FOOD: Amar Pizza

There are three food stuffs I really love. Pizza. Indian curries. Spice. Throw them all together and I'm in food heaven. And thus, I've found my new favorite pizza - the tandoori chicken pizza, and well the rest of the pizzas at Amar Pizza are pretty awesome tasting too.  

Amar Pizza is a place that makes you rethink what you know about pizza. It's a place that will get you trying new things, new flavours, new flavours together, possibly even pushing your limit. It's friendly. It's local (to me at least). It's independent. It's cheap. It's a winner on all counts. 

Seafood Pizza 

 

If you enjoy your Travel Channel food shows, you might have even caught this pizza place on Andrew Zimmerman's Bizarre Foods when he passed by a couple of years ago. In fact it was Detroit's first ever appearance on the channel so there you go. I remember catching this place on one of the endless reruns they show, then promptly forgot about it - story of my life when it comes to places to eat in Detroit. So many that I forgot which ones to try. I think I need a list. But I digress.

So to the spice. Pizza's here tend to be on the medium and higher scale. But if you want to take things to the next level, you can order pizzas that make use of spicy fish and naga sauces and the ghost pepper. The ghost pepper, oh yes, one of the hottest pepper's in the world, one uncomfortably hot. It's so hot they don't actually put the pepper onto the pizza, it's mixed into the sauce instead. But fear not the menu is great at labelling the spice levels.

Tandoori Chicken Pizza

So what did we end up trying? Well the sweet & spicy tandoori chicken pizza and the seafood pizza which was made up of shrimp and crab meat (mmmm) with a deliciously hot Cajun crust. Lots of Cajun. Lots of mmmm's. Now we've finally got around to trying it out, there's all the rest of that menu to get around to trying!

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Amar Pizza
11608 Conant St, Hamtramck, MI

Ever had a spicy pizza?!

FOOD: Pizza, Detroit Style

Americans love pizza - on any given day, 13% of the country will eat a slice (or five). Whether it's eating a deep dish in Chicago, a couple of slices of Hawaiian or perhaps a New York style pizza, there's a pizza style and topping for everyone. 

But little did I know there's even a Detroit style pizza, apparently I've been eating one for a while and just didn't know it. Sounds about right for me. But what makes a pizza a "Detroit pizza"? Well start off with cooking it in a deep square pan, it doesn't even have to be a pizza pan - it's probably better if it's not. It'll be a delicious thick, deep dish and your toppings will typically go pepperoni, cheese, everything else and finally topped off with your marinade. 

Historically it's Sicilian pizza style came out of what's still known as Buddy's pizza back in the mid 1940's. As cooks came and went variations began cropping up across the metro region. Then as Michiganders moved around, they took the recipes with them to be point of being able to find and eat a Detroit style pizza in Florida to Nevada and California. Buddy's has even inspired the chains spinning off their own take - Jets, Little Caesars, Happy's - yeap all inspired by the Detroit style.

Don't say you don't ever learn anything from my rambles!

While we may not have tried the place everything Detroit Pizza originated from, we did try Loui's Pizza in Hazel Park, a place that often comes on or near the top rankings, certainly award winning when it comes to pizzerias in the area. It was founded by a former chef of Buddy's so it's no surprise the Detroit style of pizza left with him. Louis itself feels a little untouched by time - as if often the case in Hazel Park, it's old school, it's not fancy - the plastic plates see to that. But it sicks to what it knows and does it very well. 

Service was great, if all be it a little slow but they were packed to the rafters and they sure make their cocktails strong. As for the pizza (we ordered a cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, onions & green pepper) - perfectly crusty around the edges, a little charred but in a good way and basically pretty delicious.

You could say I'm a bit of a fan of this Detroit pizza malarkey.

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Fancy a slice? You'll find Loui's Pizza at;

23141 Dequindre,

Hazel Park, MI

What's your favorite pizza style or topping?! Come make me hungry and share them in the comments!

FOOD: Amici's Gourmet Pizza

After finding the Detroit Metro Times list of their favorite 15 local pizza places, we decided to take it up ourselves and try some (if not all) of them. Everyone loves pizza, everyone loves really good pizza so this challenge, if you could even call it that is hopefully a win win. Granted not many of my readers are in the Metro Detroit area for you to try them out yourselves, but hopefully you might be tempted to try your local pizza places over the big chains (bar Jets, you can't go wrong with Jets). So I'm starting this little side venture on the blog to compare them ourselves and see how ours ratings compare.

First up was Amici's - an electric, gourmet and certified green pizzeria in along Main St. in Berkley. Here you'll find flavors of pizzas like Caribbean Spicy Jerk Chicken to Vegan or Pesto pizzas. With our push towards eating more organic fruit and vegetables ourselves, anywhere that sells organic, fresh and locally sourced produced is worth a try in my book and this place would certainly appeal to the vegetarians out there.



Opting to pick up and take out our pizza the first issue sadly was the parking which is pretty much non existent and parking in any of the other business carparks your continuously threatened with being towed. Not so good if you fancy taking out your food. But to the most important factor - the food. We ordered two 12" (8 sliced) pizzas to try - the Portabello Mushroom - decorated with fresh mushrooms, roasted garlic with crispy bacon and fontina cheese on a garlic spread alongside a Smoked Salmon pizza (photographed - salmon, sour cream, scallions and low fat cheese) for $15.79 each and on a white flour base (they also have a wheat option), we also ordered a side of the pesto breadsticks ($3.25).

Starting with the breadsticks (shown in the header) you certainly get a lot for your money, they come with a real nice, chunky tomato marinade, however the breadsticks themselves seem to be lacking in taste in comparison to the sauce. Both pizzas were non greasy which makes a very welcome change, yet the bases were a little dry for our liking. The salmon pizza turned out to be my favorite, the flavor - what there was of it was intriguing enough for it to be enjoyable. Sadly the flavors on each were nothing special - the bacon was certainly only a hint on the mushroom and the sour cream probably takes some getting use to, at least on a pizza.

When you consider the price, you somewhat expect a little extra in terms of both size and flavor. Granted the pizzas aren't cheap - yes they are "better" than many of the chains, but you're certainly paying that extra couple of dollars for the gourmet name. While I think the pizzas were good and the topping suggestions certainly offer something a little different, but the best? I'm not so sure.

Amici's is located at;

3249 W. 12 Mile, Berkley, Michigan