Review #9: Sorrento ’s
– Margherita Pizza – $19
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| This is a serious sports bar! |
I hear that Taste of Cincinnati is
the official kickoff of summer in Cincinnati . I’m debating on grabbing the foods that one
best of awards and doing a blog post for this event. Hopefully some people will enjoy seeing some
of the things they missed. The only
problem is I’m still 8 weeks behind on my posts. Fail!
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| Mmm...greasy, greasy garlic bread. |
For this week I have my first pizza
place of the year, Sorrento’s. It took 9 weeks for me to finally get into
going to a pizza place. I had to clean
out my system from doing all those damn burgers
last year. You can find Sorrento ’s
in Norwood off of Montgomery rd a bit north of the Norwood
Lateral. They are a well established
place dating back to 1956. They also
serve a few of the classic Italian dishes that you’d expect. Their website says that they have been mentioned
in tons of new articles and have won several awards for best pizza. I had been extremely busy and trying to meet
up with a vegetarian friend of mine and managed to make it out on Thursday,
March 1st. The first thing
you notice inside the building is that it was empty. I don’t know if there was something awesome
happening elsewhere that night but it was eerily quiet, with only one patron at
the massive bar. You’ll also notice that
they are insane about their local sports including Red’s baseball and softball. This place is a sports bar with a lot of tv’s
and trophy’s, but if that’s your thing I will add that it really has that
community feel that you are lacking from chain restaurants. It is definitely one of a kind and they seem
like the kind of people that would get to know your name if you went a couple
times. If you are curious as to what the
other pizza places are see the list
here.
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| 12" Margherita Napoletana pizza. |
From the menu you can see that pizza is
their specialty. Since I was training
for the flying pig half marathon in March I was craving carbs, so I asked the
lone waitress what her favorite things on the menu were. She was a fan of the garlic bread with a side
of spaghetti sauce (5$). This was a
house made hoagie bun with cuts on the top loaded with butter and garlic awesomeness. I also really like their homemade sauce
that’s just the right amount of sweetness to it. The specialty pizzas and sandwiches are made
after Cincinnati sports figures and natives
(Since I grew up in Wisconsin ,
I admit that I had cheat here and had to google this one). The make their own sauce, bread, Italian
sausage, mortadella, and “secret dressing”.
The pizzas include the Pizza Bianca (Ala Greg Cook) which is your
typical white pizza, the Enrico (Named after their dad) which is a sausage,
pepperoni, veggie, and the Home Run (Ala Pat Tabler) which is pep, sausage,
bacon lots of veggies, extra cheese and extra sauce. The home run sounds great to me, but since my
friend is a vegetarian most of the time, the waitress suggested the Margherita
Napoletana (Queen of Italy) pizza. A
medium 12” margherita pizza (19$) has slices of tomato, garlic, oregano, olive
oil, 3 cheese and “secret ingredients”.
I’m always a fan of a margherita pizza and this one didn’t disappoint on
taste, with great tomatoes and something in the cheese or secret ingredients
that made it really good. One of the main things that makes the difference in a pizza crust is having it charred on the bottom, which chain places with assembly lines do NOT have. The oregano,
on the other hand, was dry oregano and didn’t blend in with the pizza’s
flavor. Fresh oregano would have
had a more pronounced flavor. Another thing is, after working in the pizza
industry for 4 years, I have been known to take down an entire 12” pizza in one
sitting, and then some. This price for a
small pizza with dry oregano on it kinda irritates me. I went to many other places (A Tavola, Newport pizza, Pomodoris) with fresh, exotic ingredients that weren’t
chains and shopped local, and at every one of them I still paid less than
Sorrento’s, so they get low marks for price.
While this is a pizza experience to
put in the books as very tasty and community oriented, I don’t think I’ll be
making the trek back anytime soon, especially since there is a top 50 pizza
places list I have to try eventually. I
am so looking forward to going out for some awesome pizzas this year!
