You know that saying, you never really miss something until it’s gone? That’s kind of like me and pizza. I’d always been pretty neutral about it, but since we moved here I suddenly want it at least once a week.
Not just any pizza, though. The recent Pizza Renaissance in Dallas spoiled us with thin-crust, brick-oven pizza, so that’s become our standard. (Well — my standard. Crayton will really eat anything with cheese.) After trying most of the Argentinean places in our neighborhood, and a few spots in Roma, we found one restaurant that passed the test: Berretín on Rio Lerma.
The pizza there — pic above — is cooked in a huge oven at the front of the store. Not sure if it’s wood- or coal-fired, but it creates a crackly, crisp crust, which is doused in a slightly sweet tomato sauce, a handful of cheese, and then — in my favorite version — strips of jamon serrano and arugula. After that, they drizzle the entire thing with olive oil.
At first, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit, we weren’t sure whether to tell anyone else about the pizza there, because we weren’t sure it was as good as we thought. What if our time in Mexico City had lowered our pizza standards? But my dad, an unbiased party visiting from the U.S., recently endorsed it, too. And a few of our Mexico-dwelling friends love it.
Now that my pizza restaurant craving is temporarily taken care of, I find myself dreaming of a pizza stone, so I can make my own crackly-crust pizza at home. The question is how to haul it back from the U.S. in my luggage. Or Maybe Wal-Mart might have one.