I thought of this thread while switching planes in San Diego this morning.
With Dave Peck coming out to San Diego for Breakwest tour, he\'ll have to try this place and see how it ranks among the hometown joints.
and here we are.
first, i would like everyone here to go back and read through the entire thread before reading my post.
leith just took peaches, mike, and me to Basic in SD. he\'s been telling us about it since yesterday, and i was really "iffy" about it going in. sorry, but after hearing about "the best pizza in new york" for years, and trying shitpie after shitpie from that damn city, i just don\'t trust anyone when it comes to pizza.
the entire experience just got more
surreal by the minute, from the very moment we arrived and i saw the outside of the place. "holy shit. this is BAR." peaches and i took some pictures of the outside of the place (which is right across the street from PETCO Park - where the Padres play) before we headed in.
as we walked to our table, we saw a couple other tables with pies, and the pie looked good. can\'t judge a book by its cover, but you can usually tell a shitpie when you see one. i looked at another table and saw a salad. it didn\'t take me more than a one-second glance to know that it was a "BAR Salad". sure enough, we got to our table and looked at the menu, and it\'s got all the same ingredients.
i walked and looked around in awe. the bar side, the dining room side, the single pool table, the garage doors, the comfy couch room, the supercute waitress... this was no coincidence. this place is *definitely* modeled after BAR.
i knew what i had to do. mike and i split a large red chicken & onion with mozz, which is my favorite BAR pie, and what i always order there. peaches got a mashed potato and bacon (where else do they serve that??), and leith got a red bacon & mozz.
the pies came out, and at this point, i already knew i wasn\'t going to be disappointed. there was no chance this place would go through the trouble of being a west coast BAR and serving up a shitpie. and i wasn\'t disappointed in the least.
was it as good as BAR\'s pizza? no. but there\'s no way i could/would ever expect it to be. it was, however, DAMN good, and certainly miles beyond anything i would ever expect from anything west of connecticut. the pies were the same oval shape as BAR, with a similar cut. the ingredients were a little different - onions and chicken were sort of shredded instead of diced like BAR. both the onions and chicken had similar tastes (to BAR) though. the sauce and the mozz were both really strong. if there was a weak point, i\'d say it was the dough. they made a nice thin crust, but it was a
little too buttery/crunchy/flaky. not bad in the least bit, but that was the weak point.
it just kept getting more and more surreal. we\'ve got all this going on, and peaches says, "is that david wells?". sure enough, it was. not a huge deal, but pretty wild nonetheless. i had texted tim to tell him about what was going on. he asked me to order him a small mozz to go so he could check it out. when the waitress brought it out, i saw the website name on the pizza box:
http://www.barbasic.com. i had to ask her what she knew about the history of the place, and she told us the owner used to live in new haven, and she thinks he used to work at BAR. she totally understood the pizza snobbery, because there is NO other pizza like them on the west coast, and they\'re actually opening up two other ones soon. and it turns out she and her friend are going to see the breakfast tonight! :wah:
i was a doubter. big time. but i was definitely more than pleasantly surprised. it was VERY good, and while i *never* eat pizza away from home, i would most certainly eat pizza in SD again. thanks leith. :thumbsup:
