Tag Archives: Doug Horn

Leaving on a jet plane for Barbera (and recent good stuff in San Antonio)

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So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go…

Above: Whole fish at Andrew Weissman’s Sand Bar in San Antonio.

It’s hard to believe but it’s true: tomorrow I’ll be leaving again for Italy, just three weeks after our return from our honeymoon there and our move into our new home, a little rental on the northwest side of Austin.

Above: Josh Cross’s Duck burger topped with foie gras at Oloroso in San Antonio.

Life has been so rich and flavorful lately, as the wine world seems to regain its footing and I can only thank my lucky stars for all the interesting projects I’ve got lined up for 2010. It’s a wonderful time for me and Tracie P (née B) but I know that the glow I feel is for the joy that she has brought to my heart. When she smiles at me, it feels as if the whole world smiles at me as well.

Above: A marinara with marinated, fresh anchovies at Doug Horn’s Dough Pizzeria Napoletana in San Antonio.

I feel so fortunate that I’m getting to travel to Italy for the second time this year — and with a group of really cool bloggers. We’ll be posting about our tastings and adventures in the land of Barbera over at the Barbera2010 blog. (Today, we posted an awesome guest spot from McDuff, one of my favorite wine bloggers, who wasn’t able to join us in realtime.)

Above: Alfonso and I enjoyed a bottle of Barbera last night in San Antonio at Il Sogno.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was. I can’t help but thank my lucky stars for this special time in our lives. I’m so happy to be surrounded by loving folks these days and all the good things that are happening work-wise right now. As my friend Slava back in New York used to say, I should “suck a lime.”

But it’s going to be awfully hard to board that plane tomorrow. I know I’ll be back soon but it only gets harder and harder to tell that lovely lady of mine good-bye. I’ll miss her terribly…

All my bags are packed I’m ready to go
I’m standin’ here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin’ it’s early morn
The taxi’s waitin’ he’s blowin’ his horn
Already I’m so lonesome I could die

Oh babe, I hate to go…

Pizza, an Italian sine qua non (Alan Richman, please call me!)

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Above: Doug Horn’s pizza at the aptly named Dough in San Antonio is among the best I’ve ever had — in Italy and the U.S. That’s his margherita: there is a lot of great Stateside pizza but Doug’s is the most authentically Neapolitan I’ve tasted.

Did it all began back in January when Dr. V asked me what vino I’d pair with pizza?

The tenor of the debate seemed to have reached fever pitch by the time I weighed in with my post Pizza, pairing, and Pasolini.

A Solomon of pizza lovers, Eric, the sage among us observed rightly that we don’t have to do it the way they do it Rome.

Above: Doug’s mushroom and caramelized red onion pizza is not the most traditional among his offering but, damn, is it good! I have deep respect for Alan Richman (who also happens to be one of the nicest food writers you’ll ever meet) but his omission of Dough in the top 25 pizzas in the U.S. is a glaring oversight.

But now one of our nation’s greatest food writers, Alan Richman, tells us that “Italians are wrong about pizza… Pizza isn’t as fundamental to Italy as it is to America. Over there, it plays a secondary role to pasta, risotto, and polenta. To be candid, I think they could do without it.” (Here’s the link to the GQ article on the top 25 pizzas in the U.S. but it is a major pain in the ass to navigate.)

Above: Doug also does a wonderful, traditional Neapolitan flatbread. This is probably a trace of the origins of pizza as we know it today. I’ve never met anyone as passionate about traditionalism in pizza as Doug.

Alan has impeccable and unquestionable taste and I agree with almost all of his top-25 selections (at least those I have tasted myself). Anyone who reads Do Bianchi knows that I — like most Italophile oenophiles — have an obsession with pizza and that Lucali in Brooklyn is one of my all-time favorites (a preference that Alan shares).

I know that Alan is just having fun when he says that Italians are “wrong about pizza.” And I agree that Americanized pizza is a wonderful and spontaneous mutation of the ingenious simplicity that the Italians have created — like so many things they’ve given the world.

Above: Doug also does some incredible fresh cheese and traditional Neapolitan cheese antipasti that he learned to make while studying to be a pizzaiolo in Naples.

But to say that “Pizza isn’t as fundamental to Italy as it is to America” is egregious hyperbolism. Pizza — like pasta, like the Italian national football team — is one of the few notions that truly binds the Italians together as a nation — nation in the etymological sense, i.e., a shared birth from the Latin natio. (I have a great deal to say on this but I’m literally running out the door to San Antonio as I write this.)

Alan, Eric, and Tyler, please come to San Antonio anytime: we have much to discuss and the pizza (and the Brunello) will be on me. I promise that the trip will be well worth it.