Sweet Home Chicago Pizzeria

Somewhere in the depths of this blog is an entry about a new (at the time) pizza place I had read about and wanted to try.  I wrote added that entry back in September of 2006.  Believe it or not I finally made it to this place.  I guess there is something to be said for a pizza place that has the staying power to still be in business over 3 years later.

I went there with my brother, who tends to the person that is most often with me when trying out new places, especially pizza places.  He was adamant that we get their stuffed crust pizza.  Lucky for us it was a Tuesday night and the Tuesday night special was buy one pizza, get one free.  Pizza one: stuffed crust with sausage and onions.  Pizza two: thin crust with 1/2 pepperoni and 1/2 cheese.

The pizza wasn’t anything that made me put it on my list to get back to anytime soon.  First up was the stuffed crust.  And based on the difficulty of even finding it on their menu board, obviously it is an after thought. A couple layers of their standard crust and some of their standard pizza sauce slathered across the top.  And really heavy.  The toppings were hard to discern in the gobs of cheese on it. My expectations weren’t high on the stuffed crust to begin with and this met them.

While we were eating my brother brought up a good point.  If you go to a Chicago pizza place anywhere outside of Chicago, what kind of pizza do you expect to get?  Not sure about the rest of you, but I definitely expect deep dish.  So either you are a Chicago-style pizza place serving deep dish or you are a pizza place with some really good thin crust pizza.  Why confuse customers by claiming a tie to Chicago and then pushing your speciality as thin crust pizza?   Doesn’t make any sense.  Seems to me that one of the fundamental rules of business is to not do anything that will confuse your customers any more than necessary.  If you are pizza place and you have to justify, on your menu, why your speciality is thin crust pizza because your name has Chicago in it, then change the name.

The thin crust did have some merit.  A cracker-y crust with some straight up sauce and toppings.  If I go back I will stick with that and stay away from the stuffed crust.

Sweet Home Chicago Pizzeria
1442 E. Draper Parkway
Draper, UT 84020
801-545-0455
web: http://www.sweethomechicagopizzeria.com/
on Google maps

Carol’s Pastry Shop

Just last week I read about Carol’s in an article on the Best of Utah 2009 in City Weekly. Surprisingly, I had never even heard of the place. But having been there now I can see why it might have escaped my attention.

The article in City Weekly claimed they have the best eclairs in Utah, so I put it on my list of places to visit when I had the chance. Fortunately, just yesterday we had to take a trip to the doctors office up in this part of Salt Lake and that provided the perfect opportunity to stop and validate City Weekly’s claims.

Approaching this place from the street for the first time could leave people wondering if they have the right address. The street (Lincoln St, e.g. 945 East) is a residential street in one of Salt Lake’s older neighborhoods (with lots of great bungalow and craftsman style homes).

When you get to the right house number, all that is there is a house. Running along the north side though is an alley way and mounted on the fence is an unobtrusive sign that says “Carol’s in rear” with an arrow pointing down the alley.

With some trepidation we started down the alley, and discovered behind house what looks like someone’s carport. Except that as you can see in the photo, there is a van parked in the carport that says “Carol’s Pastry Shop” on the side. A dead giveaway that a bakery is near.

In this picture (sorry about the quality, all I had with me was my phone) back behind the van in the corner is the actual entrance to this place. At this point I was thinking either I’ve somehow ended at their wholesale location or if this is the entrance and they’ve managed to stay in business for the decades they have, there must be something good here.

Turns out this is the entrance. There is a good sized production bakery in this building with a small retail counter and a couple display cases in front.

Our visit was late in the day and when I asked for some eclairs the gentleman helping said they were out for the day. Oh so disappointed. But he followed that disappoint with this, “…unless you want the big ones.” It took me about 3 seconds to think, “eclairs = good; bigger = better.” And so I said, “I’ll take them.” All of them, I’m thinking, which turned out to be five. Turns out they had some small lemon ones left as well so I got four of those as well.

I feel bad, because as I was ordering two other guys walked in. One of them even asked if was taking the last of the eclairs. Sorry, didn’t mean to ruin your night. The eclairs were good. 1950s era bakery doing old-fashioned style eclairs. Vastly different that the one I had Bouchon Bakery in Yountville several years ago, or from the Bakeri and Eis shop up at Zermatt Resort in Midway, but for what it was, very good. I had another one today, making it a day old. I think there were even better at the end of day two.

I’d like to go back sometime and get there earlier in the day to see what they have and try some of the other things they sell besides eclairs.

