Al Parco is a cozy little pizzeria next door to Goodfare. It's easy to walk by and completely miss it, I did for a long time. In fact the only reason I ended up eating there was because Masala Zone (yeah, I know, but it's easy and cheap) was closed for the lunch to dinner transition.
I was sitting on the corner contemplating my nearby options as I was starving and didn't want to walk far, nor to pay too much. Goodfare had decent prices on their decent pastas (as I've noted in the past), but I wasn't in the mood. Ok, let's check out this pizza joint.
Looking at their menus, the prices for a 12" pizza start at 5.50 for a margherita and hit the high 8's for a specialty pizza. Not too bad, pizza by the slice on display looked like a good thin crust, crispy on the skirts. Let's give it a go.
For some reason over the last couple years I've developed a weak spot in my heart for pizza with arugula on it (rocket). Dunno why, nor if it will as suddenly and inexplicably depart. Anyways, I decided to go with the Pizza Italia, which is one of their specialties. Marinated mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, mozzarela, parma ham, rocket and parmesan shavings. For whatever reason they also ended up throwing on some de-seeded whole kalamata as well. Hey, I've got no problem with that.
The thin crust was indeed crisp on the outskirt and had some chew to the middle. I enjoyed it. The ingredients on the pizza were also fresh (in the case of the veg) and high quality (in the case of the parma ham/cheese). I think if the sauce was better this could have easily become a 4-star review. Alas, the sauce was lacking in the flavour department. By quite a bit I might add.
As I said in the beginning the place is a cozy pizzeria. It's narrow, but goes back far enough to host probably on the order of 30 diners. Some of the wall is exposed brick, and they have photographs of famous actors, musicians and artist from the past on the walls. Though I'm not sure who the largest photo is a picture of, and it is interestingly a photo of a half naked woman leaning over what looked to be a mirror covered in lines of cocaine. It happened to be directly opposite where I was seated, and as I said was the largest photo there. I couldn't quite figure out exactly how it fit in with the rest of the photographs, unless this was just a famous photo I'd never seen. All the others I looked at were famous photos that I'd seen before, this one was breasts and drugs. hmm.. surreal. read more