Good lord in heaven, where do I start? I'll start with long-winded rhetoric and barely applicable, self-appointed criteria that ever establishment must adhere to.
This pizza establishment ranks as one of the best in Austin. At first, I was skeptical, as any unaccredited freelance professional food critic is whenever such an emboldened statement is made without my blessing.
It started two weeks ago when my wife and I made our first voyage to Pieous.
We arrived at Pieous' front door promptly at 7:30 pm on Saturday and were DUMBFOUNDED to see a line winding all the way to the back of the house. We were especially put off by this because no great, 5 star restaurant in the Austin metroplex is EVER packed at such a time on a Saturday evening.
Nonetheless, we waited. The owner, we'll just call him "Josh" (all names have been changed to protect the innocent), came around and offered us beer and/or wine while we waited. Heaven forbid he have bud lite or an '86 chianti, but they did have reasonable craft beers to choose from.
I had very particular expectations for what the pizza would be, but boy the writing was on the wall in this place that that was NOT going to be the case. Literally, they wrote on the walls what kind of pizza they do and what to expect of the experience; which killed time while a waited and sipped on my locally crafted lager, but how dare they distract me from waiting while simultaneously educating me.
They don't have but one menu to peruse while in line. You can always download their app onto your smartphone for free and look at the menu ahead of time, but I had to delete several hundred coveted cat photos from the Internet off my phone first to make space. You can even place orders by phone or app, but not between their peak operating hours because apparently this place gets busy over the weekend. It's really unfair to the dripping springs community, as its really a little-known boomtown with so many other important and interesting things to see and do, especially after 6 pm, so that's kind of a bummer.
At one point, one of the very polite runners, we'll call her "Maisie" offered us small slices of one of their pizzas for free while we waited. Even though she didn't have to provide it, it was free and a divine slice of pizza, it wasn't the one I wanted to order and a small slice so I feel like I was handed a slice of injustice by a hustler named "Maisie".
They only have one register, which explains the long wait. That, and the line of people 75 deep. I need to complain about only one register, because I can't complain about them having multiple registers and getting my order mixed up with some other asshole named Terry who likes mushrooms on his pizza. Psh. Mushrooms. As if.
The pizzas only come in one size, (about 12") which is problematic if you need a box big enough to house a dead armadillo in afterwards, but in retrospect, enough food for one man to ponder if he just legitimately got pizza pregnant.
The cashier, Janson-- I mean... "Janson" is a lovely young lady who tried to swoon me, like Maisie, with decadent desserts from their pastry case.
...She succeeded and that tiramisu was delicious, but nonetheless, it's rude to make me consider buying tasty treats I did not originally intend on buying, dammit. A salad, 2 pizzas, 2 (craft) beers and dessert plus tip set us back about $60 which is outrageous for fresh, high quality ingredients made to order at a swift pace. When I get pizza and salad, I don't expect to pay more than $20 for both, and that includes such classic ingredients as freezer-burned lettuce, day-old croutons, and runny ranch on the salad followed by pizza with 5 different colors of the same cheese. I know THAT pizza is quality because I don't pay as much for it and it takes some dude named Steve 30 minutes to make those things!
Any way, we sat at the bar where you can watch "Thomas" and "Joe Joe" make your pizza before your very eyes. I like to call Thomas "baby face" and Joe Joe "Vincenzo" because it makes me feel like I'm right there in Naples. My only complaint is, if you sit at the bar, you're right in front of the oven, which aesthetically, is great, but do they have to make it so damn hot? The wall earlier tells me that oven burns at 900-1000° and it only takes about 90 seconds for my pizza to heat, but is it really worth it to be "authentic" and to hear me complain about the heat instead of the wait time?? I'm seriously asking...
So we watched Thomas and Joe Joe aka baby face and Vincenzo assemble our pizza and cook it. Then, my wife's pizza required arugula & prosciutto after cooking. This smooth motherfucker named "Kelly" dances... DANCES the sweetest moves I've ever seen while topping the pizza with arugula. FIRST OF ALL, how dare a server have fun at work?! SECONDLY... Where can I learn moves like that?
In short, the pizza was great and they remembered us a week later and treated us like life-long loyal customers. Good job, Pieous! read more