Carol’s Cake and Pastry Shop
1991 Lincoln Street
Salt Lake City, UT

Best Eclairs in Utah?

City Weekly’s gave this the Best Eclairs designation in their 2009 Best of Utah. Since I have a daughter who loves eclairs, putting this one in the queue to try when the time is right and I’m in the neighborhood.

From City Weekly…

Carol’s Cakes

Carol, Schmarol … this hidden-away place in Sugar House is operated by Al, Bob and Jeff Walkenhorst–three guys who know their eclairs. And anyone who’s tried baking them know there is an art to whipping up the perfect pte choux, the pastry shell that has to be baked hot and high so it doesn’t deflate and leave no room for that heavenly filling. So Bob and Jeff have learned a thing or two over the years (the bakery has been around for decades). It’s obvious from looking at all their offerings, they’re perfectionists. But those dang eclairs–they’re impossible to resist.

1991 S. Lincoln St., Salt Lake City, 801-484-3442

Este Pizza – Downtown Salt Lake City, UT

I’ve been to Este before and written about it in the past. But it has been a long time since my last visit and it was at their other location. Recently I took the other brother to this new downtown location. It was his first visit to any Este location and my first visit to this new location.

Purely by coincidence I ended up eating here twice in the last week or so. A dinner during the week and then lunch on Saturday. Este still rates as some of the best pizza that I’ve had here in Utah and even outside of Utah. Highly recommended as a New York-style thin pizza and well worth the visit whether in downtown Salt Lake City or down in Sugarhouse at their location just off 21st South.

156 East 200 South
Salt Lake City, UT 84101

Beyond Glaze Donuts

I read about this place earlier in the week in the Salt Lake City Weekly newspaper that my other brother and I picked up at Moochie’s. It was City Weekly’s annual best of Utah edition and this was in some category related to donuts.

Every donut starts as a glazed donut and then Beyond Glazed adds the toppings to it. In the picture there is a cherry chocolate, key lime pie, cookies and cream, and s’mores.

After cutting these up and letting everyone in my family try a couple bites of each flavor, the consensus was that key lime was the most flavorful. For me, the s’more tasted mostly like chocolate. The cherry chocolate was good, although I’d love to try just a plain cherry.

They had a slew of other flavors that I didn’t try on this first visit: pineapple, blueberry, caramel apple, chocolate ganache, one with mango, peanut butter, chocolate and peppermint, and chocolate. They also told me that they use real fruit in all their fruit-flavored toppings. The four I bought came to $1.00 each.

It is definitely worth a return visit when I’m in the neighborhood.

Beyond Glaze
177 West 12300 South
Draper, UT

Moochie’s

Moochie’s
Originally uploaded by ninetreats

Recently covered on the Food Network show “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Drives. My brother and I went here for the first time last week. It is a small place with a set of sandwiches and salads. They are famous for their philadelphia style cheesesteak and meatball sandwiches.

I went for the classic cheesesteak which included onions, and also added mushrooms and tomatoes. The bread was crusty, the filling was hot and gooey and dripped all over the place, including the front of my shirt. And it was all good. I’d like to go back and try their pizza cheesesteak which includes pepperoni and mozzarella and housemade marinara sauce. It is definitely worth a return visit.

Moochie’s Meatballs & More!
232 East 800 South
Salt Lake City, UT

http://www.moochiesmeatballs.com/

Emigration Market’s wood-fired pizza

Several months ago my brother and I went to Emigration Market. It is a neighborhood grocery store in Salt Lake City on the corner of 1700 S and 1300 S. It has obviously been there for quite awhile. It is a pretty typical market, but you can tell they have started to take up the trend of local and artisan made products. Along with all their typical grocery items they feature a lot of Utah produced products. And their bakery seemed to be a step above a typical grocery bakery. The thing that piqued my interest was some signs they had up advertising a restaurant that they were building in front of the store. It had claims of wood-fired pizza and other things. And then I kind of forgot about it.

Wood-fired pizza by itself is almost always enough to get me to eat at a place. Unfortunately Emigration Market very strongly made the argument that just because you have a wood-fired pizza doesn’t mean you can produce good pizza.

Last week sometime I saw an ad that reminded me about the restaurant that Emigration Market was building. So my two brothers and I decided to give it a try.

The restaurant itself is essentially a large covered porch on the front the store, which makes it a really nice place to go on warm sunny spring day in Utah. There wasn’t too much of a crowd there at lunch time in the middle of the week. We had a nice table right next to the outside of the restaurant taking full advantage of the spring weather.

