Taste Pizzabar

After our wine tasting event, we walked a few blocks northwest near the Rosa Parks Transit Center to Taste Pizzabar, located on the second floor of one of Detroit’s historic brick buildings, above what we discovered was Premium Resto Lounge, a seemingly popular nightclub. After reading raving reviews about this place when it opened last year, it's been on my "to do in Detroit" list for, let's just say, a year now!


One of the blogs I follow, "Dining in Detroit", wrote an excellent review of Taste, so without re-creating the wheel, I'll share my experiences through this review by quoting it below.

[General Manager] Will (a techno-head and DJ himself) wanted to also make it very Detroit. He insisted on playing house music over the speakers, and they also have DJ Seoul spinning in the lounge during dinner on Fridays and Saturdays. The décor is very Detroit loft: exposed brick walls, exposed pipes and airducts in the ceiling, large windows running along one wall with a view of the nearby People Mover, airy and spacious and very chill. The lounge and restaurant areas are all decorated in warm tones, from the dark wood tables to the deep red carpets. The lounge area has high-backed chocolate leather booths accented with candlelight. Will refers to it all as a "work in progress," though you'd never think it to just walk in.

Since we did walk in slightly after 10pm on Friday night, we could overhear the DJ spinning in the lounge even though we sat in the restaurant.  It didn't seem to bother us much as we were focused on the menu below.

[Executive Chef and co-owner] Daniels has a passion for making and perfecting dough, which by default led to a passion for pizza (as the dough--as any good pizza fan knows--is not just the base but also the single most important component of a good pizza).

We dove into the menu skipping the starters, soups & salads, and sandwiches temporarily heading straight for the 22 specialty pizzas.  Their menu boasted that their 10" pizza is "simultaneously a thick and thin crust [made with] organic flour and extra virgin olive oil."  Our mouths were dripping just reading the ingredients offered on some of these pies: exotic portabella mushrooms (that would be Scottie drooling, not me), zucchini, caramelized onions, spinach, roasted garlic (fist pump by me!), Italian chicken sausage, a premium Dutch beemster cheese, house made bbq sauce, and the list goes on.  Not only were the selections intriguing, but the names were quite creative with the "Fab Five", "Royale with Cheese", "Hula", "Detroit Red", and "Paparrazi". 

After little discussion, we agreed on the "Mona Lisa": we start with a creamy white sauce, add spinach, grilled chicken breast, roasted red peppers, sweet onions, roasted garlic, artichoke, and smoked mozzarella....."truly a masterpiece". 

The pie was at that size where it's probably more of a personal pizza, but we decided to split it opting to add their Chopped Turkey Salad (Mixed greens, roasted turkey, egg, bacon, Gorgonzola candied, sun-dried cherry's, walnuts topped with fried red onions w/ blueberry pomegranate vinaigrette), which came out in a quite a large portion.

We left very little to be cleaned after this experience.  We couldn't get over the tasty crust, and after re-reading the review in  "Dining in Detroit", it makes a lot of sense why.  The combination of veggies with their smoked mozzarella was juicy and filling.  I definitely want to make a trip back here to try some of the other specialties or simply create my own!

Post-dinner, we headed over to Centaur for a drink.  I am not sure I have been inside this place before, but definitely walked by it several times.  Very classy, multi-level bar!