![]() Next week Tuesday (September 5th), Jay’s Artisan Pizza opens their doors on Delaware Ave in the village of Kenmore (just a couple spots down from La Divina Mexican Store). The entire Buffalo Eats staff have been big fans of his pizzas since that truck debuted in 2015 and have even called it the Best Food Truck in Buffalo. Jay (and his girlfriend Amanda) have been working on their pizza making skills for the last couple of years on their food truck, OG Wood Fire. He has tested dozens of types of dough, fresh mozzarella and tomatoes to make sure that his pizza is as good as it can get. Jay is the kind of guy who will throw out pizza dough when it doesn’t meet his standards. Jay Langfelder is one of those people and his passion is Neapolitan pizza. They work all day honing their craft and then they go home and watch YouTube videos or read books about it. These folks are obsessed with food and usually with a very specific type of food. I mean this in the most complimentary way possible. When I go to Buffalo, I usually like to stick with uniquely Buffalonian food - which this is not - but I want to go back for more.When you write and talk about food as much as I do, you come across some real food nerds out there. But I would like to try it, as well as some of Jay's other thin-crust pizzas. I see that Jay's now offers thick-crust pizza, which they describe as "Detroit/Sicilian influenced." I was disappointed to see that description, as it suggests that they are simply getting onto the current Detroit pizza bandwagon, which I suspect will unload its passengers in a year or two. ![]() Perhaps it was unavoidable, given the toppings we chose, but be aware of that when ordering. But both plates had a substantial amount of oil, which I sopped up as much as I could with napkins. Maybe it's the high-fat cheese, and I'm sure the nduja exuded some melted fat too. My biggest complaint about both pies is that they were very oily. The nduja had a bit of kick, and the honey was applied judiciously enough that the flavors of both came together well in the underlying cheese base. But though this pizza was noticeably sweet, it was not overly so. I don't particularly care for sweet pizza, or sweet and hot flavors combined. The one topping that almost put me off ordering this was the chili honey. ![]() On Jay's pie, it's applied in dollops around the pie. On a side note, I'd suggest that Jay's edit their menu to explain what nduja is, but it's a spicy, salami-like spread. We tried the Nduja because I'd read rave reviews of it. The Margherita nailed it, with a near-perfect balance of tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil, which was wilted but not burnt. The crust was flavorful, indicative of a long ferment, and had a good balance of bite and chew. The pies were cut into quarters, which were substantial enough to eat by hand, by folding, but pliable enough to make a knife and fork a good option. ![]() The narrow cornichone along the edge was evenly blistered with black spots, indicating that the pizza had been well tended to in the oven. The crust was blackened underneath, which is sometimes dubbed "leopard spotting," but this was a little more uneven, not really spotted, with separate black areas and white areas. I went here knowing that this is not "Buffalo pizza." It's wood-fired, using what I believe is a naturally leavened dough (a/k/a sourdough), and most of the pizzas on the menu are made with a thin crust. ![]()
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