CLOSED

http://parlourrestaurant.com/
Pizza Style: Neapolitan
Venue Style: Sit Down
Food Orders: 1 Large Cheese, 1 Large Alsatian, 1 Large Mushroom and Sausage
Beverage Orders: Craft Beers
Lg Cheese Pizza: (12”) $10.00
Roll: Boboli, Ellio, Tombstone & Celeste 1727 Centre Street, West Roxbury MA,

The rotary end of Centre Street in West Roxbury has been dubbed “Restaurant Row” by locals as it is the hub of all things dining, notably acknowledged for; West on Centre, Phuket, The Real Deal, Sugar and The Porter Café, among many others. The Parlour, a recent addition, is a pizza joint that also offers meatballs, ice cream and an excellent beer selection, on tap and in cans. The Parlour defiantly has an uphill battle to claim patrons in a pizza saturated market. In a 1.4 mile stretch of Spring/Centre St (Baker St. to the WR Parkway Rotary) there are 8 dedicated pizza joints.

To start, this place is decked out to the max with welcoming lighting, HDTVs, abundant and comfortable seating, center dining islands for mingling, in addition, The Parlour has hip, accommodating staff members who were always pleasant. The one thing it seemed to lack from our perspective was a real identity. This place could be really cool because something about the décor and layout screams Rock n Roll hangout. Instead, you have an empty space that just seems like an afterthought to their sister restaurant, The Porter, which is located two doors down.

Onto the cuisine! The Slice Guys ordered up the standard Cheese, an Alsatian (smoky slab bacon, caramelized onion & Gruyere with fresh thyme) and a Mushroom and Sausage along with a few rounds of excellent local craft beers. The tomato sauce on the cheese lacked flavor and the cheese distribution seemed to be off center and placed recklessly which ultimately caused crust sag (“the Sag”). The sausage and mushroom also suffered from the lack luster tomato sauce and the Sag. However it was adorned with ample helping of large sausage balls which had a tough time of staying in place because of the aforementioned Sag. Sag and sauce were not an issue for their specialty pie called the “Alsatian” as it is a “white” pizza and didn’t have any sauce on it to begin with. This pie was topped with crunchy and flavorful bacon strips, well caramelize onions, Gruyere and fresh thyme. This pizza was a winner because it didn’t have to fulfill any traditional pizza standards that do exist for pies like a “plain cheese” or the Boboli’s staple “a sausage and mushroom”.

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The Parlour bought all the right stuff, great décor, top notch ingredients and an excellent beer selection, but they just have to hone and care about their craft in order to get all these great aspects to mesh. The simplicity of a pizza is an art and to get it right is a true craft in itself. Almost any Joe-Shmoe can grab a bunch of quality toppings, sauce, dough, mozzarella and whip up a decent pie but to us, it’s more than that. Just like everything else in life, from great sports teams, to functional relationships, there has to be a balance and a conjoined chemistry that promotes greatness, you can’t just buy perfection. Despite all of these flaws, The Parlour is really close to making a darn good pie and offered the BEST crust The Slice Guys have eaten thus far.

To wrap things up, The Slice Guys would say that The Parlour has lots of potential but they just need to tighten up the ship a bit and love on it a tad bit more. We are pulling for you, so if you end up reading this review, please take some of the changes we have mentioned to heart and you’ll have a winner on your hands but for now, The Slice Guys professionals can only give you a…….4.5 out of an 8 slice perfection.

Re-Visit: After a long day of car shopping and lugging the kids around on their first day of February vacation, the Clan and I decided to end the day with some pizza.  Wanting to give the Parlour another shot we ordered up a Cheese and a Steak Pizza. Not much has changed since the original visit. The preparation on the cheese was better this time around with proper distribution of the cheese and sauce.  The Steak, which features chipotle crusted steak, blue cheese, arugula, caramelized onions, fresh thyme and balsamic glaze had too much going on for my liking. Again, there is a lot potential here.  I think what might be missing is just a few extra minutes in the oven. Could this just be a case of the pies being slightly undercooked? Stay tuned.

Tagged: Neapolitan, Take Out