Search Previous Happy Hours

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Proper Brick Oven and Tap Room




Like beers, for a baby.


Here were some little beers we had. Before I go on a negative pizza-rant I should say that Proper has a great beer selection. Pretty much top class in terms of your downtown-specific options. (When I say downtown I mean the Golden Triangle exclusive of South Side, Shadyside, etc and for that matter the phrase "Golden Triangle" is a very underutilized phrase.)

For around $10 you can get a flight of any four drafts. Not a bad deal if you make sure to get the ones that are 9% alcohol and above.


Now, the pizza at Proper is a bunch of garbage. There's nothing more awful than seeing a restaurant with such a warm ambiance, nice staff and beautiful wood fired oven deliver such sub-par pizza. Pictured above is the carnivore pizza with San Marzano tomatoes, house-made sweet and hot Italian sausage, spicy pepperoni, bacon and house-made mozzarella. It sounds and looks pretty good, right?

WRONG. The bacon on the pizza must have been the house smoked bacon candy with the maple glaze. It was entirely overpowering. All I could taste was the sweet and smoky bacon, the other flavors were almost entirely lost in the mix. I also have to say that I was not the biggest fan of the cheese either. Why make something in-house if it is just going to be awful? The pie was attractive but dry, lacking in depth of flavor. (Sexual innuendo.) I was very disappointed.

To quote one of the other patrons who ordered a pizza, "the selling point of the bianca pizza was burrata, a mozzarella made from water buffalo [milk], filled with cream. I expected a dairy orgasm all over my pizza. What I got was a pizza with a heavy roasted garlic flavor dominating some discernible cheese and a floppy crust."

Although I would personally never expect or desire a dairy orgasm, I would save my money and skip Proper for dinner. Just have a few drinks and wander somewhere else down the street.  

Proper Brick Oven and Tap Room on Urbanspoon

Friday, March 14, 2014

Carson City Saloon - Southside



I've probably been to Carson City roughly five million times. It is my go-to spot for Sunday-funday Steelers drinking and run-of-the-mill goofing off in the Southside. I've tried mostly everything on the menu, and the nachos are without a doubt your best option.

Not to trash talk the Carson City pizza boat, but the nachos are boss. They usually come out of the kitchen in under ten minutes heaped on a giant pizza tray. My only complaint is that these particular nachos pictured above could have been baked about a minute or two longer. The cheese wasn't melted to perfection. On the plus side they also did not come out as a soppy mess that required a fork. If I'm eating nachos with a fork, those are not nachos. That's what I call taco pie, which is what the Aqua Teen Hunger Force eats for Thanksgiving dinner.

PASS THE TACO PIE
Growing up, and for most of my adult life, I had always taken nachos for granted. I just assumed they were this culinary delight that had existed since the dawn of time. I mean honestly, it is hard to imagine a life without nachos. They seem to be such an obvious combination of ingredients. However, nachos were actually invented in 1943 in Mexico.  Some dude named Ignacio threw a few old tortillas in an oven and the rest is history. Now we celebrate Nacho Day every year on October 21.

Carson City Saloon on Urbanspoon