"It's substantial. It's dynamic without being heavy. This," he says, "is very good." A tone of concession then creeps into his voice. "I'm pleasantly surprised."
A pizza compliment coming from Ed Levine - a visiting New York-based food writer and founder of Seriouseats.com who traveled the world to write his book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven - means a lot. And though it was only the first of my several visits, I had to agree: The Neapolitan-style pies coming from Stella's wood-fired hearth are outstanding, from the simplest marinara (a sunburst of tomato gilded with little more than plucked oregano leaves and shaved garlic) to the sheer decadence of the tartufo (a richly truffled white pie so fragrant, we could smell its earthy luxury the moment one landed three tables away, where a server burst the soft-roasted egg yolk on top and painted the cheese with a luminous shine). There were some small exceptions, but Stella, overall, has raised the bar for pizza-craft in Philly, which, until lately, has been inexplicably low.
Levine's qualifier of "pleasantly surprised," however, certainly caught my ear. Even in New York, it seems, Stephen Starr (who runs mega versions of Buddakan and Morimoto there) has earned a reputation as a flashy impresario and concept collector who has benefited from the fact that Philly is perpetually a couple of years behind the national trend curve. It's a sentiment I hear often from local foodies, too, who have been conditioned into a sort of reflexive Starr fatigue after his decade of domination.
