[Beerie] Samuel Adams doesn't suck

In craft beer culture there is this inherent idea that mass produced equals bad and I mostly agree with that -- I too would much rather give my money to a local brewery and support my local economy any and every time I have the choice, and small/hand-crafted usually tastes better anyway. The cult of fervent local allegiance would be nepotism if the products weren’t so damned good, but Michigan beers have earned their staunch support.

Buuuuuuut sometimes a non-local craft brewery makes something really, really interesting (like Great Lakes Brewing Co., or Dogfish Head) and even though I want to always give my money to Michigan breweries sometimes I want to mix it up a bit and try something from a different state, or different country. And for the most part, craft beer enthusiasts are on board with that. Sometimes they get snippy ("You know, Michigan makes some good XYZ-styles too") but let he who has never drank something from Sierra Nevada or Rogue cast the first stone.

And so it was I found myself at Merchant's Fine Wine the other day and saw a brand-new release from Samuel Adams -- the Stony Brook Red, part of their Barrel Room Collection. I love sour beers all of the time but right now happen to be on a particularly big sour kick, so the part of me that wants to try every single sour beer in the world for the sake of research was excited to try something new ... plus there's that whole "a sour beer from Sam Adams" curiosity. The part of me that hates everything winced -- Sam Adams? Really? Is this supposed to be their version of Anheuser-Busch's "Small Batch Series"?

My friend and Certified Cicerone Annette May pointed the Stony Brook Red out to me and said she was excited to try it, having tasted a sample of it a few years ago when they were still developing it. I made the "Who farted?" face and she said, "What? They make good beers!" And I, ever humbled in her presence because she knows about 1,000x more than I, shook off my shame at being an ignorant anti-corporate-for-the-sake-of-being-anti-corporate-for-the-sake-of-being-on-one-side-of-the-extreme extremist, bought a bottle.

And you know what? It doesn't suck.

The Barrel Room Collection is something that has been in development for several years. They've taken the time to test the products and until last month the Collection was only available in select markets; in July it was released nationwide with all four Barrel Collection offerings: New World, Thirteenth House, Stony Brook Red and American Kriek (incidentally, the American Kriek is made with Michigan Balaton cherries).

A few days later another beer industry friend posted this on the Facebook:

Me: Can I help you find anything?
Customer: Just looking for some new hoppy beers to try.
Me: [Point at Sierra Nevada]
Customer: No, I won't drink anything from Sierra Nevada
Me: Why?
Customer: I don't drink beer from large breweries (lumping them in with BMC [Bud/Miller/Coors])
Me: Sierra Nevada isn't even half the size of Samuel Adams, and Sam Adams isn't even a 20% as large as the major breweries.
Customer: Oh  

If they make good beer, what is the difference, c'mon people!!

Given that I hate everything, I also hate any kind of extremist position on anything, and the idea that any and all major breweries are unequivocally BAD (evil!) is pretty damn extreme. Besides, it wouldn't be a big leap to say that pretty much anything made on the other side of an ocean that finds its way into the Michigan market (yes Sam Adams is made in Boston; see my analogy through to the end please) is mass-produced by a major (read: corporate) brewery. I mean, craft enthusiasts still seem to be down for some Modelo and Asahi (because they're, you know, foreign) and those are among the biggest breweries in the world.

Let's also not forget that any brewery has the potential to cross that threshold from "small" to "large" if they have the capacity to brew enough and have a popular product that sells. Anheuser-Busch may still be #1 in sales volume, but our very own Bell's Brewery isn't far behind holding down the #13 spot (by comparison, Sam Adams -- as Boston Beer Co. -- is #5). Probably this has a lot to do with Broberon, but I think we can all agree Bell's makes some killer beers too.

So anyway I had the Stony Brook Red (a take on the Belgian sour Flanders red style), it didn't suck, I'd like to try the American Kriek and you should check them out if you have the chance.

[HOT LIST] Worst patios

Do you ever get sick of all the sunshine being blown up your ass from local media and particularly local blogs with names like "[something-something] DETROIT!" ? So do I. Here is a list of things that are awful.

