Okay, the food coma of Restaurant Week is slowly fading away, we’re slowly integrating everyday foods like cereal and chipped ham back into our diets instead of creme brulee and salmon. But we have four restaurants left to review from our wild and crazy foodie festival, so here’s a quick one to help you taper down from Restaurant Week.
The weekend of Restaurant Week was my weekend to work, so we had to think outside of the box for meals. I had an afternoon/evening shift on Friday, so we took the opportunity to have lunch downtown at Stone Neapolitan Pizzeria, located in the River Vue Apartments (which are right next to Gateway Plaza and the Point, if you’re unfamiliar).
Stone has this amazing wood-burning oven right out in the open. I’m fascinated with the ‘how things work’ aspect of life, so being able to see the pizza chefs at work was pretty neat!
At Stone, you place your order at the counter (right next to that sweet oven), then find a seat, and they bring your food to you. It was incredibly fast – we were there during what would be a normal downtown lunch hour, and we got our food within a few minutes of ordering.
You can create your own pizza, or you can choose from their house specialties. We opted to split one of the house pies. It’s only four cuts, but it was definitely just the right size for two people on a lunch break.
Back in the day when I was a resident of the 02138, I used to have a sort of love affair with a pizza shop called The Upper Crust. The main reason was this: you could order prosciutto on your pizza. Big, hearty slices of prosciutto. And ever since moving back to the 15217 (and even for that time in the 91505), I have searched for a replacement for my Upper Crust prosciutto pizza.
Guess what? I FOUND IT. Behold, the Prosciutto e Funghi house pie:
This pizza was bangin. Thick, bubbly crust on the edges, nice and slim crust where the toppings live. Pomodoro sauce, mozzarella, basil, mushrooms and LAYERS AND LAYERS OF HEAVENLY PROSCUITTO.
Needless to say, I’m kind of glad I don’t live in the River Vue apartments because I would weigh 450 pounds and all of it would be thanks to eating this pizza seven times a day.
Stone was such a nice surprise – I wasn’t even really aware of it until we’d biked past it a few times recently. And the service was excellent and so fast, I can see why this would be a lunch time favorite for the downtown working crowd. (Side note: if you have the sort of job where you can have a ‘liquid lunch,’ they offer beer and wine as well.) We got lunch for two for less than 15 bucks (thanks in part to a 10% off Yelp check-in deal too!). Good stuff!