Eugene weekly., January 26, 2012, Page 32, Image 32

SO NICE THE SPICE
Mezza Luna’s classic peppery pizza is the perfect pie BY RICK LEVIN
I
t’s not even on the menu anymore.
But if you study the selection carefully, you’ll
run across a rider stating that certain Mezza Luna
classics are still available, despite their absence
from the larger list of featured pizzas.
On paper, Mezza’s fine-print classics read like a line-up
of the FBI's Most Wanted mobsters: Greekish, Fun-Guy
Trio, Savory Garden, Spin Chicken, Nice Spice.
Nice Spice. That’s the ticket.
Like one of those legendary, perhaps not-quite-up-to-
health-statute pots of kimchi cooking away on the roof of
some Chinatown café in San Francisco, available only to
certain customers privy to the secret wink-and-nod, Mezza
Luna’s “Nice Spice” pizza remains available despite being
dropped from the big list.
It’s a crazy omission, because that pizza is heavenly.
Crazy, but at the same time fitting — it adds to the lore and
provides a certain zing for devotees who get the chance to
“order off the menu” — like insider baseball for the
culinary jet set.
Of course, the Nice Spice is not some esoteric, expensive
dish available only to an exclusive and elite clientele; this
pizza’s stature remains demotic and completely available to
all, so long as you know to ask for it.
Ask for it. It is the best slice of pie made by the finest
pizzeria in town.
Mezza Luna co-owner Sandy Little says the Nice Spice
was among the first pies they put on the menu when the
popular pizza joint first opened (Mezza Luna placed
second among pizzerias in EW’s recent Best of Eugene
readers poll).
“It’s one of our classics,” Little says, noting that
currently the restaurant is celebrating its seventh anniversary.
“It’s really exciting,” he says, adding that, even though the
Nice Spice isn’t featured,
“We make two or three of
them a day, easily. It’s still
on our website.”
Deceptively simple, the
ingredients in Nice Spice
include two meat toppings —
spiced pepperoni and spiced
salami — along with mushrooms,
mozzarella, tomato sauce and pep-
peroncini peppers. This last, the pep-
pers, is crucial to the pizza’s kick, but
what really defines this recipe is the deli-
cate balance among meat, cheese and spice.
“The whole combo with the mushrooms — we
were trying to balance things out,” Little explains. “The
mushroom, a more neutral flavor, adds a sort of bridge. The
spiced-meat part of it was pretty straightforward. That’s one
of the those things that can go with a lot of things.”
This is a pizza lover’s pizza, a pie that deconstructs and
reinvents the basic splendor of an uncomplicated slice. The
perfect equilibrium of Nice Spice is achieved through a
combination of daring and know-how; it is the introduction
of a common fungus that brings the zing of the pepperoncinis
down just a notch, to the ensalivating level of temperate
tanginess.
Little says that, along with the Nice Spice, Mezza Luna
features a roasted habanero tomato sauce on several of its
combinations, as well as a variety of pies topped with
jalapeño peppers. He says that, recently, he’s even asked the
pizza makers to “tone it down a bit” on the spice. Still, the
habanero sauce gives you that “good, sinus-clearing,
narcotic effect” that can lead to the “all-body glow” of
immaculately maintained spiciness, Little says.
NICE SPICE PIZZA
PHOTO BY TRASK BEDORTHA
In an era when certain meddlesome do-gooders feel
compelled to pile their pizza with ingredients like walnuts,
corn, sprouts, barbecue sauce or taco fixings, Mezza Luna’s
Nice Spice stands both as a corrective and a reminder that
pizza is just pizza — not in the sense that a game is just a
game, but in the sense that jazz is just jazz: Don’t blow
dolphin farts out of your alto sax and call it Coltrane.
When you slap chicken on a pizza and stuff the crust
with cheese, you are violating one of cooking’s most sacred
orthodoxies, which is to keep it simple — nice and simple.
Mezza Luna’s Nice Spice, a pie that takes basic to the realm
of brilliance, is the embodiment of that age-old maxim. ■
Mezza Luna Pizzeria has two locations in Eugene: 933 Pearl St., 684-8900; and
2776 Shadow View Dr., 743-2999; mezzalunapizzeria.com
Urban rustic fare with
international fl air.
Full Lounge• Lots of Parking
Koho cuts me up!
Lunch. Tuesday-Friday
11:00 a.m-2:00 p.m
Dinner Tuesday-Thursday
5:00 p.m.- 10:00 p.m.
Friday-Saturday
5:00p.m.- 11:00 p.m.
Sundays:
Family Dinners twice a month!
Happy Hour: Tuesday-Saturday
5:00p.m. -6:30p.m.
2101 Bailey Hill Road, Suite L
541-684-8888
www.kohobistro.net
4 CHOW! Winter 2012
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