One could not help but notice the calendar loudly roll into a new year recently, which does not mean too much but does I suppose require that the first pizza of the year be especially new, fabulous, daring and flat flawless.
We've done the Three Powers of Wooster Street, gone Modern, moseyed into Luna and essayed the Harry's Question This is the Time for expanded horizons...but where?
New Haven, according to Connecticut Magazine, is stacked up with Connecticut's finest pizzas, but this is the same outfit that annually puts same venues at the top of their lists Pepe's blah blah blah. (Although I agree with them that Connecticut has the best pizza in the USA).
No, were looking at Amici's, across the street from Vito's, on the Silas Deane Highway in Wethersfield. The Hartford Courant's best food writer, Greg Morago, raves of their pasta, so lets check the pie.
Now this is a daring move, you will agree seeking a new and great pie near Hartford with no one else recommending or no one even saying hey, have you tried it?a dangerous and big-balled move. Yet we go to the second oldest town in Connecticut to see if they come up second best in the pie department.
One: this is a restaurant, a fairly large one, seating about 150+ comfortably.
Two: its a spacious open room, where you can see and be seen, there are no bad tables that I could observe.
Three: it's a big menu, one that includes seafood (scampi, scrod, cappillini frutta di mare, sole francaise), chicken and veal dishes, grilled burgers, and grinders.
Sure enough, they are in the pizza business for real. Some of us remember East Hartford's Corky's idea--offering crusts of varying thicknesses. Amici offers stuffed pizza, New York (thin) crust, Sicilian (thick) crust and their day to day standard crust. As Cap'n Kirk might have said: an exciting find, Mr. Spock!
We go with Amici's House Special for $11.50: New York (Napoletana or thin) crust, small (12) so lets see what this one brings us.
First, out comes the water and the warm rolls and foccacia. Then, my diet Coke is topped with lemon, something one usually must request. Nice touches.
Here come da Product. The house special is an elegant-looking pie, rimmed with an up-curled perimeter crust, in the quiche style. But this works. It is superior to, say, the puffy perimeter crusts like those filled with air found over to Harry's Pizza in West Hartford. And it is tasty, not bland like so many other edges.
The pie itself is covered but not overwhelmed by a blend of mozzarella, fresh hamburg, onions, green peppers, pepperoni, mushrooms, and sausage.
Our Eyeball rating: 19 on a scale of 20: way up at the top of the lists.
Other options include sun dried tomatoes, hot cherry peppers, potatoes, artichokes, bacon and (alas) pineapple. So this is a place for purist, dilettante/tourist, or plain ol' chow-hound.
They also offer white garlic pizza topped with basil and mozzarella and calzones. The menu also shows spinach as an option on the sheet pizza, so presumably one could get that on top of a small or large (16) pizza as well.
Digging into it: the crust itself is not passing any Wedge Tests, but holds up well enough under the sauce, which is sweet and hit with piquancy, and the rest of the groceries. The emphasis here is on top, the goods. Crust is a palette, and crunching the rim, we see it has flavor. The under-pie crust is the thin style, yet up to holding firmly the aces in hand. Its not a knife-and-fork overloaded pie, rather a tidy handful.
Flavor: our delivery of the goods rating: Again on a scale of 20, this pizza is a solid 15, arguably 16.
I don't like hitting a pie with that pre-grated Parmesan cheese but did so here plus a bit of that red pepper found in the shaker, just to give it a bit more pop. But that is a personal preference which is not meant to denigrate the Amici pizza in any real way.
In the world of pizza, the Dons of Pie are considered to dwell only on Wooster Street or in one of the Havens: west, new or east.
However, a first-rate Wethersfield edge-wedge experience draws us to a conclusion that we must now include Don Amici as yet another pizzaouli cognoscenti. Tel: 860 529 8825.
Next issue! ConnectiCrust to venture to Old Saybrooks upscale Alforno to report - Should price be a consideration in pizza pie evaluations? Can Alforno withstand the withering Price Test?