- Illustration: Mikey McKennedy
LIKE A MUTANT BALL of dough hyper-packed with yeast, pizzerias are quickly subsuming Portland. In the last year, no less than 10 new pizza joints—from high end to fast casual—have hung a shingle. It’s as if every spare restaurant space is being filled with crust, sauce, and marinara.
The city seems to be lapping it up: Each new spot has a healthy crowd, if not a line, most nights. But a wait for a table doesn’t mean they’re serving revolutionary fare (take most of Portland’s brunch restaurants, for example). Many of these places are mediocre stabs at the wood-fired trend, with a few uninspired swipes at New York style for good measure. Portland’s got enough of that already, and the overload is pushing the universe’s best anytime/anyplace food in the wrong direction.
Of the five or so wood-fired pizza places that have opened as of late, only one, Pizza Maria on SE Division, earns its accolades. The others are at best serviceable, and at worst, burned crackers or underdone sog-fests, where you wind up with a smaller pie that costs as much as a larger non-wood-fired one. It’s like the small-plates trend: Sometimes the dishes are great, but often they’re just high-priced, tiny portions. A trip for two to get pizza and beers shouldn’t cost $50-plus just because someone built a nice, hot fire.
“There are a lot of shitty wood-fired pizzas out there,” says Nicholas Ford, co-owner of PREAM, which is set to open this month on SE 11th and Grant. “It’s not just buying a nice oven and cooking a pizza.”
