The first time we ate at Dough, Trav and Emily were visiting and Justin and Trav found it highly recommended on Yelp, or Urban Spoon, or some other food site. We drove out, put our name on the list and got our buzzer, then hung out and chatted and played iphone games for over an hour until our table was ready.
Pork Love Pizza
But upon sampling our appetizers, some freshly baked flatbread and some speidini (cheese, wrapped with proscuitto, then roasted), we knew that this was a meal worth waiting for. Justin and Travis decided to split a Pork Love pizza, topped with all sorts of proscuitto, ham, salami, etc, while Emily and I quickly agreed on sharing the classic Margherita pizza, topped simply with fresh mozzarella cheese and basil.
Margherita Pizza
Both were definite hits. The crust has a great flavor, and a good bite and chew. The 800+ degree wood-fired oven gives the pizza a great smoky dotted char, without going overboard. The center of the pizza tends to be a bit limp, mainly because of the extra water in the fresh cheeses, but this certainly wasn’t a big negative – the fresh cheese makes such a huge flavor difference that we can happily forgive a very slightly soggy first bite.
Burrata Caprese
Justin and I returned for a second visit yesterday, and again, were not disappointed with the food at all. We started with the Burrata Caprese appetizer, which was out-of-this-world delicious. Served with warm flatbread, the ball of cheeses in the middle was composed of freshly made mozzarella surrounding the creamiest blend of mascarpone and ricotta cheese, surrounded by heirloom tomatoes and drizzled with some delicious olive oil and balsamic vinegar. So so so so good!
Polenta Cake
When we had dinner with Trav and Em, we also ordered dessert. When we ordered the Polenta Cake, I expected to receive something dense, similar to a pound cake, but what arrived was so much taller, and so much lighter than that. The Vanilla Bean sauce and strawberry coulis paired beautifully with the sweet corn flavor of the cake, and it didn’t take long for us to gobble it up!
While we love the good New York-style pizza of Polito’s at home, we will miss this great, more traditional style pizza from Dough!
