by David & Susan Greenberg
Ted Lasso’s Dani Rojas says that “Futbol is life.” We understand the sentiment but cordially disagree. Futbol (i.e., soccer) is not really a sport. It’s an activity designed to make parents stand outside in the pouring rain on weekend mornings watching their kids scamper about in the mud with a ball. Really, how life-affirmative is that? And does soccer include melted cheese? No. What Rojas really meant to say is, “Pizza is life.”
Although causality is unproven, earth’s recent fall in glacier mass mysteriously correlates with a rise in serious pizza-levels . Like a teeter-totter, one balances out the other so, thank goodness, earth’s equilibrium is maintained. Eating serious pizza, therefore, is good for the planet and one has a moral obligation to do so. Months ago in Jacksonville, Oregon we had a life-altering pizza flavored with saffron, wild shrimp, cherry tomatoes, and rocket. We, mere JV players, make a pizza with pork belly and artichoke hearts that we’re pitching for the Nobel Prize. Pizza Temples proliferate in Portland drawing pilgrims from afar. But the serious pizza to population ratio in the Tillamook area is low. In the past couple of years two pizza dispensaries in Tillamook have closed. (Covid may have played a role.) The Salmonberry, in Wheeler, which made superb pizzas, just closed. The area seems oddly pizza resistant.
Until now. Launched sixteen months ago by Theresa Seifer & Bill Thomas, Crab Rock Pizza in Garibaldi brings irrefutable pizza gravitas to the regional game. To understand why, first a short pizza primer.
Great pizzas demand both technical skill and art. Without both you tend to get the sorts of pizzas served in junior high cafeterias, variations on an English muffin with spaghetti sauce and American cheese zapped in the micro, sadly the norm to many (and not bad if you’re famished… or thirteen years old).
There are three major elements to a pizza: the crust, the topping, the baking. If any of these is akilter, all is lost.
The crust must be delicious in and of itself, from dough that has fermented for some time. Many say that 00 flour, of a particularly fine grind, is best. The pizza crust must be thin (pshaw on Chicago style), handsomely blistered, and able to hold a “New York Fold” which means that you can hold it in one hand folded the long way, and the tip won’t droop (spilling its contents into your lap). This leaves your other hand free for a beer.
Pizza is not fondue. Probably the cheese should be low-moisture mozzarella applied with a light hand. We have eaten superb pizzas made with fresh mozzarella (and even housemade mozzarella) but quite often they seem to throw off liquid which sogs the crust. The sauce must be zesty yet sparse. Many believe that pureed San Marzano tomatoes are best. There are classic pizza toppings such as pepperoni or sausage, of course. Pizzas with unique toppings are commendable.
Wrong oven temperature or cooking time and the pizza’s a goner. A wood-fired oven imparts a smokey finish which is nice but not mandatory. Some, particularly in New York City, say coal is the best heat source. We’ve had worthy results with our electric oven cranked to max, 550°. We wish we could blast higher but, like the speed of light, standard ovens have an inelastic heat cap. Around 800° degrees is probably ideal.
Crab Rock Pizza ferments its yeast-leavened dough (two teaspoons of yeast for 55 pounds of 00 flour) for three days, uses San Marzano tomatoes for sauce plus low moisture mozzarella and births its pizzas in a hulking one-eyed wood-burning oven (that looks suspiciously like Jabba the Hutt) at around 800°. Their standard menu toppings are roughly what you’d see from other fine pizza mongers. But they also have unique “seasonal seafood pizzas” based on local bounty: fresh crab (right off the docks), butter clams, squid, and salmon. Were they to go with one moonshot special (Wolfgang Puck rocketed his reputation with duck sausage pizza at Spago in 1982, unheard of in its day) it would not bring them discredit.
We tried two ‘standard’ pizzas:
The Rip Tide: pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushroom, olives, onion, mozzarella, tomato sauce.
The Butter Bar: pepperoni, ‘Nduja sausage, provolone, mozzarella, tomato sauce.
In both cases we noted how the crust was particularly thin, pliable, blistered, flavorful, and still had the structural integrity for the vital New York Fold. No sliver of raised edge crust (cornicione, to pizzaphiles) went uneaten. Toppings were tops though we do wish the olives on the Riptide had been of the green or black brined variety, kalamatas perhaps. The scent was seraphic. All elements of technical prowess were artfully knit. Their pizzas are elite athletes of their genre.
They are such perfectionists with their pizza that if the pizza isn’t a half-court swish they pro bono it to the local Coast Guard Station (which must fervently wish for their errors). Community oriented, they pay their employees above-standard wages.
Crab Rock Pizza also makes and serves housemade gelatos which is like saying they serve housemade electricity from their own fusion reactor, fantastically improbable. For gelato, let alone excellent gelato, borders on impossible to make well. Especially if the flavors are from-scratch as theirs are, instead of from-mix which is more common. Yet, it’s true. They do it with a fancy machine that we covet.
In our journalistic zeal, we tried coffee, chocolate, spiced pear, Biscoff cookie, orange, and sweet cream. Their pear gelato is from fresh pears. Their orange from oranges, and so on. Impossibly smooth and creamy, phosphorescent with flavor, every single one was so superb we had no favorites. Repetitive hyperboles lose credibility, but the incontestable fact is that all were our favorites. We do hope they continue to experiment with flavors. One which makes us pant, common in Europe, is chestnut (which grows in Yamhill County). And we’re unreasonably fond of Arborio rice gelato.
They have eleven craft beers on tap, including one from de Garde Brewing which is available at no other outlet (except de Garde’s taproom). Their Newport Brewing Dungeness IPA is now our beer of top choice worth ordering if only for its perfume.
Cold pizza is one of life’s great breakfasts. This requires leftovers from the dinner before. Unfortunately, we found Crab Rock Pizza’s pizza so nummy that we gobbled every last bite and there was none to take home. So our breakfast distress was their fault.
Eat Crab Rock Pizza’s outstanding pizza and fulfill your moral obligation to the earth’s equilibrium. Pizza is life.
Crab Rock Pizza is located at 604 Biak Avenue, Port of Garibaldi – https://www.crabrockpizza.com
For more reviews, go to: www.ardentgourmet.com