Tony C’s Coal-Fired Pizza

(map) It’s always a good sign when you walk into a pizza place and there’s actually a guy over by the oven, tossing circles of dough into the air. Tony C’s claim to flame is using a coal oven to bake at 1000 degrees, twice as hot as wood. That’s how the big dogs do it in New York and Brooklyn, and it’s said to be the only way to deliver a true thin-crust pizza.

Inside, there are tables upstairs and down, but I dig the dog-friendly scene out here.

Tony C’s has lots of salads, subs and Italian pasta dishes, but we were there for one thing only: the pizza. There are 11 different choices or you can create your own. We opted for the Bianco with an addition of prosciutto. The Bianco is a white pizza, meaning no tomato sauce, just olive oil, mozzarella, loads of roasted garlic and quivering mounds of fresh ricotta you spread around on your pizza. The sweet taste of the ricotta married perfectly with the saltiness of the thinly sliced prosciutto. The super-thin crust had a crunch and that tiniest bit of yeasty chewiness that’s a mark of the pros. We raised our $3 glasses of chianti. Salute!

Sitting at a bar in the sunshine makes you feel like you’re on vacay.

Will, pizza-tosser extraordinaire.

Tony C’s website