The Del Popolo pizza truck is a brilliant concept. A giant bi-level pizza food truck complete with wood fired oven to bring hot fresh pizza to the masses no matter where they are. It's even more amazing than the pizza vending machine which is great in an only in America kind of way. This glass sided beast rolled into my neighborhood recently and I too the opportunity to check them out.
Once you order one of their 3 pizza choices you can watch them through the glass toss, top and bake your order in this wonderful contraption. Since food trucks in my part of town are a bit of an anomaly, there was some wait from order to actual pizza in hand, but that is to be expected.
I decided to go simple and ordered the white pizza--fresh mozzarella, grana padano, ricotta, basil and garlic. I got this fresh and hot out of the oven and it looked and smelled fantastic. The crust is thin and lightly charred but not burnt and the different cheeses give it a great flavor. I liked the hint of basil and garlic and the mixture had a lovely buttery flavor I found appealing. The one drawback for me was the crust. While it is thin and light it is not very crisp--actually not crisp at all. This is more New York pizza as opposed to say Chicago. The dough was soft, but at least it wasn't chewy. I basically ended up folding the pieces to eat them, kind of like an Italian quesadilla. On an overall scale of 1 to 10 I'll give this a decent 6.5 since I do like my crust with a little more structure and crispiness. While I didn't totally love it I still ate it, I mean come on--it's pizza!
I've said before, pizza is very subjective, some people like a thin crispy crust, some like deep dish, some like thin and soft and if that is you then this pizza is for you. I still say everyone should check the truck out if you see it around cause it is kind of cool. As for whether or not you'll like the pizza--well only your taste buds or preferences will be able to tell you that.
