Bravo! Pizzeria & Grill, Niagara Falls, Ontario

December has been a very busy month for the Pizza Geek, with less time for pizza exploration than I’d like, so for this post I’ll tell you about a place we visited back in August while on vacation in Canada. Choosing pizza when you’re traveling is risky. Finding reliable reviews online is often a shot in the dark. We were driving into Niagara Falls, Ontario and we noticed a large billboard advertising the wood-fired brick oven pizza at Bravo! Pizzeria & Grill. After checkin at the B&B, I spent some time looking for reviews online. Bravo! was fairly new (opened around July 2010) and didn’t have many reviews online, so I looked around a bit more. There was one pizza restaurant that had consistently good reviews, but those reviews came with warnings about the long lines. So, Bravo! and its wood-fired brick oven pizza won out.

This restaurant looked pretty good, with a nice street presence and nicely decorated interior. It was definitely a step up from the pizza places I usually review – more like the atmosphere of an Olive Garden.  But I’m not going to concentrate on the physical restaurant; this review is all about the pizza.

I ordered a Margherita, which is essentially a cheese pizza with a comparatively small amount of fresh mozzarella, and fresh basil. Usually, the basic allure of a wood-fired pizza oven is that the high heat and wood smoke give you a charred, crispy and flavorful crust in just a few minutes. In this case, the crust gave little evidence that would indicate anything unusual about its baking. It was browned, but not charred – even light in some areas. Also it was soft, somewhat chewy, dry and floury. Note also the rather substantial, thick rim. While not bad tasting, there was nothing memorable about the crust.

The sauce was rather dry, lightly spiced and generally plain. A little bit of fresh tomato flavor was evident. Cheese was a little salty, but generally OK. Basil was dark and shrivelled, indicating that it was applied before baking. It looks and tastes so much better to have generous portions of fresh basil leaves. I pointed out these problems to the cashier when I paid, and he seemed genuinely surprised: “Oh really? Usually everyone loves the Margherita!”

I’ve sometimes thought that restaurants in tourist areas don’t have to be very good, because every day brings a new crop of people into town that know nothing about them.

Tending the oven

Locals often eat elsewhere, away from the tourist traps. I don’t know anything about the other food at Bravo!, but I’m guessing that the pizza at this restaurant wouldn’t do very well in a “local” area. For a restaurant that sought to bring in customers by touting their pizza, they need to do a much better job. It was an entirely ordinary, average product, and the Pizza Geek gives it an ordinary, average rating of 3 out of 5 slices.

Summary – Pros: easy parking. Cons: dry, plain crust, shriveled basil, generally tasteless.

What do YOU think? Have you tried unknown pizza out of town? Were you happy or disappointed? Click the comment link below and tell us how it was!

Crust: ***
Sauce: ***
Cheese: ****
Toppings: **
Bang/Buck: ***
Overall:

Bravo! Pizzaria, 5438 Ferry Street, Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada – (905) 354-3354

Ohio City Pizzeria, Cleveland OH

Wait a minute, what’s Cleveland doing on the Syracuse Pizza Geek blog?  Bear with me, we’ll return to our regularly scheduled pizza reviews in just a moment.  On Columbus Day, a trip to Cleveland, Ohio found us sitting in a cozy bed & breakfast, feeling hungry, and looking online for pizza. The closest pizza shop was also the one recommended by our host – Ohio City Pizzeria. Ohio City is a very old (our B&B was built in the 1860s) section of Cleveland, just west of downtown and the Cuyahoga, and just south of the Cleveland Browns stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

My online search found very mixed reviews – the pizza is great, the pizza stinks. The delivery was prompt, the delivery took two hours. The order taker was rude, the order taker was friendly. We figured we had a 50/50 chance of success, so we ordered a medium (12″) pizza with pepperoni and green peppers on half ($11.75 plus tax), and a salad. Being too hungry to wait, we picked it up in about 20 minutes. It was a quiet Monday night, with nobody in the dining area.

I know absolutely nothing about Cleveland area pizza, and have no idea whether NY style or pan-baked pizza is the norm. Alas, this was a pan-baked pizza, and it had all of the typical pan characteristics – oily and spongy bottom, mottled browning pattern, fried dough texture and taste, and in this case, a very strong, “off” and unpleasant cooking oil taste. I still can’t put my finger on what else was wrong with the taste, but the dough recipe was not your typical pizza crust. It had some amount of “biscuit” quality, with less gluten characteristic (imagine what dough would be like with half of the flour replaced with Bisquik.) Even so, it would have been generally OK if it weren’t for the strong, “off” oil taste.

Sauce was pretty decent – a good amount of it, bright red with a slightly chunky texture, some fresh tomato taste, and a medium spice load. I even noted some large pieces of tomato skin. It was just a touch toward the salty side, though. Cheese was about average – slightly oily, and heavily browned on the cheese-only side, but generally OK. The pepperoni was good, the green peppers fresh and cut into small pieces.

Overall, this pizza did have some good things happening – pretty decent sauce, good cheese and toppings – but it was brought down by the weird oily taste on the crust. If it weren’t for that problem, it could have been a pretty reasonable 4 slice rated pizza. As it was, though, I have to drop it to a rating of 3 out of 5 slices.

Summary – Pros: good sauce, cheese, toppings. Cons: oily crust with “off” taste.

Crust: **
Sauce: ****
Cheese: ****
Toppings: ****
Value: ****
Overall:

Ohio City Pizzeria, 3223 Dorian Ave., Cleveland OH – (216) 281-5252