Every year every media outlet runs the obligatory "best patios" run-down in time for summer. (Here's mine, and mind you that was pre-GLCRC.) There is usual very little variation from year to year or from one glorified PR/ad sales vehicle to the next, and phrases like "hidden gem" and "urban oasis" are used without restraint. But not all patios are good patios, much like not all restaurants are good restaurants. These patios pretty much suck. Here's why.

#1 Pizzeria Biga (Royal Oak)
I love the new Pizzeria Biga building. It's totes gorg, soaring ceilings and all the pretty things owned and designed by the man with the best taste in all of metro Detroit. And then there is that godforsaken patio. Proving once again that just because you can doesn't mean you should, the patio at Pizzeria Biga is the most poorly-situated patio in all of metro Detroit. Flimsy tables wobbling around on artfully broken concrete make your entire meal a balancing act, but the real crime here is that it's RIGHT NEXT TO THE FUCKING RAILROAD TRACKS. Do you know how many times that fucking train goes by during peak dinner hours? Twice on my last visit. Twice I had to completely cease all conversation because that fucking train is, literally, RIGHT NEXT TO YOU and even the loudest of us can't shout over it. And do you know what a train isn't? Short. It isn't short. What should offer some measure of tranquility ends up being as violently jarring as having a picnic in the parking lot behind the 7-Eleven where the EMS vehicles wait for their emergency calls. Love the inside, love the beer selection, love pizza, everything else is lovely, but that patio is the worst.

#2 Majestic Cafe (Midtown)
Alright, so I realize Detroit is in its renaissance and everything is all better and so on an so forth and something-something DETROIT! But there are still things about Detroit that are no different now than they were three years ago back when the dominant narrative was one of a feral dystopic wasteland before the switch was flipped and we all happily hurled ourselves towards the other extreme. What I'm really trying to say is that no one told the housing-challenged about Detroit's renaissance, and they're still out there, shouting at cracks in the sidewalk and using bus stops as waste management facilities. New Yorkers like to talk big about their beggars but rest assured I've yet to find a city in the continental United States with a homeless population as violently aggressive as ours. The "homeless problem" is actually a significant one that only gets addressed when there's a Super Bowl in town and is otherwise ignored in the narrative of nu:Detroit. But for all the happy little hipsters playing house in Midtown, the homeless are still out there, all around us, still quite visible despite our collective efforts to ignore them. And lest this sound like soapboxing, I do it too and the last thing I want to deal with during my $30 bottomless mimosa brunch is the never-ending stream of vagrants angrily demanding money because that's just, like, a bummer man. And while the stark juxtaposition between the privileged colonizers who only look homeless but who have plenty of money for overpriced PBRs and shots of Jamesons and the long-time un-residents who haven't yet been pushed out by them is an anthropologically fascinating thing to witness and probably the closest thing to a true narrative of nu:Detroit, this is why I don't hang out on the Majestic Cafe's sidewalk patio.

#3 The Well (Detroit)
That last one was extra long so I'll keep this short: same as above. Also, as far as patios go, this one is just kind of silly but I have certainly witnessed some interesting things happen on it back when $2 Labatt Blue Light night was the highlight of my week. Yes, that happened.

#4 The Old Shillelagh (Greektown)
Not only is this the most awful place you could possibly be on a Saturday night (and it IS), but to get to their rooftop patio--which in itself isn't bad, aside from the awful people--you have to walk up like 16 flights of stairs. Okay, so you've got a bunch of freshly-made-21-year-olds who came to PARTY IN DETROIT, WOOOOOOOO and they're getting wrecked on Jaeger bombs because that's what newly-minted legals do and they're all partying on the patio because that's what people in Michigan in the summer do, but on top of that they're being made to navigate multiple flights of stairs in their exceptionally inebriated states like shaky foals just learning to walk on still-unstable legs (it takes years to develop proper alcohol legs). The only saving grace for the Old Shillelagh is that most of them won't remember the tumbles they took come the next morning and 21-year-olds still have yet to be fully indoctrinated into our compulsorily litigious society and are too afraid to tell their parents even if they are hurt because they probably weren't supposed to be there in the first place.

#5 BlackFinn (Royal Oak)
This place is the WORST. There is nothing inherently bad about their patio other than the fact that it's theirs. The problem is that the walls are the only thing containing the awfulness of this place and preventing it from breaking through its barriers and inflicting itself upon the rest of the world. The patio, with its garage doors that open into the bar, is a gaping entry into the Hellmouth.

Bubbling under Sneakers Pub (Ferndale), Niki's Pizza (Greektown), Crave Lounge (Dearborn), the Detroiter Bar (Greektown), Woody's (Royal Oak), Dino's Lounge (Ferndale)

 

The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

New Yorkers visit Detroit, eat at Slows. Yep, it's this story again, only these guys failed to bow at the altar of the Most High Exalted Mac and Cheese at the Most Important Restaurant in the Country. [NY Food Journal]

Green beer. Not in a gross way like that Bud Light pumped full of green food coloring that gets served by the trough-full during St. Patrick's Day; this is about Arbor Brewing/Corner Brewery's $350,000 investment in sustainable technologies at their production facility. [Fox News]

Chez Zara opens inside the Madison Building, and it's the MADISON building, not the M@dison Building, because just because Subprime Dan got a few buildings for practically free doesn't mean he gets to run around disrespecting this city and its heritage by slapping on infantile Twitter-twatty names on historic buildings he bought at bargain basement prices after his company ruined real estate. [Drinks Business Review / Deadspin]

POUTINE IS A THING!!! [Esquire]

You ever make out with someone after they ate the death-by-garlic shawarma at Bucharest Grill and found yourself totally into it? So did Esquire. [Esquire]

Bray's Burger Bust. [Det News]

Yates Cider Mill opens August 10! Fall is coming! [Yates FB]

When hipster cred goes Etsy twee: Corktown is discovered by Martha Stewart Living. [IAYD]

Yelp and You: Deconstructing the Website You Love to Hate and Why You Love to Hate It

Earlier this week I posted this photo poking fun at the self-annointed experts who populate Yelp. As I often post things I think are funny that poke fun at other things, I posted this too with the same intent -- a giggle, perhaps a chortle, maybe even a guffaw, but nothing more.

As the most popular post ever in the history of the EID Facebook page, it received over 400 "likes," reached over 8,000 people, was shared over 150 times, and catapulted my weekly reach to more than 69,000, with more than 2,800 people "talking about" it. Did I anticipate this sort of rabid reaction to something I thought otherwise fairly innocuous? Of course not. Which forces me to wonder: how does a website focused on user-generated content that as of January 2012 has over 71 million unique visitors monthly also generate so much hostility, so much vitriol, with an almost gleeful proclamation of solidarity in antipathy via social media shares?

By doing some quick remedial algebra, dividing Yelp's 71 million unique users per month by the just under 315 million people (including infants and children and the olds and all of the many people without computers or easy access to the Internet who are either living at or below poverty level or in extremely remote areas or both) in the country, that still means nearly 23% of the TOTAL population of Americans use Yelp. The 71 million figure is specific to Yelp.com, the American site, and does not account for the separate Yelp sites in Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Austria or the Netherlands (none of which are .com). While Detroit can claim a bit of overlap with Windsor with restaurants immediately across the border making their way to the American site, since we're talking numbers in the millions the overall impact of Canadian cross-over users is negligible. (Plus, they gave us poutine, so let's cut them a little slack here.) Factoring out those whose numbers don't contribute to the count of viable Internet users in the country and that percentage of total Yelp users probably soars well above 50%. Which is to say that, of all the polemic Internet high-fiving over an apparent shared and declared dislike of Yelp, probably at least 1 in 2 of those people use it.

So why all the vitriol? The lady doth protest too much, methinks... meaning that those who so abjectly oppose Yelp (often citing such artfully articulated arguments like "all it is is a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're talking about" as their reason why) are perhaps more deeply dependent on it than they care to admit. In other words, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference -- and this reaction seems anything but indifferent. Besides, user-generated content in any sort of online outlet tends to be filled with the garbled brain-droppings of mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers (read any comments section in anything anywhere) ... if anything Yelp loyalists tend to be intelligible, and are often even articulate (though sometimes people seem to want to "push" their prosaic prose prowess with twee descriptors and self-ascribed axioms like "bacony goodness").

Is it our own internalized self-disgust going back to our Puritanical roots that dictates almost every behavior we engage in is cause for shame and self-loathing? Eh, that's probably a question too big for a blog, but that's definitely something we Americans are quite good at. (We're also very good at loving something right up until we hate it. See: the Obama presidency.) And maybe Yelp is full of idiots who don't know what they're talking about, but by that token (and given the number of users in this country) the chorus of idiots should be nothing but white noise drowned out by the sheer glut of content available, much of it generated by non-idiots. Unless you *sincerely* think everyone is an idiot. In which case you're probably a sociopath.

