You’ve heard it before, and you’ll be hearing it again: This pandemic is rough on business. It’s especially rough on small businesses, such as our favorite local restaurants.
Even the careful reopening of some sit-down dining options next month isn’t likely to restore full cash flow or anything like it. As much as I love dining out, I know I’m going to be wary at first. How about you?
But there’s one thing I can do — and you can too: Order food for curbside pickup or delivery from your favorite locally owned and operated eateries as often as you can. Every bit of business we can give them helps, so target your favorite locals as often as you can.
And once you have that delicious food safely home, spread the word! Head on to social media, post a picture and celebrate its deliciousness and how easy it was to acquire it.
That’s what I’m doing right now: I love MozzaPi so much! It’s kind of far out in the country for me, over the tracks on the far side of Anchorage, so to be honest I had put off a trip for a while. But too much is at stake now to hold back, so we put in an online order and headed out that way just the other day. The prize was a wonderful pizza, and I’m going to reheat and enjoy the rest of it just as soon as I get this written.
Ordering, by the way, is as simple as can be. Call up MozzaPi’s website, and you’ll see a button marked Order ToGo Online right there on the front page. Click it, and you’ll go straight to the Order for Pickup page where you can choose to order for now (head out, it’ll be ready in 15 or 20 minutes), or plan your pizza meal for another time soon. Fill in your credit card details, and your pizza is as good as on your table.
We got ours yesterday at midday, and the timing was so precise that when I rolled up and called in five minutes early, I learned that it was in the oven. “It’ll be ready in five minutes.” Right! And so it was. Owner Tom Edwards brought it out himself, waved and said howdy from a safe 10 feet or so and slid the box into the open hatch of our jalopy. He left, I got out and slammed the lid and away we went, home before it had even cooled off enough to need reheating.
To be on the safe side, I followed a careful procedure: Brought in the box, slid the pizza onto a clean plate with a spatula, then hustled the box out to the recycling scow. Came in, washed my hands for 20 seconds and sat down to enjoy.
It was every bit as good as I had hoped it would be. Edwards makes his crust from a careful blend of Italian Tipo 00 flour and artisanal flour made from organic ancient grains grown by Kentucky farmers and milled in-house. Yes, it’s that special. Pizzas are topped with quality ingredients and fired in a beautiful Le Panyol fired-clay wood oven from France wrapped in a shiny copper exterior. The wood fire turns the thin-crust pizzas into crisp, chewy Italian bread dotted with deliciously charred leopard spots that look as good as they taste.
Ten pizzas, all dinner-plate size, range in price from $8 (for a cheese and tomato sauce pie) to $12 (for seven of the pizzas, including such goodies as a spinach-and-mushroom vegan pizza or a Spanish chorizo pie made from sought-after Ibérico pork). Traditional pepperoni or sausage can be yours for $9 or $10, respectively, and you can add toppings to any pie for an additional $2.50 for a meat item, $1.50 for veggie additions.
We summoned a cheese pie with roasted red peppers and mushrooms added ($1.50 each) and got an excellent pizza, a thin, chewy base discreetly topped with good, sweet, textured homemade tomato sauce and creamy, molten mozzarella dotted with bits of grated yellow cheddar. Bite-size chunks of roasted pepper were sweet and tender; dark, shiitake-type mushrooms were meaty and loaded with umami. It all worked together beautifully, and it was hard not to eat it all in one sitting. Fortunately, I exercised willpower and now the rest of it awaits for my lunch. Yum!
Our pizza, by the way, came to just $11 plus tax. I let the computer calculate a 25% tip, but in retrospect, on a tab that light, I should have forgotten percentages and just dropped a fiver or more. Next time! •
MozzaPi Pizza 12102 La Grange Road 890-4832 mozzapi.com