The first warning sign came when we picked up the menu. As hoped, the wood-fired pizza was there. So was sandwiches, hamburgers, appetizers, soup and calzones. It is hard enough to produce good food when you focus on a few things. It gets even harder when your menu is spread across so many kinds of food. I believe you should pick few things and do them well, not many things and not so well.

As we almost always do when trying a new pizza place, we ordered our with half cheese and half pepperoni. In addition we also ordered their bruschetta appetizer. And it was only downhill from this point on.

The pizza came out first. To quote one of my brothers “this just proves that cooking method doesn’t guarantee a good pizza.”

To quote my other brother, “this is like a frozen pizza from the grocery store.”

And then the bruschetta reinforced the quality of pizza. The bread was soft, hardly any crunch, the cheese they put on it wasn’t still cold, even though they’d made some attempt to melt it. And there was ham. Ham. Ham on bruschetta. It may happen somewhere, but never when I’ve had bruschetta before.

Emigration Market I would recommend as a local grocery store that has an emphasis on Utah produced foods. Their restaurant on the front end, is not worth the visit for pizza. I would pick Papa John’s for pizza over theirs. That doesn’t speak to everyone thing else on their menu so there is still a glimmer of hope.

Emigration Market
1706 E 1300 S
Salt Lake City, UT 84108

map

Big City Pizza?

Last fall I wrote my impressions of Big City Soup. It was good then. I have been back several times since then. It is still good. They have figured out how to make soup. But I write today with both trepidation and excitement.

First, the trepidation. When an establishment figures out how to do something well and convinces a large enough audience of that fact (that they do it well), I’m always nervous if they try to expand to something else. There is the risk of the owners and staff losing their focus and having too many things to occupy their attention and then you no longer have one thing done really well, but two things that are just alright. Always a risk when resources are limited.

On the other hand, once someone has figured out to do something really well, there are traits and lessons learned and other things that can be applied and the argument could be made that if they figured out the first thing, then they should also be able to figure out the second.

Enough of my vague ramblings. I was out walking today in downtown Salt Lake, stretching my legs and clearing my head. I ended walking past the main location for Big City Soup and noticed a sign that they have posted in the window next door to their current spot. It said:

Big City Pizza
Coming in April

So, my trepidation for fear they will lose the focus on making good soup, and my excitement that there is another local, non-franchised pizza place opening here. A visit is in order once they’ve actually opened their doors.

East Coast Subs

…recently opened very close to where I work. I had initially intended to wait several weeks before my first visit. Unfortunately circumstances arose that required me to get a quick lunch one day during their opening week and its convenience factor overrode my intentions.

I walk past it at least twice a day coming to work and going home from work, so I’ve been watching the progress ever since they put their “Coming Soon” sign up several months ago. Shortly after the first “Coming Soon” sign went up I tried to find out more about it, which was not that easy.

It sometimes amazes me how difficult it is to find information online about some companies, especially retail ones. In this particular instance I did the first thing I always do when I want to learn more about a new place. I did a Google search for East Coast Subs Salt Lake to see what would come up. I don’t remember the particulars, but it seems like I had to make several subsequent, less specific searches to find out anything about it. I probably tried a second search using terms like East Coast Subs Utah.

Point 1: do what you need to to make your business easy to find online.

When I finally did find them it was on another site like CitySearch or one of many local directory sites where you are in essence part of a big online phone directory. A lot of these sites provide the opportunity for people to post reviews or comments about a business and provide some kind of rating. When a business does this they are letting the conversation and perception of their business reside in someone else’s control.

There will never be a way to prevent reviews about your business showing up online, but if you at least have your own site on the web, you can present your side of the story, without that you aren’t even part of the conversation.

Point 2: Always tell your side of the story, somewhere, preferably on a web site you control.

Fortunately for East Coast Subs, most of the reviews were positive and it sounded like they had a customer base that likes there product and continues to come back and eat there. So at this point I had some anticipation and was looking forward to trying it.

Again, I really wanted to give them a few weeks to get the operational kinks worked out, but ended eating there the second or third day they were open. The experience overall was good, but now that I’ve been there a couple times since they’ve opened I’ve noticed the same problem both times.

Their ordering process involves someone on staff greeting you at the counter to get the particulars of your order. The way they do this is on a laminated card. It has several lines on it and on each line the staff writes the name of your sandwich down and then checks off the different toppings you either want or don’t want on the sandwich.

The problem I’ve noticed both times is that each sandwich has a different set of standard toppings listed on their menu and so each time I’ve ordered, the person taking my order has had to refer to a separate cheat sheet and the custom-tailor the questions they ask me about which toppings I want on my sandwich. Just adds a little confusion to the process.