At the end of the day, we all just love to hear ourselves talk. (Hi: I have a blog.) The problem is, we all hate that we all love that. We accuse other people of that as a form of personal indictment, but really the issue we have is that we can't hear ourselves talking over all their talking and it makes us huff and puff and stamp our feet. Yelp is the ultimate distillation of that behavior in its purest form, and that's why everyone is so damn ambivalent towards it.

I'm not sure this totally applies to this post but it generally applies to everything.

Yelp is at its very worst ethically problematic. Their so-called "bullying" tactics to get restaurants to pay them money to have negative reviews removed are well-documented. Eater National takes particular umbrage with the site, wasting nary an opportunity to make it abundantly clear just how repugnant they find Yelp's whole business model and fan base to be. (Which is extra funny in the ironic sort of way for so many reasons, but that's another post for another day.) But let's just have a little real talk time here: 71 million unique monthly users. That means a whole LOT of IT infrastructure and maintenance, if absolutely nothing else. That needs to get paid for somehow; websites don't build and maintain themselves. Now, if Yelp is going to fall under scrutiny for essentially allowing restaurants to "buy" positive reviews ... THAT IS THE FUNNIEST FUCKING THING I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE.

Welcome to modern day media in which all content is bought and sold. So why should Yelp, a user-generated website that never purports to be anything other than an entertainment tool, be excluded from the very same practices that so-called "legitimate" publications have quite literally made their bread-and-butter in recent years? Who's really the asshole here? Make no mistake, media is nothing more than a blood-thirsty pariah gorging itself on the wasted carcass of society. As a part of it, I study it exhaustively to better know the beast whose bed I lay in and after years of climbing the ranks and getting better acquainted with the inner workings of the system, I can tell you that you don't want to see the man behind the curtain.

With something as democratizing as the Internet, one might think free speech would flow -- now everyone has a voice, the first amendment wins, etc. Instead, the Internet has turned into the most pervasively employed tool of public relations since television and even user-generated sites like Yelp aren't immune. It's fairly easy for a soulless PR lackey to create a fake profile and rave about the places they represent ... Yelp tries to be judicious in monitoring for these but they still sneak through. (It's also fairly easy for a jilted former employee/lover/friend/what-have-you with an axe to grind to write something scathing and drag down a business's overall ranking.) The system is certainly flawed. But targeting Yelp for practices that are pandemic across major media is a little forest-from-the-trees.

I love Yelp. I think it's a fantastic tool, an "illustrated phone book" as one person called it. For all of Yelp's ethical issues and the banality of some of its content, it is an exceptionally useful reference tool for researching businesses. Despite all of the backlash the "Yelp Elite" types receive from the rest of the eating public, they do an exceptional job of keeping listings current. The algorithms used by the website itself to generate suggestions related to the listing a user is viewing is still the single best way to discover new a new business, more than any other website with similar (though less efficient) functionalities. Because of the insatiable obsession of the site's most avid users, their dutiful reviewing of places most arcane allows a spotlight to shine on businesses that would otherwise go wholly unnoticed due to lack of a website, social media presence, advertising and in some cases even storefront signage. Yelp's denizens of dining, in their never-ending quest to ferret out the most obscure hidey-holes and be FIRST to discover the dive bar burger that's better than Miller's or the barbecue handed off through bullet proof glass that's better than Slows' fill in the gaps otherwise missed by traditional media. (And I get that compulsion. I do.)

Obviously in my line of work I talk to a lot of business owners, managers and chefs. Some have a healthy attitude towards Yelp, recognizing it for what it is without taking it too seriously. The rest HATE it. But they miss something critical, and maybe because this has less to do with what's visible online and more to do with consumer psychology: it used to be that the customer is always right. If the customer whined and bitched and pissed and moaned enough, he or she would inevitably get his way. But thanks to Yelp, the whining bitching pissing and moaning has become so constant and incessant that it is nothing more than white noise falling on deaf ears. As soon as restaurants stopped taking it seriously, asshole customers stopped being rewarded and incentivized for asshole behavior. What's more is that the consuming public actually doesn't put much stake in Yelp's reviews beyond just using them to grab a quick phone number.

