#SNAPPY TOMATO NORTHSHORE HOW TO#

That prize is a Bal’s Special: Italian sausage, mushrooms, onions and black olives scattered across a lightly sauced crisp-as-all-get-out thin crust. The front stoop is rarely unoccupied by Tosans, who keep their eyes on the prize that awaits them once a table in this bustling, old-school ristorante opens up. Balistreri’s Italian – American Ristorante If you can see crust under big chunks of sausage and vegetables, you’re not at this Bay View institution. The pizza has a solid rim of breadiness, and it’s strong and on the thicker side of thin. The patrons seated around the bar finish each other’s thoughts, let alone sentences. Hold on, this is just pizza, right? Good pizza. The sausage makes savory breaks in the surface.

#SNAPPY TOMATO NORTHSHORE HOW TO#

They know how to do it up crisp and flaky, the melted cheese as smooth as a skating rink. Wells Brothers’ history dates to 1921, and descendants of the founders keep it all going, down to the thin-as-a-wafer pizza. Thin-crusting it down in Racine is not hard to do. To those who balk at the area-wide dominance of thin crust, the Pizza Men offer a limited amount of pan pizzas daily and deep-dish only on Mondays. The pizza is crisper, the toppings combined more creatively and tastefully than in days past. Both also have the same executive chef – Zak Baker – who has proven that the Pizza Man of North Avenue, pre-fire days, could evolve and flourish. That is the (very busy) Man at the Mayfair Collection, which mirrors its brother’s menu and has some physical similarities (the same architecture firm worked on each). The East Side location’s undisputed success inspired its owners to make a sibling. Pizza Man’s meatball thin crust pizza (left) and pear pizza on pan-style crust. With that, I default to meat-lover creations like the Satiricon Sausage, with feta, onions and peppers. It’s with its “traditional NY-style” (as they word it) pies offered by the slice – pieces as long as your forearm. Classic SliceĪlthough these days, the Bay View hipster pizza place is venturing deeper into vegetarian and vegan pizza territory, it’s not what I think Classic excels at. Can’t go wrong with sausage, (fresh) mushrooms, onions and green peppers. It’s brighter in that second-floor space than the tenebrous old days (thanks to a remodel a handful of years ago), and the firm thin crust still gets swiped with a thick, sweet tomato sauce and an application of toppings stamped with the classic label. I relive every early-life Lisa’s pie in my REM sleep.

Red wine not included, just highly recommended. Read carefully and make frequent stops so as not to miss key elements, including expounders on crust, toppings and frozen pies. Its consumption does not require coaxing. Because this most ubiquitous of foods is a close-to-godly food. Those words would never be used with respect to pizza. Have you ever been force-fed pizza? Decidedly not.

Snappy tomato northshore