Comments (0) Best Pizza (Thin Crust) - 2012
Peel Wood Fired Pizza
921 S. Arbor Vitae
Edwardsville, IL 62025
618-659-8561
You don't have to look very hard to find the secret to Peel Wood Fired Pizza's success. Really, you don't have to look at all. It's right there in the center of the kitchen, visible throughout the restaurant: the oven, which reaches temperatures of about 800 degrees, fueled by hardwood logs. This intense heat gives Peel's pies a gorgeous, gently blistered crust, its flavor lightly imbued with smoke, and it reduces the slabs of fresh mozzarella on the margherita pizza to beautifully molten puddles. Peel offers a pizza for every taste from traditional (you can't go wrong with a pepperoni or Italian sausage pie) to fancy (the "Prosciutto" pizza serves the eponymous cured meat with fingerling potatoes, roasted garlic, fresh rosemary, and Parmesan and fontina cheeses over roasted-garlic olive oil). Even off-the-eaten-path varieties like the "Thai Red Curry" (with chicken, cilantro, carrot, cucumber, peanuts and mozzarella) hit the spot. Pair your pie with a beer from the restaurant's excellent list of craft brews, and you might never eat pizza west of the Mississippi again.