While democratizing food reviews (something I had mixed feelings about, being that your average diner doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, until I realized that your average reviewer doesn't either) and seemingly empowering customers a bit too absolutely, it has ultimately enabled restaurants with the power to ignore them. Restaurants no longer fear a bad review - not from Yelpers and now not even from professionals (who more and more face the constraints of catering to advertisers and editors who'd rather not rock the boat). As business owners, they merely have to worry about running their business, as it should be. If they do it poorly, people will stop coming - with or without reviewers needing to tell them to.

Love Yelp, hate Yelp - it matters naught. But to blame Yelp for the woes of the world is utterly missing the point.

Enough of this; time for me to find something else funny to post on Facebook.

[Metromode] Beer + Bikes: A Match Made in Heaven

In recent years, cycling culture in metro Detroit has gone from nearly nonexistent to explosively popular, with significant cycling infrastructure being added in major metropolitan centers and small towns alike. At the same time, the same thing has been happening with craft beer culture, evolving from the niche realm of beer geekdom to mass consumption. Coincidence? Never. As bike culture and beer culture have grown exponentially in Michigan, they have also been growing together, in a symbiotic relationship of fun.

Stephen Johnson launched the Motor City Tour Company in 2009 as Motor City Brew Tours, offering guided brewery tours (with samples) by bus. Each tour would hit three different breweries, and was more than just a standard-issue pub crawl: designed for people with a real passion (or at least sincere interest) for craft beer, the tours also included a meet-and-greet with the brewers themselves and a behind-the-scenes walk-through of the brewing facilities. As Motor City Brew Tours grew, Johnson began offering different kinds of tour packages: first walking tours, then biking tours.

Read more.

[Beerie] Ron Jeffries on Sobrehumano Palena 'Ole

It may be one of the ugliest labels Jolly Pumpkin has ever produced (which is particularly unfortunate given that they are known for their artwork), but Sobrehumano Palena 'Ole -- a collaboration brew between Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales and Maui Brewing Company -- is 2012's Beer of the Year, and you might as well start believing me now because you're going to have to believe me later. (What, you think I saved this one solely for my blog? Come on.)

I recently had the chance to speak with Jolly Pumpkin's head brewer and founder Ron Jeffries, and after the obligatory background chat I then launched into the question I had been burning to ask: "ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE SOBREHUMANO AGAIN????"

But first some background.

Maui Brewing Company had been discussing their possible collaboration brews for 2012 and were tossing the names of some potential partner breweries around. Maui's lead brewer John Walsh is originally from Michigan and named Jolly Pumpkin as his number one pick. Ron (who likes to practice "Hawaiian time" himself) was into the idea, and together they decided to contribute the unique flavors of their respective home states to this collabobrew -- from Maui, lilik'oi (a native Hawaiian passion fruit); from Michigan, cherries.

"It was a really challenging beer to brew," Ron says, specifically because of the two fruits (the tartness of the lilik'oi and the sweetness of the cherries). "Every single barrel we did tasted different. I had to create 10 different blends that tasted the same; it was quite the challenge. The blends are all slightly different but really close. [Because the beer is non-pasteurized and non-filtered], with aging and depending on how it's stored you'll get different flavors still."

The result? A zippy-tart, lushly tropical, bright, effervescent summer fun time light-drinking treat for grown-ups. I would drink it on a plane. I would drink it watching Bane. I would drink it on a boat. I would drink it eating goat. I would drink it in a car (even though I wouldn't get far). I would drink it on a train. I would drink it in the rain. I would drink it on an ark. I would drink it in the dark. I would drink it on a mare. I would drink it here and there and everywhere.

So...will he make it again? "I'm not planning on doing it again, but I could be convinced." So...you're telling me THERE'S A CHANCE???

He offers that he could maybe do one batch and make it a pub special, but as of right now he just doesn't have the space to make any more. ****BUT**** once they're in their shiny new 70,000 square foot brewing facility there will be a LOT more room. And Ron has been convinced to re-brew something he had considered as a one-off before: the Baudelaire series' iO - a style Ron likes to think of as a "red saison" brewed with hibiscus, rose hips and rose petals - was meant to be a "one-shot" but then he was petitioned by fans to brew it again, and now distributes it still in limited release but much greater quantities.

