Restaurant Spotlight: Matchbox

Hello, pizza aficionados! Sorry we have been a bit AWOL on the blog. This weekend we will try to catch up with all the pizza we have been eating the last couple of months!

This post is long overdue. A few months back, we met with Bart Nadherny, the pizzaiolo at Matchbox. We have previously reviewed the Matchbox in Chinatown as well as the one on Barrack's Row. But this was not a day for reviewing. It was a day for chatting about pizza and learning about some of the "behind the scenes" of the pizza biz.

A "pizzaiolo" is, simply, a person who makes pizza in a pizzeria. But if you're the pizzaiolo for three large restaurants (there's one in Rockville, too), this is a pretty big job!

It seems like a new pizza restaurant is popping up in DC every other day, and Neapolitan pies are all the rage. While Matchbox has a wood-burning oven, similar to what's used for Neapolitan pizza, their pizza has some distinct differences. First, the sauce. Matchbox uses California tomatoes, rather than the San Marzanos that you'll find at many other area pizza places. Why? Simple enough reason-- they prefer the taste. Also, the sauce has a zesty taste to it that is different than most pies you'll find in DC. Bart describes their pizza as closer to a "Chicago thin crust" rather than a Neopolitan. While the crust of a Neapolitan pie is soft in the center (Gary's dreaded "droop" factor), a Chicago thin crust is more crispy throughout.

One thing that any restaurant strives for is consistency in their product. How does Matchbox get their crust to have the same taste and texture day after day? Bart gave us some insight to how this is accomplished.

First, the pizza board:

Each day the chefs measure the air temperature, the flour temperature, and the friction temperature (meaning the heat added by motion of the mixer). By then plugging these numbers into a formula, they can figure out what temperature the water needs to be in order to keep the temperature of the dough consistent for each batch. This is important so the dough tastes and reacts the same way in the oven for each pizza.

Next, the wood burning oven:

The oven is kept at a temperature of about 700 degrees. Those pizzas cook fast!

The result:

Delicious pizza!

Our current fave: the vegetable pizza which includes crispy potatoes on top. Delish. Matchbox has become one of our favorite Capitol Hill pizza spots (stay tuned for a new post...).

Matchbox-- Barrack's Row / Capitol Hill

What better way to celebrate our newfound celebrity--welcome, new readers!--than with a pizza outing.

We went to Matchbox on 8th Street SE on Capitol Hill. Liza had been here before, but this was my first official visit. (We've also been to the Matchbox in Chinatown.)

We know that there are dozens of pizza restaurants still to be reviewed--we welcome suggestions, by the way--but since we live on Capitol Hill, we stayed local. And we think it's unfair to review a pizza place just once, so memo to pizza restaurateurs: "We'll be back."

Matchbox calls itself a "Vintage Pizza Bistro." I like the sound of that. And the restaurant is very nice--it's a converted warehouse and spacious. But it's crowded all the time. There seems to always be a 15-45 minute wait for a table.

When Liza is hungry, she doesn't like to wait. And usually I don't like waiting for a table, either. But there were two seats at the cozy bar, so we settled in for a glass of red wine, watched a Nats-Phillies game on one of the TVs, and waited for our table.

We wondered why no one was coming up to us asking for our autographs.

People! Pizza experts in the house! Hellllllloooooooooooooooooo?!

So we were finally seated 15 minutes later.

Matchbox boasts what they call an "authentic wood-fired masonry oven where the fire has burned constantly since the day we opened. Modern gas and electric ovens cannot produce the intense heat needed--over 800 degrees--to achieve the crispy, smoky crust that our oven provides. With dough made fresh daily in-house, our goal is to make the best pizza in DC!"

We admire their ambition.

Well, Liza and I ordered a 10-inch Oven-Dried Tomato and Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella pie. (Isn't that basically a Margherita?) Matchbox pizza chefs must like to put meat on their pizzas, because most of the offerings had steak, ham, meatballs or chicken as toppings.

Now, on Matchbox's menu, it mentions that "due to the extreme heat of our oven some charring or blistering of the crust is to be expected."

Thanks for the warning, but my initial reaction was: "This is not acceptable."

When our pizza arrived, on one side of the 10-inch pie the crust was black and charred. Very disappointing. Seems to me that, by putting the warning on the menu, the pizza chefs are settling for burned pizza. A good pizza chef would find a way to minimize any "charring or blistering of the crust."

Matchbox chefs cook with a very thin crust--it had a cardboard feel to it--and the charred side of the pizza had a smoky flavor that leaned more toward burned than smoky.

The non-charred side tasted fine--Liza mentioned, as she has in previous reviews of Matchbox, that she liked the sauce. It had a good zesty flavor with a hint of basil. The oven-dried tomatoes, one on each slice, were a red blob because they had apparently melted in the searing heat of the oven.

The verdict: This is not the best pizza in DC. In fact, we've both had better pizza at Matchbox before.

Gary's Rating: 1.5 stars
Liza's Rating: 2.5 stars

(It should be noted that, at the Matchbox in Chinatown, we also had pizza with charred crust. We rated that pizza 2.5 stars. The Matchbox--Barrack's Row, in my estimation, pizza was worse. Liza felt it was the same.)

Matchbox - Chinatown

Saturday, January 19th was an important day for us. This is because 1-19-08 was designated "Liza and Gary's DAY OF FUN!!" (two exclamation points). Yes, it was going to be a day all about US. So of course, it included pizza! But we'll get to that in a minute.

The morning started out at the Bed, Bath, and Beyond in Chinatown. How is this fun, you ask? Well, because we were registering for gifts, that's why! This is why weddings rule-- you can actually go to the store, pick out stuff that you want, and then people go buy it for you. What the heck?!? This is the best thing since trick-or-treating, if you ask me. So we went around the store and Gary got to use this nifty little scanning gun to put all the stuff on the registry. (I think this was created specifically to get men into the store.) It was sa-weet... but I must tell you, even though it's awesome, even the greediest among us get a little gifted out after an hour or so of picking and scanning.

Seeing my enthusiasm starting to sag, Gary suggested we go around the corner to Matchbox to get some lunch. Pizza? I'm always in!

When I'm hungry I get a little grouchy, so the lunch did not start well when we had to wait for 20 minutes for a table-- not because there were no tables available, mind you, but because the hostess forgot about us. This is the kind of thing that burns me up, but Gary just laughed at me. Whatevs. (PS-- Gary said we didn't wait 20 minutes. Well... it FELT like 20 minutes, I'm just saying.)

But on to the pizza. We each got a (very yummy) salad and split a veggie pizza (are you sensing a veggie theme here?).

I thought the best thing about the pizza was the sauce. It was sweet but had a little bit of spicy zing to it. The vegetables had a nice roasted flavor. The crust, however-- I was not a fan. It was floppy and seemed rather undercooked, even though the edges were burnt. The crust didn't seem to rise at all. And-- the ultimate good crust test-- it did not reheat that well.

Gary described the crust as "rubbery and soft." He felt the sauce was a little too spicy. He did, however, like that the pizza was not too filling and left him ready to take on the rest of the DAY OF FUN!!.

So, feeling re-energized after our lunch at Matchbox, we went on to E Street Cinema to see Juno (two thumbs up), finish up our registry at BBB (we registered for a Dyson... YAY), head home for some movie watching (The Terminal with Tom Hanks... I give it an "eh"), and then out for drinks with friends that evening at a local pub.

All and all, a pretty damn good DAY OF FUN!!

But not the best pizza we ever had.

Gary's rating: 2.5 stars
Liza's rating: 2.5 stars