Piro's pizzas, salads make the cut

Piro’s Caprese Salad is a salad, not just sliced mozzarella, tomato and basil.
Piro’s Caprese Salad is a salad, not just sliced mozzarella, tomato and basil.

While pizza has proliferated like, well, pizza across the landscape, until fairly recently actual Neapolitan-style pizza was hard to come by around here.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Marinated olives at Piro range in size from peanuts to bird eggs.

Just to refresh your memory, true Neapolitan-style pizza (as defined by the official-certifying Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) requires that the dough for the thin crust be kneaded and formed by hand and made with only four ingredients -- flour, fresh (not dry) yeast, water and salt with all-fresh toppings (tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and extra-virgin olive oil), baked on the stone floor of a wood-fired oven at a minimum of 800 degrees.

Piro Brick Oven & Barroom

Address: 1318 S. Main St., Little Rock

Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday

Cuisine: Neapolitan-style pizza, sandwiches, salads

Credit cards: V, MC, D, AE

Alcoholic beverages: Full bar

Reservations: No

Wheelchair accessible: There’s a pretty big step up into the historic building front

Carryout: Yes

(501) 374-7476 (PIRO)

pirolr.com

The pizza was always one of Bruno's Little Italy's claims to fame. (The Bruno family, which derived from Naples, has always claimed to have introduced pizza to America in 1903, two years before the delicacy's generally acknowledged arrival on these shores.) But Bruno's and its pizza were out of commission between the restaurant's closing on Bowman Road in October 2011 and its reopening on Main Street downtown in October 2013.

In just the past few months, the number of local places serving Neapolitan-style pizza has tripled. Late last year, we got The Pizzeria @ Terry's Finer Foods in Little Rock's Pulaski Heights (putting out near-perfect pies in an oven they brought across the pond from Naples at great expense of money and time). And last month we got Piro Brick Oven & Barroom. (That's pronounced PIE-ro, as in pie, not PEE-ro.)

The name is a pretty good description of what you'll find in the South Main storefront (on the same 1300 block with South on Main and Midtown Billiards, between which it fits comfortably in terms of level of cuisine).

Back in the kitchen, out of sight but not out of mind, is the brick pizza oven. Out front, the brick-foundation bar occupies almost two-thirds of the dining room space, but is so well integrated into the total decor that it's not particularly intrusive on the dining experience.

A lot of thought and effort has gone into making customers feel right at home; we sure did.

Seating is at banquette tables opposite the bar, with bench seating on one side and red plastic bucket chairs on the other. There are a couple of elevated tables at the back end of the long room that could be an extension of the bar or an "L" off the dining space. The decor is mostly in earth tones except for the mirrored quasi-windows on the gray-painted wall on the room's north side.

Though Piro's primary presentation is as a pizza place, pizza is only one, and not the largest, menu element: eight specialty pies, with no create-your-own option. The menu also features seven gourmet appetizers, a handful of high-end salads, four sandwiches and some pretty fancy desserts.

The pizzas are approximately 14 inches in diameter with a firm slightly crisp crust. Five of them come with a tangy pomodoro tomato sauce; toppings range from a fairly simple Pepperoni ($15) to the rather elaborate Gorgonzola (also $15, made with gorgonzola dolce and mozzarella cheeses, fingerling potato, radicchio and olive oil) and the H.A.M.Cetta ($17), topped with pancetta, smoked chilies, "farm eggs," pecorino cheese, arugula and olive oil.

We remained in the middle and had two first-rate pizza experiences.

We were so eager to dig into our Quattro Formaggi (mozzarella, pecorino, provolone and taleggio cheeses, $14) that we had practically inhaled a slice before we had the presence of mind to take a photo. We don't recommend you do that, by the way; the four melted cheeses are tongue-burningly hot and sloppy out of the oven.

However, waiting for the cheese to cool to edibility results in a bit of a race because, as is typical of this style of pizza, the moment it comes out of the oven, it starts to go downhill. (Initially, Terry's and Piro's weren't doing to-go pizza because that's reflected in travel time. Piro's now takes to-go orders without demur; Terry's requires that you order to-go on the premises so they can calculate exactly how long it will take and customers won't pick up a "dead" pizza.)

We were equally successful with the Salsiccia ($15), crumbled Piro's house-made fennel sausage with Peppadews, a tangy South African pepper that adds a nice contrasting sweetness, topping pomodoro sauce and mozzarella. Our only complaint: The toppings were spread a little unevenly over the surface, with patches of pizza that were either sparsely topped or not topped at all.

All of the appetizers we tried were winners as well. They're of good portion size and pretty filling, so unless you're with a large group or have an extraordinary appetite, we recommend being careful about ordering any of these plus a pizza.

The Meatballs ($8), half a dozen medium and coarse-ground spheres, about 90 percent beef and 10 percent sausage, come in a generous amount of thick marinara with a drizzle of melted cheese and some bread to dip up what's left behind. The meatballs are also available as a $10 sandwich, loaded on a baguette and topped with mozzarella.

Intrepid Companion was well pleased by the Beef Carpaccio, which costs the same as a pizza ($14) for a pretty decent portion of thin-shaved, slightly seasoned raw beef on a bed of arugula, topped with capers, truffle oil and shaved parmesan.

The marinated olives ($5) range in size from peanut to the eggs of a good-size bird, all with pits intact (so be a little careful biting down on them). It's a fairly big bowl and the olives taste mostly of olive and not so much of whatever they're marinated in.

We're not used to getting Eggplant Caponata ($7) warm, but that's how it comes out of the kitchen at Piro, chunks of seasoned eggplant with bits of onion and spices in a tomato paste-based sauce. Six toasted baguette slices (aka crostini) were inadequate to the task and we had to finish it with a fork.

Our excellent Caprese Salad ($8) was also a bit of a surprise, a full-size salad of local mixed greens tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette with some pale bits of tomato, basil and fresh mozzarella -- not sliced but shredded from balls -- with a balsamic vinegar drizzle.

Seeing as "barroom" is part of the title, it's not surprising that Piro has a long list of mostly craft beers, many of them on tap, chalked up on a behind-the-bar blackboard (between the two large flat-screen TVs). If you're not a beer drinker per se but want the experience, there's a $2 draft root beer served, as the beer is, cool but not cold, and not over ice.

Service was uniformly good to excellent over all our visits. Food came out of the kitchen fairly quickly (pizza takes about 10-15 minutes depending on how busy the place is). The staff is friendly and happy to answer questions; we were duly warned that the olives had pits and there'd be a charge for root beer refills.

Weekend on 03/26/2015

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