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.