Pi Day with Uncle Mario

Last Friday was March 14th, which meant it was Pi Day! We always try to make it out for dinner on Pi Day to grab some pizza to celebrate. Unfortunately our favorite neighborhood pizza spot had a line out the door by the time we arrived, so we went in search of another pizza joint. We ended up at Uncle Mario's, a Hell's Kitchen restaurant that we've walked by many times but have never visited.

A ordered a Peroni to relax after a long, hard week of work. As a beer it's not his favorite. He prefers bolder flavors and beers like IPAs, stouts, and porters. It was a refreshing enough beer, though.

We were pretty hungry and we figured that a fried appetizer would arrive much more quickly than a wood-fired pizza. So we ordered the fresh mozzarella fritte (lightly breaded ovoline medallions served with Uncle Mario's marinara sauce, $7.50).

The cheese itself was mild, but that's expected in fried cheeses. The sauce was full of flavor, and it made us excited to see what the pizza would be like. Fried cheese isn't the healthiest of appetizer options, but we always love eating it. It was little expensive for what it was (the whole menu was), but it was a good start and something we wouldn't make at home since we don't deep fry.

For our pizza, we opted for the Original Grandma special pie (thin crust square pie topped with fresh mozzarella and secret tomato sauce on a garlic bread crust, $22). We did realize during dinner that we were out celebrating Pi Day and did not get a round pizza, but in the end pie is pie.

If we were eating this pizza without the benefit of the menu description, we would probably think it was pretty good. The tomato sauce had good flavor and was rich with tomatoes and garlic. The fresh basil and mozzarella that topped the pie were good. The dough was pretty good, with a crispy crust and nice chewy inside pieces. Overall, it wasn't our favorite pizza, but it was pretty solid.

However, we were expecting a lot more, mostly from the crust. The menu said it was supposed to have a "garlic bread crust" so the first thing M did was cut off a piece of the crust by itself to try it. She expected it to taste like garlic bread. Like the stuffed crusts in all those pizza commercials on TV, she thought it would taste like garlic and butter and herbs. But it didn't. It was regular crust. Eating the pizza, you definitely tasted garlic, but it seemed like it came from the tomato sauce and had nothing to do with the crust. Not having a garlic bread crust was kind of disappointing. We also felt a little cheated since it was advertised as a special garlic bread crust and ended up being just a regular dough. It was part of the reason we thought the pie would be so special and why we ordered it.

We had a nice, relaxing Pi Day dinner at Uncle Mario's but it certainly hasn't replaced our favorite pizza spot in the area, Don Antonio (we're still working on a post about that one which we will hopefully share soon). Happy Pi Day!