Santarpio's Pizza - East Boston, MA

Posted By Michael Stern on January 21, 2008 12:00 AM

Bostonians know Santarpio’s as the city’s premier pizza place. We concur. Arriving on battered metal trays carried by a staff of take-no-prisoners waitresses (who are as efficient as they are brusque), this kitchen’s thin-crusted pies are a joy to eat. The outer rim of the pizza is a balance of bready crunch and chew, featuring an occasional blistered-black spot from the oven; and while the inside of the circle tends to soften and become unwieldy under a lot of toppings – leading to the heartbreak of cheese slippage – even the flexible part of the crust has a taste that makes you want to keep on eating, then ordering more. Curiously, the most powerhouse toppings (garlic, onions, anchovies) do not seem to pack a really wicked flavor wallop on Santarpio’s pizzas; these are tomato and cheese pies with plenty of soul, but with a mild, creamy disposition. In our experience, one pie, ranging from simple cheese or cheese and garlic (the latter with a hale of oregano on top) to a deluxe combos of sausage, mushrooms, etc., is just about enough to satisfy one normal appetite.

But your appetite is like ours – bigger than normal – than you need to know about Santarpio’s bar-b-q. For if this establishment’s reputation rides on pizza, it is bar-b-q that will lure us back again and again. Bar-b-q in Boston? you ask. In this case, “bar-b-q” is not the southern ritual of slow-cooked meat in a metal pit. It refers to meat cooked on a grate over charcoal – lengths of homemade Italian sausage and skewered hunks of lamb, or what Italians know as spiedini. That sausage is spectacular – a long, taut tube with the flavor of the charcoal fire insinuating its succulent, high-spiced insides. Many folks get it as a pre-pizza hors d’oeuvre – one long char-crusted sausage on a plate with hot cherry peppers and some crusty Italian bread. The bar-b-q lamb has a vivid flavor – for lamb-lovers only – and it ranges from a pleasant chew to a serious chaw. Plates of sausage and lamb, with peppers and bread, are the ONLY thing other than pizza on Santarpio’s menu.

The bar-b-q adds immeasurably to Santarpio’s atmosphere. Literally. The meat is cooked on a grill that is just inside the front door, and its wonderful aroma harmonizes with the smell of tomato sauce, cheese, and crust from the pizza ovens in back to make this place the most appetizing bar we’ve ever found. And make no mistake, it is a bar: smoky, raucous, a little unkempt, with boxing posters on the wall and 1960s Motown tunes setting a sassy beat.

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Posted By CM on July 28, 2011 1:33 AM

If not the best pizza around, it's close. The atmosphere is also up there. You have to sit at the bar and wait for a yuppie to come in and ask for the "wine list" (which is red or white), and then get the wine in a water glass, absolutely the best!

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Posted By Metz R on May 28, 2011 11:42 AM

The all-male waiters are rude, abusive, and borderline threatening. The pizza stinks: a thin layer of soggy dough, burnt black in spots on the bottom and edge. This is slapped down on your table by rude waiters after a long wait. The place is a dump.

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Posted By Larry Ropeik on May 17, 2010 4:51 PM

I concur--Santarpio's has it all over the better-known but less-flaovorful North End sopts. And it's only a bridge away.

As a member of the third in a four-generation devotees of of Trenton's DeLorenzo's Tomato Pies (Hudson St, location), that pie still ranks #1, but along with Pepe's in New Haven and Patsy Grimaldi's of Brooklyn, I'd put Santarpio's in any top five you can pick.

Besides, the pie-in-a-bar vibe is the way it should be!

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