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