My love affair with Otto Pizza began several years ago right before I moved from Massachusetts to Maine (we're talking about May/June 2014.) I was not only leaving the state, I was also calling an end to my teaching career - a situation which brought me to the MTA Office in Lynnfield. As I walked through the office, one of the people that worked there had an Otto Pizza box from the then-recently opened restaurant in MarketStreet. When she opened the box she took out a slice of pizza.... that had APPLES on it. Apples? Who in God's name would think about putting Granny Smith apple slices on a PIZZA? She swore by how good it was - and asked me if I wanted to try a slice. Note about me, I have an aversion to eating others' food, and if you dare ever try to take food off my plate, you'd better share my surname, or be prepared to be stabbed with my fork! But the whole drive home, all i could think about was "How good could a pizza with no red sauce be? With APPLES no less?? This woman must be smoking some really good stuff!" My intellectual curiosity having gotten the best of me, when I picked my son up from after-school care (he was in 3rd grade at the time) I asked him if he'd like to go for pizza, warning him that we might not be getting pizza in the traditional sense of the word. His 8-year-old brain not having wrapped itself around what I had just said, all he heard was "Pizza!" and we were off. So first off, that Apple Bacon and Red Onion pizza was freaking amazing. As someone who has Italian ancestry on my father's side who comes from a long line of people who sweated over their "Sunday gravy" there is no way I was supposed to like Pizza like this! I kept saying "this is bollocks" to myself, not because it wasn't fantastic, but the cognitive dissonance this was creating with my heritage was unexpected. I came to the restaurant fully expecting this pizza to be crap and it wasn't. But what made this an especially memorable visit was that the manager/owner/operator (it's been a long time, so I am not sure of his name or title at this point) took an interest in us because my son was displaying vocal tics from Tourette's syndrome, and he had recently participated in some kind of event - a fundraiser perhaps - that benefited Tourette's. We were often regarded disdainfully in restaurants because of his tics, but this gentleman went the opposite way, treating us to different slices so we could get a taste of the various types of pizza available, and even gave us some Otto swag (a shirt and a hat, the latter of which we still have!) He even went next door and brought us back some Pinkberry (which I didn't have the heart to tell him I thoroughly detest.) In doing so, he cultivated a relationship between us and Otto Pizza that still exists today. Every weekend we would go up to Bar Harbor to visit my wife, who had started her job in January of that year, and from then on, we always tried to make it a point to take a detour and hit up Otto Pizza for dinner (depending upon when we left, due to Boston traffic being brutal, we would sometimes visit the restaurant at intersection of Forest & Congress in Portland.) Most every time we left Maine to go to Massachusetts or Rhode Island or to visit relatives in New Jersey, we would stop at Otto somewhere. I can't explain enough how great their pizza is (Mashed Potato Bacon and Scallion is definitely my favorite.) If you're a closed-minded douche who thinks great pizza must emulate New York (where I was raised) Pizza, then you may not be ready for the gastronomic phenomenon that is Otto Pizza. But if you want to try something unique and delicious, please go to Otto. Great food and great people. I live in Pittsburgh now, but i still work in Maine - remotely - and I go back every 10 weeks. There is a high probability of a scheduled extended layover in Boston so I can go up and get me some of their delightful culinary witchcraft. I'm as picky an eater as they come, so if I love it, you should give it a try! read more