Stone and Stein

Stone & Stein is a new pizza spot located across Nike on the first floor of the Outlet Shops downtown.  Their pizzas cook quickly in a propane gas stone pizza oven at 800-1000 degrees so don't expect to  be waiting around for your order. We received ours within 2 or 3 minutes.

We ordered two different pizzas off their specialty menu. The Pizza Al La Vodka and Chorizo con Papas. You have the option to build your own pizza with an array of specialty and traditional sauces. Sauces include vodka sauce, roasted red pepper, buffalo, mushroom, green tomatillo, tomato sauce. Specialty toppings include carnitas, breaded chicken, chorizo sausage, smoked mozzarella, prosciutto, and they also carry plenty of traditional toppings.

Pizza Al La Vodka

Fresh mozzarella, famous tomato cream vodka sauce, seasoned fresh mushrooms, peas and proscuitto di parma

According to the Stone & Stein menu, this pizza was voted #1 in America in 1992. It was full of flavor thanks to the fresh cheese and proscuitto, and peas were a pretty interesting topping to find on pizza. If you've never had vodka sauce, it's a strong flavor so it can be overpowering. There's actual vodka in vodka sauce--even though the alcohol is cooked away the taste of vodka lingers, making this pizza have some really bold flavors that take some getting used to. Next time we'll try with a different sauce or go for the Smoking Goodfella.

Chorizo Con Papas

A spicy chorizo sausage with seasoned cubed potatoes over a bed of fresh mozzarella and green tomatillo sauce

This pizza hit much closer to home. It tasted like a familiar Mexican breakfast. Whoever made the pizza, or prepped the ingredients, left the stems on the cilantro which wasn't very pleasant to eat--we  had to remove the stems ourselves (or just remove the whole cilantro, because who has time for that). Since the chorizo itself already has a lot of spice, the spiciness of the sauce was just too much; making this dish very spicy and hard to eat an entire pizza. Maybe a single slice to try out the taste but not a good choice to eat for a whole meal. Perhaps a different sauce would balance out the flavors and give an even contrast to highlight the chorizo.

Cookie sandwich 

These cookies are made in-house and are soft and chewy (instead of hard and crunchy) giving it a softer bite, which makes the sandwich easier to eat since the cookie doesnt disintegrate and spill out all the ice cream. While the ice cream isn't made in-house, we were told that it's made of high-quality ingredients and was specially selected for that reason. We had ours rolled in coconut, and it was a pretty sizable sandwich for $5.

Specialty Sodas

The sodas here are awesome, they're made with no artificial sweeteners or high fructose corn syrup. You can tell because they're not as sweet as regular soda; but what they lack in sugar, they make up for in flavor. We had the lemon berry acai and orange hibiscus. They also have cola, root beer, black cherry with tarragon and pineapple cream. 

 

Because the pizza cooks so quickly the crust imparts a unique smoky flavor and bubbly, crispy quality which makes it light and airy around the edges of the pizza. Traditional pizzas in a regular oven take 12-15 minutes to cook. Since these pizzas only takes 2-3 minutes to cook, the vegetables and proteins retain their crunchiness and overall nutrients while developing a soft, chewy bite because they aren't cooked for a long period of time. 

Our only gripe is one girl-worker who walked into the restaurant during our meal. She went directly to the clean prep area and with bare hands reached into the cucumber tray, picking up cucumbers, placing some back and putting the ones of her choosing into her personal water bottle. No gloves! We were a little shocked/disturbed to say the least. 

 

The space itself is huge and the atmosphere is really bright and inviting. There's a nice stone accent wall that provides a cool touch and breaks up the monotonous yellow walls. Jose took our order and was really helpful, showing us all the ingredients they carry and telling us everything he knew about the restaurant. We had an overall great experience trying the out-of-the-norm flavors they have at Stone & Stein and we'll definitely be back. Head down to the Outlet Shops for a different sort of pizza experience!