Artichoke Basille’s Pizza is beloved by me and countless other people for being a great place to stumble upon indulgent late night pizza slices after a night out in NYC. Those nights where we ended up eating a 3AM dinner of pizza and McDonald’s are some of my favorite memories with my best friends.
Anyway, a few years after initially expanding to the West Coast in Berekley, CA, Artichoke Basille’s decided to venture the opposite direction from NYC, up the Merrit Parkway in Connecticut almost all the way to Hartford, where I grew up. Luckily for me, my sister lives pretty close to the newest Artichoke Basille’s Pizza in Newington, CT, so we got together to try some pizzas to go at our grandma’s house.
Since I knew from experience that Artichoke’s pizzas are pretty f-ing big, I told my sister to just get one pizza with 1/2 marg 1/2 pepperoni. However, our Babci (polish for grandmother) overrode my suggestion and demanded that we get 2 pizzas so we ended up having a bit of a pizza party. To be fair, when you’re eating with your grandma, you can’t escape from extra food no matter how hard you try.
The pepperoni pizza had a pretty even distribution of cheese, sauce, and pepperoni on a crust that was a little too bready and chewy for my liking. The sauce had a nice thick consistency, where you really taste the best of the tomatoes, but I would have liked a little bit more cheese. The best-looking part of the pizza, the pepperoni cups, were great. The pepperoni were thick cut and were baked to the point where they were just starting to char at the edges.
The margherita pizza was more solid overall, although my gut still liked the pepperoni more. The plum tomato sauce stood out more without the pepperoni to compete against, and the olive oil and basil added a really nice touch. The dough was more forgiving with this pizza’s toppings. If you are somebody with less of a tolerance for grease, who doesn’t mind a simple slice, this is a really good one to try.
Both of these pizzas reheated really well the next day in my bougie countertop steam toaster oven. I added grated romano cheese to both slices as well as Pizza & Pasta Magic Seasoning to the pepperoni slice. The pepperoni got extra crispy and both slices tasted maybe even better than when they were fresh. If anyone gets the chance to order an Artichoke Basille’s pizza well done, please let me know how it turns out!
Website: www.artichokepizza.com
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