Table Brick Oven and Bar “Table 22”

It seems like May blogs had a pizza theme to them lol. I recently went to Table Brick Over in Murrysville for the first time. I have heard a lot of great things about them for a while now and couldn’t wait to try the food. I started with the Spinach and Goat Cheese salad. If you have goat cheese on the menu, there is a good chance I’m going to order one of the items with it. The salad comes with Crispy pancetta and red onion, topped with a panko breaded goat cheese dollop and strawberry mint vinaigrette. No matter where I go and what goat cheese salad I get, I think there can always be more goat cheese! The salad itself was light and fresh, but more goat cheese!

For the main event I had the Lawnboy Flat Bread. I had done some research and heard a lot of people rave about this item and all the flat breads. The Lawnboy Flat Bread has ripe tomato slices, prosciutto, and arugula with a balsamic reduction. I was disappointed with this. The arugula and balsamic reduction on top made this flat bread very messy. The tomato and balsamic reduction made the flat bread very soggy and the arugula was just in the way. I wouldn’t order this again, if you do order it, maybe try eating it as a sandwich to become more successful lol. Even without it being messy, I wasn’t crazy about the overall flavor of the entire flat bread. If the flat breads are supposed to be Table’s signature item I’m not sure if I will return.

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Mary Jo’s Pizzeria

I recently had one of the strangest trips to get food I’ve ever had (not in a bad way). If you ever decide to check out Mary Jo’s Pizzeria make sure you plug it in your GPS because you might just pass it up. Everything is fine when going to pick up your pizza, until you make a turn into an alley. Then you play a little game called “Can you guess which house is also a Pizzeria?!”. Mary Jo’s Pizzeria is in the basement of a house and you can only get pizza for pick up. You walk up to the house, there is a door with a buzzer. You ring the buzzer and then the pizza gets passed to you in a small slot on the door. It makes you have this feeling that you need to look over both shoulders just to make sure nobody is watching.

I ordered 1 Pepperoni and 1 with half sausage and half green pepper just to try a few toppings. The sauce was a little sweeter than what most places give, but that’s fine it just makes Mary Jo’s a little more different than it already is. I usually like sausage and mushroom pizza but I wasn’t crazy about the sausage on this pizza, it tasted like breakfast sausage. The Pizza’s only come in 1 size which I would probably say is slightly larger than a personal pan. How can you really go wrong with a $5 pizza?! My friends and I usually get Little Caesar’s $5 when we get together but I may give Mary Jo’s a try with the group next time to see what they think. I didn’t know what toppings they had until I saw the menu outside (pictured above). Next time I am definitely trying the bacon pizza!

Leaving Mary Jo’s all I could wonder is how many people order pizza the first time and pass it up? However, random places like Mary Jo’s Pizzeria is the reason I started this blog in the first place.

Shelly Pie

I’m sure at some point, whether or not you are a lifer or have only lived in Pittsburgh a short time, that you have heard about something called a “Vinnie Pie”. Vincent’s Pizza Park in Forrest Hills closed last year (but is reopening soon) and many in Pittsburgh have been going through withdrawl. A friend of my sisters was telling me recently of a place called “Shelly Pie” that is supposed to be very similar to a “Vinnie Pie”. So last week I decided I would take a trip down to see what the Shelly Pie is like.

First the Shelly Pie comes in the traditional cardboard bottom and paper wrapping that we all know from Vincent’s. Open up the paper, traditional pool of grease in the middle? Oh Yes! Just by looks so far the Shelly Pie does come close. I ordered sausage and mushrooms, overall the pie was pretty good. It even had a little char on the bottom like a “Vinnie Pie” (hopefully the Shelly Pie isn’t cigarette ashes like Vincent’s lol). I think the only real difference was that a “Vinnie Pie” was always pilled high with toppings and the “Shelly Pie” wasn’t, there could’ve been more sausage and mushroom on it.

I will say that the “Vinnie Pie” was never my favorite, I would get it from time to time, but in my opinion it wasn’t the best pie in Pittsburgh (that award goes to Mineo’s in my book). The Shelly Pie does a good job filling the void for those looking for a Vinnie Pie until they reopen in June. I think the real test for the Shelly Pie will be when Vincent’s opens again and compare them side by side. Maybe that will be another blog down the road.