Cheap Eats - Earth-toned pleasures
Terra-Cotta wows with crisp, creative pizzas
Terra-Cotta Pizza, adjacent to and sister of Mezza, serves date-night charm with a side of batted lashes and knowing looks. The lighting is just dim enough — totally flattering, yet you can still read the menus without squinting. Paintings and photographs cover the earth-toned walls, and a small cellar to the back of the restaurant offers bottles featured on the menu. Lounge and trip-hop music with a Middle-Eastern twist (think Nitin Sawhney) provide an intriguing soundtrack to the television tuned into Turner Classic Movies.
All the art in Terra-Cotta Pizza was created by customers, according to owner Iman Bitar, as part of the Bitars’ goal of making their newest restaurant not just a pizza joint, but a community gathering place. Service reflects that ideal, as you are made to feel warmly welcomed without having your ear chatted off.
Pass the pté: Unlike most pizzerias, Terra-Cotta offers an abundance of vegetarian choices. The appetizer of assorted house-made pate bites ($4.99) includes two vegetarian terrines, one a creamy, earthy combination of spinach and goat cheese, the other a slightly sproingy, two-layered affair of sweet peas and sweet potatoes. The two other terrines are remarkably fluffy. Melt-in-the mouth pate of chicken livers steals the show, with a smoked salmon terrine shining on its own with a buttery, unfishy flavor. The olives and cornichons included on the plate are piquant palate-cleansers, but the accompanying freshly baked pita are outstanding. Blistering hot and crusty with a hint of fluff on the inside, these pita will ruin you for store-bought forever. There’s even an excellent option for vegetarians allergic to gluten — the crustless pizza ($12.99) of roasted pepper, eggplant and zucchini layers topped with a selection of vegetables and cheese.
13 whole inches: Whether you go veg or carnivore, the 13-inch pizzas are more than enough for one person, and perfect for two with starters or salads. Zucchini pizza ($11.99) is kicky with garlic, toothy yet tender slices of zucchini, mushrooms, green onion, green pepper, a sprinkling of fresh oregano and fresh basil, and a judiciously light layer of cheese. The crust is extraordinary, better than those I’ve had at high-end restaurants around town. Cracker-crisp, blistered and charred around the edges, the crust doesn’t buckle under the toppings yet is still whisper-thin and delicate.
Beef pizza ($12.99) flaunts a Middle-Eastern twist on a meatball pizza, with chunks of house-made meatballs scented with cumin, coriander and cinnamon, fresh tomato slices, pine nuts, Kalamata olives and cheese. Dessert includes a Nutella and banana pizza ($5.99) whose creamy goopiness is hard to resist. I was only two bites into my first slice when a wink and nudge were all I needed to ask for a to-go box, out of which I finished the rest of the pizza before the night was over.