So: there's a chance.

Whether Ron decides to do it again or not (could use a little help persuading him here, guys), it will still be about two years before we see it again. Because of the freak weather we had this spring (80+ degree temps which teased the fruit tree blooms out a bit too early, followed by a frost that decimated them) Michigan cherries are hard to come by this year. Plus the beer has to age in oak barrels for a year, so even if we're very convincing we still have a long wait ahead of us, which means it's time to stock up. I have a bottle of 2012 KBS and a bottle of 2012 Devil Dancer and I'm willing to make trades.

As for Jolly Pumpkin, it was the first 100% oak barrel-aged sour brewery in the country and still to this day is the ONLY 100% oak barrel-aged sour brewery in the country, though there are significantly more breweries experimenting with sours now compared to when Jolly Pumpkin first opened in 2004. "People will ask me, 'How big do you want the brewery to be?'" Ron says. "My answer has always been, 'I'll make as much sour beer as people want to drink.'" If my predictions prove true (sour beer: it's gonna be the next thing), Ron's about to get a whole lot busier.

[HOT LIST] Neapolitan pizza

Mani Osteria. All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

There has been a growing trend in metro Detroit recently, and one that has been happening relatively quietly. No, it's not upscale BBQ or upscale comfort food -- those trends have been anything but quiet. But while we have continued to bow at the altar of the almighty mac and cheese, coal- and wood-fired pizzerias are increasing in number (not to mention overall quality), and more specifically, Neapolitan-style pizzas are quickly nipping at the heels of their Sicilian-born Detroit-style deep dish brethren.

Pizza gets a bad rep. Typically thought of as the garbage pail gut-bomb it has been bastardized into courtesy of America (USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!), when people think of "pizza" they think of grease-soaked dense pan-cooked crust gobbed with dripping piles of cheap cheese and piled over with a zoo's worth of animal flesh. While I have a certain passion for such pedestrian pizzas like the fat Midwesterner that I am, not all pizza is so offensive to refined tastes. Neapolitan-style pizza is defined by high-quality, fresh, simple and healthy ingredients -- unbleached flour, fresh mozzarella, exceptional produce, extra virgin olive oil. In its truest Neapolitan form, pizza is actually quite healthy.

There is a very specific set of criteria that qualifies a pizza as "Neapolitan," but there are only two pizzerias in metro Detroit that are officially certified as such. For the purposes of this Hot List, I'm looking at places that are Neapolitan in spirit if not 100% in practice. Taken into consideration is size, shape and flavor of the dough; the quality and caliber of ingredients (prosciutto, yes; Canadian bacon, no); whether the pizza ovens are coal- or wood-fired; and, as is the case with any Hot List, whether or not I like it.*

The Margherita pizza at Antica Pizzeria Fellini.

#1 Antica Pizzeria Fellini (Royal Oak)
For more about the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, scroll down to #4. Got it? 'k. So this place is metro Detroit's other VPN-recognized Neapolitan pizzeria, and it's the real deal. This place is the most like an actual restaurant in Italy out of any of the faux-Italian eateries I’ve ever been in – it’s just a space, a simple space they obviously made some effort to make it look nice but otherwise a room in a building, nothing more. The owner is ever-present, presiding over the restaurant from his post in the very open kitchen, making all the food himself and personally checking in with all the customers. (For a little added authenticity, he even has an Italian accent). There was once a time when Il Posto was the most "Italian" place in Detroit, reminiscent of the highly-orchestrated fussy fine dining at Michelin-rated restaurants in touristy Toscana. Antica is countryside Italian, a small family-owned spot that exists solely to serve good food to their "extended" family, the customers. This is hands-down the best Neapolitan pizza I’ve ever had in Michigan. The dough tastes like flour, salt and yeast with a bit of wood smoke – in other words, exactly what it is, a mere canvas for the superior tomato sauce and creamy mozzarella. Their house-baked bread used for their bruschetta would also make excellent fettunta, and I wouldn't be surprised if they would in fact make it for you if you asked.

