Pizza Style: NY Neapolitan
Venue Style: Sit Down
Food Orders: Cheese, Sausage & Vidalia Onion, Spicy Pulled Pork with Scallion & Herb and Meatloaf, Mashed Potato & Herb
Beverage Orders: Craft Beers
Lg Cheese Pizza: $15 (16″)
Attendees: Boboli, Ellios, Tombstone & Celeste
Guests: Jefferson Pizza & Tony Freschetta

It was a rainy Friday evening in Brookline but that did not dissuade patrons of all sorts from finding their way to one of the many hip establishments that are nestled quaintly atop of each other in Brookline’s most popular square, Coolidge Corner. How conveniently named seeing that all the majority of people that frequent this area dress to impress, have a cool bravado and typically do not drop below a 9 on the beauty scale. Coolidge corner basically takes the pages of Vogue Magazine and puts it in motion; great style, beautiful people, and in summary it has an overall exciting energy about it. This aspect did not make Boboli and Tombstone’s jaunt difficult when on their way to meet the guests of the evening Tony Freschetta and Pizza Jefferson.

Seeing that Ellio was away on business and that Celeste was running a bit behind the Guys and guests tried to be proactive by making a reservation, which was not taken, to our surprise! Apparently you have to have all your guests in attendance before you can even put in a name for a table at Otto. This unfortunate aspect eventually turned out to an unexpectedly long wait to be seated; a tad over an hour, egad! This was not so painful due to the fact that we were enjoying our company with the indulgence of a few craft brew selections from Otto’s beer menu.

Finally, after a long wait to be seated, our hosted guided the guys to a rather comfortable corner table that sat just close enough to the kitchen and just far enough away from the rest of the patrons which actually situated us in a primo location to openly discuss the pizza do’s and don’ts of the evening, one of them being the “Drop Test”. This was introduced by our guest Tony Freschetta and although it had amazing comedic value the Guys determined that this should probably be omitted pizza testing in the future just for safety purposes alone. Boboli can attest to this since Tony Freschetta had dropped a slice of cheese pizza onto a plate several times using a vertical radius of about three feet from hand to plate, ultimately littering Boboli and his beverage with pizza shrapnel.

Here is what we ordered:

Cheese: Plain cheese didn’t have enough cheese or could have used a stronger cheese, the sauce was good, but overpowered it.

Sausage & Vidalia Onion: Sausage mushroom and onion pizza was a perfect marriage – great pizza!

Spicy Pulled Pork with Scallion & Herb: Ole’ spicy pork pizza! Terribly advertised, should have been called Mexican spice pizza with pulled pork.  The majority didn’t like it as the pulled pork was overpowered by the Mexican spices.

Meatloaf, Mashed Potato & Herb: Meatball and tater pizza was a surprise but a lead weight in the gut. It was executed well and was the first time a few of us ever had mashed potatoes on the pizza.

Overall, Otto loves to push out artsy fartsy pizza which sometime work and sometime don’t.  That being said they have the basics down so they can push the envelope all they want. 5.0 Slices of an 8 Slice Perfection. 

One quick side note, beware of you actions and conversations within Otto in Coolidge corner. The ghost of a former tenant haunts the rafters. Ronald hears and sees all.

Noteworthy Guest Quotes:

“I didn’t want to talk, drink, or do anything other than bite, chew, repeat….and I wasn’t even that hungry.” – Tony Freschetta

“I’m probably going to disagree with the rest of you on the pulled pork. I thought it was mislabeled (it was spicy and Mexican, not sweet and Southern) but I liked it. Good flavor and a sort of mild/medium spiciness”. – Pizza Jefferson