pic stolen from the internet as I forgot to take pics this time)

Overall, this establishment seemed to be much better received than the last one.  The ratings out of a possible 60 points were 48, 37, 46, 44, 38, 46, 48, 33 and 41.  Our rookie questers both gave the lowest and highest scores (Tom even gave out two 10's (crust and toppings) which is a first for this crew). We later learned that Matt had actually only tried the sausage pizza (which was the pizza I liked least)  which could have explained his low score of 33.  Since its Olympic season, we decided to throw out the highest and lowest scores.  With those scores out, the average score was 43.   The final approval rating: 71% (12% higher than last time)

FIRST STOP PIZZERIA VESUVIUS
I'm not really sure how Pizza Quest got started. I know the conversation happened over beers one night about how we somehow needed to determine where to get the best pie in town.  Perhaps we were bored. Or hungry. Or both.  When the topic came up again and someone from our crew sent out a Thrillist article about the 8 best pizzas in Atlanta, we decided to use that list as our starter template and got the ball rolling.  Pizza Quest 2013 commenced on  Sunday November 3rd at Pizzeria Vesuvius. Thrillist says its located in Old Forth Ward, but it's definitely in a sketchier part of town, over in Edgewood. In fact, one of our members bailed due to lack of ability to find close parking and the sketchiness of the 'hood.  Deduct points for dining experience for that one.

We agreed (sort of) that we would order a Margherita pizza at each establishment in order to compare apples to apples.   Then we would order either what they are known for or whatever struck our fancy. In this case, Pizzeria Vesuvius was known for Bone Lick BBQ Pizza but since not enough of us were fans of pulled pork and collards on pizza, we opted for a Funghi (Portobellas, creminis, buttons, goat cheese, white truffle oil) and a Mediterranean (House blend pesto, fire roasted peppers, kalamatas, spinach, cherry tomatoes, feta, three cheese blend) We added prosciutto to the Mediterranean as well, since we didn't have a meat option. Below are some shots of the pies.

We each scored the pizzas independently and then totalled them up to get an average.  Pizza was scored on a scale of 1-10 (1 being "Dog Shit Tastes Better Than This",  5 being "Your Average Pizza Chain" and 10 being "I'd Kill Another Human For a Slice" ) in the following categories: Crust, Sauce, Cheese, Toppings, Dining Experience, and Overall.   Despite a lot of initial complaints ("Too Salty!")  most people gave fairly decent ratings.  I was actually the lone harsh rater, only giving the pizza a total of 21 points out of a possible 60.  Several others rated the pizza in the 33 range, while a couple seemed to enjoy the pizza more and gave scores in the high 40's.   The total scores were 21, 33, 33, 32, 35, 46, and 47.  The average score was 35.3 for a total 58% approval rating.   That is definitely not what I would consider one of the top 8 pizza places in town. 

Since this was our first stop on the quest, we realized there might need to be some tweaking of the scoring system.  For example, 5 is probably not your average pizza chain- that really should be a rating closer to the bottom.  I'm sure we will figure it out as we go along.  Stay tuned for our next spot on the quest- time, date and place TBD.