Wood-fired pizza restaurants put a new spin on a familiar concept

REVIEWS BY POLLY CAMPBELL

It's one of the perfect foods: familiar but still fun, sharable, customizable, delicious. No wonder we all eat so much pizza.

Since we do eat so much of it, the number of variations that have been worked on the simple theme is not surprising. Some pizza pushers try to build a better version by going deeper, gooier, cheesier, crustier. But the genius variation is the gourmet pizza. Not more, better: Using high heat in a wood-burning oven for a great crust, making tomato sauce optional, using more interesting toppings and better cheese. Pomodori's in Clifton has been the genius place for gourmet pizza in Cincinnati for 12 years, and still is. And now the suburbs have their own wood-fired establishment, Palbino's in Montgomery.

I am not alone in my high opinion of Pomodori's. The place is always hopping with UC students, families, friends and groups all sitting at the copper-topped tables, many of which occupy nooks and crannies created by additions to the building. It's spare but stylishly so, and full of activity in the dining room and the exhibition kitchen. This is the best place to bring kids for pizza. Instead of game tokens, they get a lump of pizza dough with which to occupy themselves.

While the kids develop their artistic abilities, adults eat salad. On a recent visit, a friend and I had the spinach - an abundant pile with lots of bacon, hard-boiled egg and a sweetish mustard dressing. We also tried the balsamic vinaigrette, a perfect mix of juvenile lettuces with sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, gorgonzola and the eponymous dressing.

You can get a conventional-style pizza from the regular oven, a deep-dish with above-average toppings. But the 9-inch wood-fired pizzas are the most popular and absolutely the thing to order. The wood-burning oven is not just for show. Relatively small, dome-shaped and burning hard oak, it's designed to get extremely hot - 1,000 degrees. That's why the crust is so crispy but airy. It would be delicious completely naked.

Instead, the menu offers 19 different ways to clothe it. These pizzas cover the full range of everything that's good on a pizza without ever crossing the line into the whimsical or questionable. (Which cannot be said of many current offerings of "innovative" pizza.) The inspiration is mostly Italian, and the garlic presses in the kitchen are kept busy.

We had the most loaded pizza, The Gourmet, which includes artichoke hearts, mushrooms, onions, gorgonzola, pesto and lots of fresh, pungent garlic. We would not have been able to stop eating it except we had to try the seafood-broccoli also. This is a more tame taste, with shrimp, mock crab and a few bright green broccoli buds amidst a restrained amount of cheese. And garlic.

I've never had a pizza I didn't like here, though I haven't tried every single one. The caramelized onion, the gorgonzola walnut, the roasted pepper are all good. Twelve are vegetarian. I like them so much I've never tried the pasta, which include many of the same toppings as the pizza, or the sandwiches.

There is a very nice wine list and changing wine-by-the-glass features.

The one dessert pizza is apple with apricot jam and streusel. Too much after a main-dish pizza, but it's worth ordering just a salad sometimes so you can try it. Otherwise, there's tiramisu and Avils cheesecakes, including the hazelnut - one of the best sweet things made in Cincinnati.

Something very important to remember: They don't take credit cards. Bring cash!

Palbino's took the wood-fired pizza concept to the suburbs when it opened a few months ago on Cooper Road in Montgomery. The space is lovely: high ceilings, wood floors, tasteful artwork, flowers on the table. The wood oven, surrounded by blue tiles, is the first thing you see on entering. Paper covers the white-clothed tables, so you can doodle or take notes and keep track of how many glasses of house wine you drink on the "honor system." The elevated atmosphere is marred, though, by having TVs on in the dining room while Julio Iglesias sings on the sound system.

Three friends helped me check out Palbino's. We started with panzanella, an Italian bread salad featuring authentically chewy bread cubes, lots of chopped vegetables, pepperoni and cheese and a good balsamic vinaigrette. The house salads were also generously loaded. The blackboard said the soup of the day was minestrone macadamia, an odd-sounding idea I felt I ought to check out. The macadamias were used as the base for a pesto in the soup, but they didn't add any noticeable flavor.

Our consensus on pizza here was in favor of the pizza pollotate, the trademark house specialty. It features chicken breast strips with a citrus-cumin-red pepper flavor, roasted potatoes, red onions and just enough cheese to hold it all together, on a good, bready crust. Very filling and interesting.

We were not as taken with the pizza pollesto. It had the same chicken, but it didn't marry as well with the pesto, mushrooms, onions and a greater amount of cheese. The wintery pesto lacked the punch of really fresh basil and garlic.

Pizza classic adds roasted potatoes to mushrooms, Italian sausage and peppers. Pizza margherita is low-fat, with roasted tomatoes and garlic and low-fat mozzarella. You can also have a traditional pizza, ordering from the usual toppings, roasted in the wood oven. One advantage of wood roasting is that a pizza takes only 4-5 minutes to cook, so there's none of the usual waiting around.

We were puzzled by the straws in the glasses of water until it dawned on us that they were long tubes of ziti. Cute, though they got a little gooey.

Desserts are brought on a tray. I quite liked the hazelnut cake with coffee icing, and the banana-chocolate chip cake had a wonderful chocolate buttercream.

Two of my friends independently asked me when they sat down if this was a chain restaurant. It's not, yet, but they picked up the right feel. Palbino's owner, Tony Palombino, is planning to open four more restaurants in the Greater Cincinnati area over the next three years. The menu and concept do seem, indefinably, to have been developed for duplication.