Pizzeria Paradiso is a Pizza Paradis-NO!

Over spring break, I coordinated with Adam P. (who is guilty of saying "za"...sigh) to have a "pizza happy hour" at Pizzeria Paradiso.

Pizzeria Paradiso has a reputation in DC as being "upscale" and "high quality" "artisan" pizza. They also have a great beer selection, and are somewhat beer-snobbish. I'm down with beer and pizza snobbery, to be honest. I like both of these things in both their highbrow and lowbrow forms. Anyhow, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Pizzeria Paradiso has a happy hour special where beers are half price, all appetizers are 5 dollars, and all pizzas are 9 dollars. Seemed worth checking out.

Upon actually arriving at Paradiso, however, I quickly realized something: while the beer special was indeed worthy, the pizza and appetizer specials were incredibly lame...for most of the pizzas, the special saved you between 35 cents and 1 dollar. Wooohooo! Thank God for the beer specials, otherwise I might have rolled my eyes and come back another day.

So, yes. As I said, Paradiso has this reputation for being snobby and excellent. But, I hate to say this...I wasn't impressed. There are several reasons for this, but I am going to outline the two major issues that I had.

1) The crust. I can appreciate regional variations on pizza. A New York style will be thin and floppy; a Chicago-style deep dish, yet still thin crusted, much like a pie; and Detroit will be a thicker deep dish and square in shape (caramelized edges, y'all.) But Paradiso didn't claim to have a regional style--they just claimed to have good pizza. In fact, according to their website, they claim that their main concern is the crust, "We opened Pizzeria Paradiso so we could make the kind of pizza we longed for but couldn't find in the DC area, the kind of pizza where the crust was the most important part."

Look, I agree. The crust IS the most important part. But Paradiso, if I may say so, your crust wasn't what I want in a pizza. Your crust was tasty, it's true. But it didn't seem like a pizza crust. The dish you served me tasted more like a foccacia--pillowy and thick and doughy. Very, very bread-like. Very, very heavy. Tasty, but not pizza. Very pizza-esque.

2.) The sauce. Paradiso also brags about their quality sauce which uses only imported tomatoes from Italy. When they say this on their website, however, I take it to mean that they only use that one type of canned tomatoes, not that the ONLY thing in their sauce is canned tomatoes. But, alack! That's what it tasted like: diced canned tomatoes spread on thick foccacia like dough. You're killing me Paradiso! I shouldn't be able to taste the metallic taste of tin can lingering in the sauce in every bite!


So, yeah. In my pizza quest, I won't be returning to Paradiso for their pizza alone any time soon. Maybe I'll return for the beer though. Maybe.