Quartiere…Italian for “neighborhood,” “district,” or literally “quarter,” recently became an “adults only” restaurant as of January 2023. While that may sound naughty, it’s only because they want this joint to be a quality date spot without some bratty kids bringing da mf’n ruckus. Along with some great Italian dishes, they serve Artisan style personal size pizzas with dough made from imported Italian flour, mixed and then proofed for 24 hours. I went with the Margherita pie, which is not exactly like the typical cookie-cutter, wood-fired, Neapolitan pizzas that seem to be popping up everywhere. With minimal char and no crisp or crunch, the dough is super soft, particularly the mega doughy crust which seems to account for roughly 40% of the pizza! Plenty of fresh mozzarella in the middle, with decent flavor aided by some pecorino romana but the blend isn’t creamy at all; the melted cheese has sort of a plastic texture. To make matters worse, the sauce is virtually flavorless, with no sweetness or spice, just bland crushed tomato taste & texture. Lacking pizzazz in just about every ingredient aside from the cheese, which falls flat with no help from any of the other components, topped off by some pathetically wilted basil and a little drizzle of hard-to-detect extra virgin olive oil. Even though this is not a typical wood-fired Neapolitan pie, it might as well be when it comes to the soft texture. Lackluster sauce combined with dough in dire need of crisping and entirely too much crust leaves a ton of room for improvement. Their specialty pies might be better, especially if eaten on-site; and this seems like a pretty cool date spot but I’d pass on their pedestrian Margherita takeout pizza.
