Pizza is tricky. Expectations are always high. If a new place opens in your neighborhood, you want it to be good because, well, it’s pizza, a required food.
The Neapolitan-style Grazie Grazie Pizza opened at 610 N. Coast Hwy in late March by chef Garrett Taormina and his family.
It’s required food.
At first, you might think it’s spartan – in fact, the whole place is a bit spartan – but don’t confuse spartan with tasteless.
The crust, the sauce, the ingredients, they all play nice together. Nothing overpowers, meaning you can slow down and differentiate the flavors while you eat.
The crust’s texture is surprisingly supple yet has backbone. It’s chewy in just the right way.
The sauce is light but substantial, providing enough of a platform for the other ingredients.
And the ingredients seem plucked from a nearby organic garden, fresh and flavorful.
While it might be anathema to say out loud, the pizza tastes like you’re eating healthy. Healthy pizza, but not in a bad way.
Now for the temporary bad news: no wine. You will have to bring your own chianti at least until mid-summer because they are still waiting for their permit. In the meantime, they won’t charge you a corkage fee.
Price-wise, the pizza size is a decent value, not too big but not too small and nothing more than $20. If you don’t want a full pizza, you can ask for their version of a slice. It’s about half the price and comes out to almost two regular slices.
We had the Bianco Verde pizza and the sausage pizza (and added pepperoni to make it like a combo). Both were very good. The pesto on the Bianco was actually a big dollop of pistachio pesto and honey, which elevated the richness without making it too sweet. We are looking forward to going back and trying some of the other pizzas.
It’s a somewhat limited menu, at least for now, but focus is a good thing.
