I am the first to admit to indulging in snobbery of certain subjects, music, pizza ... OK only music and pizza.

And being from east of these parts it's a heckuva haul to find good pizza. West Coasters do it different. Sure we have our taste-kinda-like-NYC (ubiquitous-but-not-close) California-style BBQ-and odd vegetable combos (not pizza) our national chains (don't count) but I have yet to find anything in the town, ne, in any city on the West Coast that can rival a:

1) Minnesota-Chicago flatiron style (cut in squares of course)
and
2) Deep dish Chicago. (I am told there's one in Salem, I will get there)

Stay with me. Well a pizza-rib joint that opened on MLK as 'Wildfire' has now changed its name to Carboni's, eerily similar to Carbone's in Minnesota, home of the World's Finest Pizza Ever Hands Down Don't Even Try To Argue.

So Portland's Carboni's had a lot going against it in terms of living up to a name. The owner says the name translates from Italian as 'coals' as in the 1,000 degree fire the crust cooks in.

Imagine my shock as I picked up the sausage-onion 12" wood fired pie Sunday afternoon to find a sliver thin crust coated in the right amount of flour, rich sauce and fresh mozzarelle.

While it is not quite the midwest flatiron thin style, the overall taste is close with a crust I would compare to Ken's Artisan. It's dang good.

They've also got local micros (Rogue, Laurelwood) on tap and a cool patio for summer.

Congratulations to Carboni's (3925 NE MLK) I'll be back probably tommorrow.

1 Comments

Carmen said:

Clearly you've never been to Italy, you know, the place where pizza comes from... Or you wouldn't be so keen on that nasty goop Mid-Westerners fondly call pizza - basically, thin bread slathered with Costco's finest chock-full-o'-preservatives assortment of meats and artery-clogging cheeses. THAT is why you can't find a "decent" pizza joint - your idea of a good pizza is simply offensive to the senses. Try Apizza Scholls on Hawthorne, but be prepared to wait a while. It might get you to like real pizza...;)

May 5, 2008 5:37 PM

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