Mark Stehle
RIGHT ANGLES: The Santucci clan's signature cheese-on-bottom, sauce-on-top pizza style is a big draw, but there is plenty more to like on the menu at their new Italian Market location.
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In Philadelphia, our dining scene evolves faster than Apple technology. For proof, look to Philly Mag's "Great Philadelphia Pizza Quest," a thorough feature representing 1,000 pizzas and probably as many hours consumed in the search for slice-by-slice excellence. The article came out in July. It was obsolete by August.
That's when Santucci's opened on the 900 block of Christian.
Santucci's isn't new new. Joseph Santucci and his wife Philomena debuted in 1959 on O Street in Juniata, where their square, sauce-on-top pies became a hit. Family members opened offshoots all along the I-95 North corridor, but O Street remained the undisputed original until Frank Santucci, Joe and Phil's son, decided to close shop and relocate to South Philly with his daughter, Alicia, and future son-in-law, Blake Barabuscio.
The downtown move is something of a homecoming for the clan. Alicia and Blake, who live in Graduate Hospital, are starting a family here, just as Joseph and Philomena Santucci started theirs in a 10th and Carpenter row home before moving to the Northeast.
What if Joe and Phil never moved out of South Philly? Maybe I'd have grown up on square pies like my fiancée, whose family roots run deep in Tacony and Holmesburg. Maybe my childhood Friday nights would have been spent at Santucci's instead of Celebre's and Marra's. I feel so cheated. But the past is just that. Better to concentrate on the present: the best pizza I've had in months, a 9-by-9-inch "personal" pie with a mottled brown bottom and tall crusty corners, melty aged mozzarella underlay and liberally spiced tomato-sauce top striped with roasted long hots. It's magnificent.
The magic is in the pans, heavy cast-iron bastards that are black with seasoning built up over countless oven firings. They're never washed with soap, only water, after each pie is lifted out and then re-oiled for the next dough. So each new pizza, in a way, contains some DNA of all the pizzas that have come before it, like sourdough made from a starter passed down through the generations.
Is this why Santucci's squares taste so good? Could be. Could also be the special ovens, which burn at 550 degrees and circulate heat convection-style, crisping the bottoms and corners while turning the tops to magma in six minutes. Pies come in 9-inch, 12-inch and 17-inch sizes, plain or with toppings. There's a honey-whole-wheat crust available, too (for the larges only), and a white option that isn't worth your time; remove the robust pizza sauce and these pies lose their mojo. Stick to the original.
With pizzas of such high esteem, Santucci's could mail in the rest. A limp salad, some crappy mozzarella sticks, and people would still file into this sun-washed restaurant. I still would. But instead, the family recruited chef Bobby Saritsoglou, who'd impressed them with a grilled calamari bruschetta when he was sous chef at L'Oca in Fairmount. The pizza recipe is the only thing that came from O Street; the rest of the menu is all Saritsoglou's.
He adds wild boar and cloves to his amazing meatballs, and forms patties for the Santucci burger made from grass-fed beef and topped with mozzarella, pesto and roasted red pepper. He confits garlic, enriching the wings' Parmesan/provolone sauce with the garlic's infused oil and spreading the sweet cloves on Aversa rolls for garlic-bread cheesesteaks. He cures his own pancetta. For any restaurant that gives two shits, none of this is a big deal. For a neighborhood pizzeria with just 35 seats — more are coming soon to the adjacent courtyard — and a bustling takeout and delivery business, it's ambitious.
Takeout is ready in a speedy 20 minutes, while delivery can take around three times as long. I'll pardon the hour holdup during Hurricane Irene, but what about the order that was just as late on a sunny afternoon? That delivery also arrived missing a salad, which the guy returned with right-quick. The salad, velveteen leaves of bibb cupping green apple, pickled red onion, candied walnuts and Gorgonzola, was worth the wait. Next time, I'll order extra cups of the fresh, tangy apple cider vinaigrette and sock it in my fridge for the future.
The delays showed no mercy to many of the items ensconced in eco-brown takeaway containers. Baker Street and Aversa rolls turned to rubber. Fries went flaccid. Santucci's is best enjoyed at Santucci's, where the bread is always pillowy and the salty, crunchy, skin-on frites are the epitome of boardwalk excellence. Another upshot to dining in: the staff, a sorority of PYTs who run this room with the intensity of a red-zone defense.
The open kitchen connects to the dining room, where a blackboard fixed to the exposed brick entices with unexpected specials. The corn bisque was the essence of summer, a light, sweet prelude to supple housemade gnocchi in emerald pesto. Capped off with a wedge of cinnamon-laced, brioche-and-hoagie roll bread pudding, it was a meal worthy of any seasonal American BYOB.
But it's equally hard to resist the relatives from the pizza family tree, like the free-form "flatbread" topped with caramelized onions, fontina, mozzarella, a gooey fried egg and salty, singed curls of Saritsoglou's pancetta. The skinny, crusty, black-bottomed stromboli upstage even the pizzas. The spinach needs a bigger dose of garlic, but the meat-filled versions (try the loaded "Uncle Joe," with prosciutto, coppa, salami and pepper-jack) I'd order on my deathbed. Santucci's serves its tomato sauce on the side for dipping and dusts each stromboli with a secret spice mix for a zesty, breadstick-like effect.
In less than two months, Santucci's has cornered the Bella Vista pizza trade. Next up: brunch, coming in October. Watch your backs, Sabrina's and Morning Glory; I hear Saritsoglou makes a mean Greek yogurt.
Santucci's | 901 S. 10th St., 215-825-5304, santuccis.com. Open Sun.-Thu., 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Appetizers, $4-$10; pizza, flatbread and stromboli, $6-$17; burgers and sandwiches, $7-$9; entrées, $12-$15; desserts, $3.