Point 3: If I ever own a sandwich shop, standardize the topping list for every sandwich and then the staff only has to deal with exceptions (or provide a lot of training on the products).

On both my visits the food has been good and other than the slightly confusing order process, everything else has been good. I will continue to eat there, because ultimately, restaurants are all about the food and processes can always be improved or changed.

East Coast Subs
about 67 East Broadway (300 S.)
Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Settebello Napoletana Pizza

I caught the smell of wood smoke half a block away as I was walking to this new little pizza place in downtown Salt Lake. My visit this week was the result of another walk I had taken on a week or two earlier.

Most afternoons I need some time to get out of my office and stretch my legs out and breath some fresh air. I am usually surprised at how much ground I can cover walking around downtown Salt Lake on a 15 minute break from work. A week or so ago as I was heading home from work, driving past one of my favorite downtown restaurants, Red Rock Brewery, and I noticed a very unassuming new sign painted along the top edge of the brick building immediately south of Red Rock. At the time, being in the car, I couldn’t really figure out what it was, but you could see the chairs and tables through the windows.

Several days later, that chance sighting turned my feet in that direction while I was out for a quick walk one afternoon. Walking past, I had one more piece to the puzzle. The name on the sign — Settebello. Back in my office I did a quick search for Settebello online and could only find a web site for a pizza restaurant outside of Las Vegas in Henderson. No mention of another location, not even a coming soon teaser.

That same evening as my brother drove out of town on our way home, I drove past the place again to show it to him and this time there was a big white banner strung across the trees in front of the restaurant. It was simple and to the point, black letters on a white background proclaiming “Wood-fired Pizza, Now Open.” The was all I needed. Wood, fire and pizza all in the same context and I’m sold. That was last week.

We scheduled our visit for this week on Thursday. While highly interested in anyone cooking pizzas in a wood-fired oven, my expectations were somewhat tempered by the fact that I knew they had just opened the week before and I assumed that would still be working on some of the kinks and getting settled into a routine with a new place and new employees.

Typically my eating experiences are with my brother whose office is close to mine. This time my parents and another brother joined us for lunch. So it was a group of five at Settebello.

The initial impression as a patron is a little weak. As you walk up to the door there is a little hesitation, because it feels kind of like you are coming in the side door instead of the main entrance. Though small and not particularly welcoming the front door leads into a wide open space with a strategically placed hosting podium right in front of you once you get inside. Off to your right is the simple kitchen with a small looking wood-fired brick oven in the corner. The smoke-y smell comes on even stronger inside the restaurant, but fortunately, there wasn’t any smoke with the smell. It’s nice that you can see the pizzas and burning wood right as you enter. Immediately to the right is a large open space that you can tell they haven’t really decided what to do with yet. At the moment there are chairs lining two walls for people waiting and then a big dead space in the middle. All the seating is off to the left from the front to the rear of the restaurant.

We had a table in the back. The menu is filled with 5-6 appetizers — salads, bruschetta, etc. — and the pizzas. And drinks on the back. The pizzas are the obvious focus. All of them come in a 12″ size and are served on a plate, uncut. The first couple are the base pizzas, either a marinara or a margherita. They sounded more a less the same, except the marinara didn’t have any cheese on it. From there you could build your own on top of one of the basics or pick one of their pre-built ones farther down the page.

It’s my opinion that if you run a pizza restaurant and you can’t get a cheese pizza right, then nothing else is going to be right. So on a first visit I almost always order a cheese pizza — in this case the margherita. The pizza came as promised with crushed tomatoes, fresh buffalo milk mozzarella, and some fresh basil sprinkled across the top. There is not a question about the quality of the pizza, it is some of the best I’ve had in Utah. The crust was nicely charred, the tops of the crust bubbles a rich dark brown. The only complaint I have is that you can tell they are still working on getting the right oven temperature. The cheese had started to melt, but they had to pull it out of the oven too quickly to keep the crust from burning and the cheese wasn’t fully melted. That is the only complaint I had though. The service was attentive and overall it was a good experience.

It is definitely worth several return trips to see how it is after they have worked out some of the new restaurant kinks. Our server also told us they are still looking for the right person to head up their dessert making, so no desserts on the menu yet. And there were several items on their menu that I wanted to go back and try now that they’ve proven themselves with the basic cheese pizza.

Settebello
260 South 200 West
Salt Lake City, UT
801-322-3556

www.settebello.net