#2 Pizzeria Biga (Royal Oak, Southfield)
The custom-built brick oven chef-proprietor Luciano del Signore had flown in from Italy is pretty much the Ferrari of pizza ovens. Actually I think I said it best when I said, "The showpiece of the place is the 6,000-pound Ferrari-red wood-burning oven hand-made in Naples, Italy by Stefano Ferrara who is (channeling Cher Horowitz), like, a totally important designer. (Of ovens.)" Also, I am apparently fond of the Ferrari comparison. Real talk: this is not the best Neapolitan-style pizza of the bunch; several others on this list and listed as "bubbling under" are better. But do any of those other places have 24 international craft beers on tap and a beer store in their basement? No they do not. Extra bonus for the use of their own house-made charcuterie like duck prosciutto, which if you HAVE to pollute your pizza with animal carcass then this would be the place to do it.

The Margherita pizza at Tony Sacco's.

#3 Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza (Novi, Ann Arbor coming soon)
It's a casual joint that manages to strike the perfect balance between pedestrian pizza gluttony and European refinement. You can read more about their $50,000 custom-built oven that burns extremely expensive clean-burning coal here; see also all fresh ingredients and everything made from scratch with no freezers, no microwaves and no fryers anywhere in the building. For a place that feels like such a casual sit-down pizza place, their commitment to quality is unmatched. The pizzas themselves toe that line of excessive American meatiness, but their Margherita is the real deal and the Bianco is bang-on. And also also also also the garlic rolls.

#4 Cellar 849 (Plymouth)
As Michigan's first certified Neapolitan pizza recognized by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN) -- the "pizza polizia" -- of Naples, Italy, Cellar 849 adheres to the strict regulations that respect the tradition of true Neapolitan pizza, including a custom wood-burning oven, hand-rolled dough, and fresh, all-natural ingredients. They use some of the highest-quality imported ingredients available, including Fior di Latte mozzarella, Denominazione di Origine Protteta (DOP -- the produce polizia) San Marzano tomatoes, Italian extra virgin olive oil, prosciutto di Parma and Caputo flour. Their Italian-built wood-burning oven is the same as those used at the flashier Pizzeria Biga joints, and the remainder of the menu is just as delightfully Italian, including the (somewhat predictable) wine and beer lists. Yes, I just plagiarized myself here.

#5 Crispelli's Bakery + Pizza (Berkley)
Make no mistake, this place is a clusterfuck. It is so much of a clusterfuck that I'm not even sure why anyone would even make the attempt to go there on a Friday night. Don't go on a Friday night. All the traffic controllers and little metal signs with numbers on them designating your assigned seats in the open-seating cafeteria-style restaurant cannot make this any less of an exercise in tedium, nor does it make up for the fact that you have to wait in six different lines just to cobble together a single meal and if you don't stand in the middle of the register area with all of the other blank-looking meat bags you'll have no way of knowing when your food is ready. Pizza? That's one line. Salad? That's another. Drinks? Look, don't make this complicated: go on an off day at an off time and order one of their "Authentic Italian" thin crust pizzas. Despite all of the MANY inconveniences of ordering, their pizza is worth the hassle. (Just not on a Friday night.) Another thing I like: the self-serve structure means your $10 pizza really is $10 -- none of the added charges of sitting down in a restaurant with a server, ordering drinks, having to tip, so on and so forth until your $10 pizza becomes a $25 pizza. If you want to stuff your face on the quick without the fuss but still have high standards, this is the place to go.

Bubbling under Terra Cotta Pizzeria (Windsor), Tomatoes Apizza (Farmington Hills, Novi), Spago Trattoria E Pizzeria (Windsor), Vito's Olde Walkerville Pizzeria (Windsor), Mani Osteria (Ann Arbor), Fresco Wood Oven Pizzeria (Rochester Hills)

*Gas ovens have been excluded. Supino uses a gas oven. Is that a bad thing? Certainly not. The best pizza I ever had in my life was made in a gas oven. But that is not for this list. I have to draw the line somewhere, and I drew that line at coal. Because...I did. Because I can. So there. Still more places not listed here -- Vinsetta Garage, Union Woodshop, Bad Brad's BBQ Shelby Twp., J. Baldwin's, Motor City Brewing Works -- use wood-fired pizza ovens (as I said, this is becoming quite the trend), but their pizzas didn't quite meet my very loosely-defined Neapolitan-ish criteria.