Beer and PIzza in Ocean Beach

Place:
Newport Pizza and Ale House
5050 Newport Ave
Ocean Beach, 92107

Time:
Tuesday 25 August 2009
14:00

Investigation Led By:
Agents Nader and Joe

Pizza:
6.5out of 10

Atmosphere:
9 out 10

Judging pizzerias in San Diego sets a tough standard of what counts as exceptional atmosphere. Newport Pizza and Ale House is a paradigm example, a lively ale house/pizza place decorated with style and located only footsteps away from the beach. While there’s not much missing as far as atmosphere, the tavern-like pizzeria places its pies in second priority to their extensive beer selection.

Newport Pizza located, appropriately enough, on Newport, Ocean Beach’s most happening avenue. They have a dog-friendly patio and while I was there I saw more than one dog hanging out on the patio. This patio rule fits the people of Ocean Beach (OB) since it seems that almost every local owns a dog; OB even has a beach-property park dedicated to dogs. Sounds like when they die, all dogs really go to OB. Agent Nader and I sat inside on bar stools at a high wood table attached to the side of the wall.

We situated ourselves across the room from where the pizzas were made. I always appreciate a pizza place that makes their pizza production easy for the customers to see; half the beauty of pizza is the production, it’s sort of a spectator sport. In front of the pizza production they displayed their slice selection separated from the hungry beach goers by a pane of glass. The slices were set on top of a long booth that had transparent cubes with a stream of neon lights below. This was sort of out of the theme of the place. Most of the ale house was wooden with beer memorabilia hanging up on the walls. Above the bar hung hundreds of taps. Their beer selection contained a long list of beverages on tap and three refrigerators full of other less typically bought beer. It was pretty evident that the focus at Newport Pizza was on the beer, not the pizza. The motto that was attached to there logo was “No crap on tap”. Although all beer lovers, myself included, could appreciate this quality standard, There didn’t seem to be such a quality emphasis on the pizza, or else they probably would have had another logo stating something like, “No cut-cost pizza sauce”. But we didn’t find anything like that.

Two girls were working the front and in charge of the music. A couple other guys, throughout our time there, emerged from the back, but only for a moment. We sat at our table trying to figure out what song was playing. At first, I gave no thought to it and figured it was just Christina Aguilera or some variation of that style. But Nader pointed out that the instrumentation was probably too complex to be a typical pop-star song. My next guess was PJ Harvey but at this point I was just fishing for answers. We soon found out when one of the girls changed the music. The music was connected to an iTunes program and shone on one of the half dozen flat screens in the place. We could see the play-list on the TV as they sifted through looking for new music. The song had been from Zero Seven, and then they switched to the newest Radiohead album, “In Rainbows”. I appreciated the switch; it made the entire atmosphere that much better.

The most charming element of their pizzas were their names. The Greek-style-toppings pizza with pesto, artichoke, olives, feta, etc., for instance, was called “Hulk”; The meat-lovers pizza was called “Ron Jeremy”. Nader and I ordered a split pie, one side being “Homer Simpson”, and the other side was “Clint Eastwood”.

The Homer Simpson consisted of a honey mustard sauce, chicken, onion, mozzarella and cheddar. The honey mustard gave the pizza a creamy taste and soaked into the pizza bread too easily. The pizza bread itself appeared to be a slightly smaller New York style, thin bread that grows bigger into a decent crust to chew on. The bread did not have much flavor; it seemed, instead, just to be an edible place on which toppings go. The bottom of the pizza bread was overcooked, which gave the bottom too much of a crunch, but the inside was pretty tender. The central problem with the pizza, however, was not the bread but the grease. There was an overload of cheese that oozed with grease. Some bites predominately had the taste of grease rather than pizza ingredients. Between the grease and the honey mustard sauce the bread became soggy quickly. I’m not sure it would have held its form at all if it wasn’t for the solid overcooked bottom. Overall, the “Homer Simpson” mainly tasted like creamy grease along with some pizza flavor, but then again, what should we have expected ordering a pizza named after Homer Simpson. I have no doubt Homer Simpson would love this pizza.

The other style was the Clint Eastwood, which consisted in a barbeque sauce, Chicken, onion and cheddar. This was a much better pizza than the “Homer Simpson”. For one I actually tasted the ingredients, and, on top of that, the flavors complemented each other. The barbeque sauce and the onions went together like a miser and his money. Besides the faults of excessive grease and the pizza bread that I mentioned above, I thought the Clint Eastwood was pretty tasty and had potential to be a great barbeque pizza. The Clint Eastwood also went well with the beer special of the day, a summer port ale that is produced, I believe, by Stone Brewery. The piney bite of the pale ale paired well with the onions and the barbeque sauce.

Maybe the girl who rang us up thought we were nice or maybe she just wasn’t paying attention, but she charged us less than the menu demanded. Both the Simpson and the Clint Eastwood where only sold as whole pies and were a dollar more than the other specialty pies. We got a single pie split into the Homer Simpson and Clint Eastwood, and the girl charged us $18. Our beers were on special and ran $3.50 a piece. Nader and I walked out having drank good beer, eaten decent pizza and leaving with extra pizza in our hands for under 15 bucks each.