Those who know me, know I take my pizza seriously. I don't suffer inferior pies gladly, and have often traveled great distances, at great personal peril, in search of the ultimate pizza. I especially don't place much stock in gimmicky pizzas - you can keep your stuffed crusts, and your fifteen cheese mega combo behemoths, your whole wheat pies topped with alfalfa - I'm having none of it. When it comes to pizza, give me a Naples style, or a good NY style, and you can keep the rest.
So I was a bit uneasy when I was heading to Los Alamos to try American Flatbread - a place known for the owner's commitment to using local products (the bar is constructed of lumber from abandoned Central Coast barns), organic when possible, and some non traditional combinations. But when in Rome......
The place lives up to its billing.
Talk about taking advantage of nature's bounty - this restaurant walks the walk. Fresh everything! The place is even decorated with produce - big baseball bat sized zucchini, and baskets of heirloom tomatoes strategically strewn about the rooms.
I like the bar - there's tons of good, local wines available, and they are priced so that folks might actually order them. We had a ten minute wait for a table, and each enjoyed a glass of Kathy Joseph's Pink Fiddle rosé - enjoyed it enough so that when we were seated, we ordered a bottle of it. They have better than average stemware, for those who concern themselves with such matters.
Continuing in the theme of fresh, local produce were the salad specials - one featuring green beans and roasted garlic, the other, warm fingerling potatoes. We chose the green bean - all the ingredients were exquisitely fresh - the beans snapped, the tomatoes crunched, the lettuce was still alive.
There were two special pizzas as well - one, heirloom tomatoes, pesto and burrata cheese, the other, fresh figs and proscuitto. We took door number one.
A beautiful pie was delivered to our table in short order, laden with big, round slices of red and yellow tomatoes, and dotted with the melted burrata. The crust had been smeared with pesto, providing the base. This pizza was seriously good - the crust is very tasty, if just a tad under salted, for my palate. It emerges from the wood fired oven quite crispy, so the first few pieces provide the greatest pleasure.
If I had to pick a nit, it would be that the integrity of the crust did not hold up to the end; as the time passed, it became a bit soggier. But don't let that stop you - just chew faster.
Entertainment is provided by watching the staff produce the pizzas - the prep area as well as the unique pizza oven is fully visible to the entire dining room. The pizza oven is of ancient design, and was constructed by the owner using (what else?) local materials.
What's that you say? I didn't talk about dessert?
Well, let me tell you, it was a beautiful riff on peaches and cream...
a big, tall parfait glass, like the ones they used to use in the old ice cream shoppes, layered with Strauss Family Vanilla Ice Cream (organic ice cream - who knew?) freshly sliced, local, tree ripened peaches, topped with slightly sweetened REAL whipped cream. Three of my favorite things on earth, all in one glass.
This was my hands down best dessert of the year, bar none. The purity of flavor in this amazing combination was brilliant - it needed no garnish, no embellishments, no bells, no whistles, no squiggly lines drawn with beet juice - this, my friends, was the real deal.
Outstanding.
My wife ordered some sort of a nut cake, topped with the same whipped cream - I tasted some, and it was good, but frankly, aliens could have come to the table and whisked her away, and I would barely have looked up to wave goodbye, so enthralled in peachy pleasure was I.
This was a very enjoyable meal, as well as an all around good time.
Highly recommended.