Didja ever have to do a high school book report and kept putting it off cause you did not want to write it?
ALFORNO RISTORANTE and Brick Oven Pizzeria presented me with such a situation. Sure, the Old Saybrook address is nice... and Alforno's got a real brick oven... and the mavens at Connecticut Magazine rated it right behind the Powers of Wooster Street... Sure, this would a sensible, albeit pricey, place to check out for a ConnectiCrust review.
But, to sum up my experience:
The Greenwich yuppie-scum oriented Connecticut Magazine rates this place best in three counties, and raving: A perfectionist to the tips of his flour-covered fingers (Bob Zemmel, owner) has succeeded (with) his 10 1/2 foot diameter brick oven, stoked with fiery wood coals, (he) bakes a classic Neapolitan crust to perfection...the review team (being media-driven moronic followers). If only for the Scowlish zine reader and nothing else, we decide to motor the 40 minutes to the shoreline to order up a few.
Now, before you read the rest of the review, realize that we didn't get hurt there, we weren't angry when we arrived and the waitress, a brunette, was quite attractive. I just would not go back for seconds. Here's the experience:
We order up the some ten inchers: the Our Famous Pizza (tomato sauce, mozzarella and Romano cheeses, and olive oil, $6.95), the Pizza Margherita (fresh plum tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, mozzarella, Romano cheese, and olive oil, $9.95), and a couple of standard mixed pies: a mushroom and pepperoni and another with sausage, peppers, and mushrooms for around $10 each.
When I learned they had both red and green peppers, I had them put half green, half red on one of the units.
A plus: unlimited soda for the price of one. So I drank three. That's what I got to write home about.
The pies came, were eaten, and we left. No one commented on the pie, although Karen, who knows of my Wedge Test (if the wedge doesn't sag and the groceries don't droop off the slice, it passes) noted her Famous Pizza wedge failed the wedge test spectacularly. One of the other pies passed.
And zounds, one arrived with mushrooms and peppers, not pepperoni. (She's pretty but do both ears work?) Offers to re-do it were made. We did not bother.
The Pizza Margherita was totally unexceptional, and did not represent the three Italian flag colors that the Pizza Margherita is known for: white (cheese) red (tomato sauce and tomatoes) and green (basil or whatever). It was all off-white with a splotch here and there connoting, I suppose, where the tomato was buried under the Cheese Sea.
On the other end of the table, the Our Famous Pizza was very flavorful, a lively slice with nuance and subtlety. OH! Please excuse me for using such terms to describe dough topped with vegetable and animal by-products. Is it not unlike the East Side snob describing unbalanced wines thus... limaceous, but certainly not gelogenic (Pardon me, George Plimpton, or it is Bill Buckley?)
The red and green pepper and sausage pizza: the half with green peppers looked like I forgot to mow my lawn, then fired up the Deere and went out and harrowed it two weeks later, resulting in great gobs of green clumps all over. The pie was entirely smothered (like totally obscured, man) in green peppers, and not particularly tasty peppers at that. It looked like a Popeye Spinach Festival gone drunk and disorderly.
Whereas, the red pepper side was dead-on, just right. Flavorful, ripe, juicy even, and just enough to add that j-o-t! any pie pro (aka pizzauoli) needs from peppers on a pie.
And oh by the way, you will notice, if you look toward the restaurants back end where the open kitchen and ovens reside, a dolphin-like bit of neon art on the wall. Its the artistry of Mundy Hepburn, a local and a nephew of the famed actress, K a t h e r i n e.
The ace pal Colonel K. Spartez said of it: weird shit, eh? A pithy man known to enjoy a glass of lager, the Colonel was in Connecticut to do pie in between insurrections -- banana republics being at peace at this moment in South and Central American history.
So we did the pizzas. We downed extra cola. The Colonel did some brews. Our waitress expected left-overs. The woman could not know our Lifes Motto: Huge volumes of pizza is never too much! So there were none. We paid the bill. We went our ways. Ob-bla-de, life goes on.
Eyeball scale: low, maybe 11 (out of possible 20).
Gustatory scale: OK, a 15 or so.
Alforno.. You're in Old Saybrook or Old Lyme or egad, Westbrook, and you need quality fare, motor over to 1654 Boston Post Road (Rte. 1) in Old Saybrook. Its on the southern end of that fine town, toward Madison and New Haven. Tel 860 399 4166.
You wont be disappointed if, unlike me, you ain't read the hype in that magazine. Its quality and it may even be worth the price, but you wont go out of your way to return here.
So... why did I write such a column, you ask? Well, where else will a man get to use the term egad since I no longer speak to George Plimpton?