Pizza Without Any Parallel? - CLOSED

Parallel Pizzeria

34255 Pacific Coast Highway Suite 101

Dana Point, CA 92629

I used to have a rule that I would wait until a restaurant was around for a year before I would review it. My reason for this was that I did not want a website full of reviews of boarded-up restaurants. That stat still floats around: about 90 percent of restaurants fail to make it to their first anniversary before closing up shop. Now coming up on my ninth year of writing this restaurant review site, inevitably, there are a good number of restaurants that I have been to that have gone the way of drive-in theaters, rotary phones, and record stores (I know I'm definitely dating myself with these references). I realized this was a silly rule because most of you want to see if you should eat at that new place in town. If that new place in town you are wondering about is Parallel Pizzeria, the answer is yes, you should head there right away.

I had a sneaky suspicion that Parallel Pizzeria would be great when I heard who was behind it. Chef Ryan Adams of the vaunted 370 Common in Laguna Beach and the soon-to-be very busy Buttermilk Fried Chicken in Downtown Orange, along with his business partner, James Nunn, opened Parallel late last month. Situated in The Row Shopping Strip, this is a homecoming for Chef Adams. He used to skate and surf in this area when he was younger and always lamented that there were no good pizza places in Dana Point. He decided to rectify that by bringing Parallel to town.

To say that New Haven-style pizza is under-represented here in OC would be an understatement. I did some quick research and discovered that this is the only place serving New Haven-style pizza in the county. I could have overlooked a spot, and someone will correct me if that is the case. New Haven pizza is distinctive in that its shape is oblong instead of round, the dough is fermented for 72 hours, the pizza is cooked in a charcoal oven at 700 degrees, and they even did some water analysis with some help from the guys at UCI to get the water as close to Connecticut's as possible. A lot of work went into this restaurant.

Thankfully, this is not a build-your-own pizza concept, which is refreshing for a change. Haven't we reached our saturation point with the build-your-own pizza places? The menu here is divided into a small selection of starters, salads, and sandwiches. There are eight signature pies and a red and white base model that you can customize with an added upcharge per topping. These are not single-serving sizes of pizzas either. They offer medium and large on most pizzas, and the medium could definitely serve two. They also serve a gluten-free cauliflower crust for people who are into that sort of thing, like my fantastic sister-in-law, Emily. Enough build-up; how did we like this new pizza place in town?

I've been on a real meatball kick lately and had to give these Housemade Meatballs ($7.95) a spin. These smaller-than-I-imagined meatballs came five to an order, were bathed in a tangy red sauce, and dusted lightly with parmesan cheese. The meatballs were tender and had a pleasant texture. I loved the marinara sauce, which was not too acidic and had a slight sweetness. After devouring these in record time, I looked forward to trying their meatball sandwich on my next visit.

The medium version of this Chopped Salad was the perfect size for sharing. Chopped iceberg lettuce is jazzed up with radicchio, sliced salami, tomato, artichoke, mozzarella, onion, olives, and garbanzo beans and is then rounded out with a red wine vinaigrette. The freshness of this salad cannot be debated, and I liked that they added lots of items to it. I was not thrilled with the dressing on this, though. I thought it had a tanginess that was too strong for my palette, but Katie seemed to love it. I'm more of a creamy salad dressing kind of guy.

Now, the real reason you come here is the pizzas. Katie got the White and Green Pizza ($18.95) for her maiden visit to Parallel. This pizza is topped with prosciutto, ricotta, a well-done cilantro pesto, chili flakes, garlic, parmesan, and plenty of arugula. Katie felt this was a very flavorful pizza, and the absence of sauce allowed the excellent toppings to be the show's star. The chili flake added a tinge of spice, while the delicious prosciutto and creamy ricotta added a nice textural element. I had imagined this would be a dry pizza, but that was not the case. A very clean-tasting pizza and a great first impression of New Haven-style pizza for us.

I came here knowing I would have this Clam Pizza ($22.95). I know it might seem a little crazy to most of you, but clams on a pizza is pretty much a tradition in New Haven, Connecticut, so since this would be my first time experiencing this type of pizza, I thought I might as well go all in. The little neck clams are joined on the pizza by cuts of bacon, pecorino cheese, red onions, olive oil, and chili flakes. If you are averse to clams on pizza, they are not fishy or slimy like you might expect. The sliced bacon and the spicy chili flakes overshadowed the clams, which were a little hard to pick out while eating them. New Haven pizza is very light on the cheese and sauce, but the crust was delicious, and I definitely do not consider myself a crust guy. A very light pizza, which did not make me feel as heavy as I only ate half of it and saved the rest for dinner the following evening. The perfect bacon used here excited me to try their carnivore pizza next time.

I'm thrilled that the people of Dana Point have a great pizza option in their town. Since this was our first foray into New Haven-style pizza, I don't have anything else to compare it to, but I liked what I had this evening. The pizzas were lighter than Chicago's heavy, deep-dish style, less greasy than New York-style thin crust, and had more flavor than Neapolitan-style pizzas. You can say that the New Haven type of pizza is comfortably right in the middle ground of pizza. A sweet spot, if you will. Since Parallel has only been open for a month, I look forward to seeing how it's received by the community and how it evolves. We had the pleasure of running into Chef Ryan Adams during our visit, and his passion for the culinary landscape of Orange County is contagious and very optimistic, which is something that I like to hear. Plus, he's one of the most down-to-earth chefs/owners we have met in the nine years of writing this restaurant review blog. I'm glad I decided to break my rule of waiting a year to review a restaurant, even though I have no doubt this one will be around way longer than that.

Out of five lollipops (because New Haven not only was the birthplace of the first hamburger, submarine, and corkscrew but the lollipop was invented in this town in 1892 as well), five being best to zero being worst, Parallel Pizzeria gets 3.5 lollipops.

Parallel Pizzeria has a minimal website, which will hopefully be updated soon. You can see it here: http://parallelpizzeria.com/