While shopping on Walnut St. on Saturday, my friend and I decided to give Pietro's Coal Oven Pizza place in the 1700 block a try. First the bad news... The place is real noisy. It has beautiful tin ceilings and hardwood floors, and the furninshings are wrought iron. But there is nothing to baffle the sound. It was hard to carry on a conversation with the person next to you over the kitchen noise and the din of the other diners. Secondly, they do not take credit cards. We just assumed that being in Center City and on tony Walnut St., that all establishments would take them. Wrong. I had to get up from the table when I received the check to visit the Mac machine outside. Thirdly the service was ditzy. The waiter tried to explain the specials but didn't know the names of any of the pasta he was trying to describe. He would say things like, "You know, the curly ones..." My friend had 3 beers and on each one the waiter had to be reminded to bring it. But now the good part. The food was excellent. I had a beautifully presented arugula salad with roasted peppers and shaved mozzarella cheese. The dressing was light and on the sweet side to tame the tartness of the arugula. It was a large portion at only $5.95. My friend had a Romaine salad with olives, capers, anchovies, and peppers. He said it was so good, he'd go back just for that. They had lots of pasta and meat entrees, but since it is officially a pizza place, we diecided to stick with that. I had a spinach pie. To me, the crust was superb. Very thin and crisp even in the center. And it had that slight charred taste that I like from where it sits on the bottom of the oven. The cheese was high quality and melted evenly across the top. And you could tell the spinach was fresh, not the chopped frozen kind. My friend had pepperoni and roasted peppers. Equally good. We had individual pies which were $8.95 each. A little pricey for pizza but they were more than we could eat, and the quality was definitely there. I'd go back.
Pizza