Motola: pizza gold but service misses the podium
Something of a pizza renaissance is taking place in Cambridge, pies that re-vitalize the popular foodstuff and elevate it from the standard and innumerable industrial-goo pizza that Domino-ates the landscape.
Pizzeria Motola, in the funky (but at times overly illuminated) Gaslight District in Galt, opened last summer. Then, Willibald Pizza, a satellite of the successful Willibald Farm Distillery and Brewery venture in Ayr, landed this past fall in George Street’s former Galt Bottle Shop and is garnering for itself rave reviews. And, apparently, a small Italian-inspired chain hailing from east of Toronto (and which has something to do with Tuscan wolves?) is said to be coming soon.
Motola, however, has generated considerable interest from pizza aficionados and what appear to be a regular pizza tifosi who enjoy scarfing the Neapolitan libretto fold. So, given what has turned out to be Italy’s superlative 30-medal showing at the recent Milano-Cortina Olympic Winter Games, a visit on a snowy February night during the Games seemed timely. Forza Azzurri!
The entrance to Motola lands you, somewhat oddly and inauspiciously, right in front of a POS system and the equipment and accoutrements of a take-out station. After waiting to be seated, you’re taken along a corridor past the restrooms and back-of-house passageways. The dining room reveal, however, pops with bustle and vibrancy and simply rings of the energy and clamour you might expect of a trendy new venue.
The old building’s stone walls are festooned with classic Art Nouveau travel posters of Italy and Rome and faded and intriguing family photos (that I confess, nostalgically, look somewhat similar to ones I have seen of my family from long ago). It’s very much an inviting and exciting atmosphere.
The menu is small (like the too-small coffee-shop table at which we were seated). For drinks, there are several apperitivi, a couple of Italian birra that will likely be familiar and basic house wines. The Tuscan red, incidentally, was quite good and inexpensive and perfect for drinking out of tumblers as if you are seated under a trellis of grape vines in Nonno’s backyard.
A sip to start was a house-aged Negroni (described as “oak-barrel smooth”) served in quaint Duralex Picardie-style glasses — again, fitting given with the casual trattoria. Yet for $14 each, I can’t help but feel that I’d like at least a bit of a comment introducing the cocktail when it’s served instead being plunked down on the table as if it’s a Brio Chinotto. (Come to think of it, I’d also like a bartender to have made $28 worth of drinks rather than spigotting them out!)
From a half dozen appetizers, we went with burrata Caprese, a delicious Puglian concoction of silky Mozzarella swaddling a dollop of cream: the cheese component was quite good (though too cold), but the very generous portion of mixed tomatoes with drizzled balsamic included too many mealy, whitish tomato chunks that proclaimed, “February is not a good tomato month.” They should have been extricated from the mix to save the dish.
Motola pizzas are six very interesting creations: mushroom, roasted olives, castagne, prosciutto-arugula, Gorgonzola-walnut and boscaiola with its luscious fior di latte, mushrooms, sausage and some truffle oil.
The latter “woodcutter’s” style draws on dusky, earthy mushrooms to do the lion’s share of the flavour-work but, while good, was slightly muted in taste despite the beautiful and deft construction of an excellent alliance of crisp cornicione with its perfect degree of char and leopard-spot bubbling that circumnavigated a soft and succulent interior.
In my calculations, the restaurant experience is basically tripartite: food, service, ambience. It was in this blend that the coordination of front-of-house and back-of-house broke down like a poor exchange in short-track speed skating. Barely half way through eating the burrata, the boscaiola made its unfortunate and much too-early appearance from the woods: there was no room on the small table for the large platter, and the waiter stood indifferently while we scrambled awkwardly to stack plates and move glasses and shuffle cutlery to make space. That was unfortunate — and simply should not happen.
When a manager made his way over, rather than apologize, he outlined how the “Motola system” worked when it came to pumping out dishes (during which explanation made the second half of the pizza cold).
Frankly, I don’t care: “policy” is not the way to ensure a good customer experience. With its 800F-degree roll-over heat, wood-fired Neapolitan pizza takes 90-120 seconds to cook. That should be easy enough to manage, so don’t make your system a diner’s problem.
It has me wondering about staff training: do they simply follow a “system” uncritically and go through the steps of knocking off tickets and turning tables to get through the shift, or does waitstaff read a table and make a proper decision? Are they empowered to make that key decision?
The food was generally very good at Pizzeria Motola and the ambience as well (except for the giant Gaslight District Jumbotron outside the window flooding the dining room with periods of intense lumens). I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of people who visit restaurants will agree that even if the food is mediocre, the experience can be salvaged by excellent service; rarely is it the case where it’s the other way around.
I would return to Pizzeria Motola for the pizza, but I believe they can do better when it comes to seeing to the customer experience; trite but true: take care of the small details and the bigger things will take care of themselves.
Dinner for two with two Negroni, a shared burrata Caprese appetizer and a pizza is about $75 before taxes and tip.
