Co

Company, the new-ish pizza joint opened by the famed bread maker Jim Lahey (the mastermind behind Sullivan Street Bakery), has been on my list of places to visit since it opened. Co/Company is one of the only restaurants I know of that charges for bread and butter (the only other place I’ve encountered is in Spain), but since Lahey owns Sullivan Street Bakery, I assume it’s more normal (although at Jean-Georges, they give you Lahey’s bread for free…well, it’s included in the meal cost.) I finally made it to Chelsea over the weekend and was in the mood for pizza, so I crossed my fingers that the line wasn’t going to be ridiculous and stepped into the restaurant:

I was in luck because there was practically no one in the restaurant and we were seated immediately (3pm on a Sunday afternoon might be the best time to go). I read a lot about the different types of pizzas (mostly good things) and was thinking about ordering the Popeye (with lots of spinach), but I decided to order an appetizer and one pizza to share instead. We started off with the artichoke salad with arugula, capers, pecorino, and olive oil:

Sadly, the artichokes had no taste whatsoever. The arugula was doused with lemon infused olive oil and wasn’t unpleasant, but was definitely something I wouldn’t order again. I thought the artichokes would definitely have more flavor, especially since they were marinated in some kind of olive oil, but they tasted like I was chewing on a fibrous stick of some sort. Definitely skip this salad.

For the pizza, we went with the fennel and sausage pie:

The pie comes with crushed tomato, roasted fennel, sausage, red onions, chili flakes, buffalo mozzarella, and parmesan and was very hearty. While I was enjoying the pie, I was thinking to myself that this is definitely something I could eat all the time, but I definitely missed the tomato sauce that usually comes on pizza. I mean, there were crushed tomatoes on the pizza, but it’s just not the same – I could eat pizza with crushed tomatoes AND tomato sauce! The pizza was semi-healthy (minus the pork sausage) and very filling. After I finished two slices, I felt full but not stuffed and decided against ordering another pie (even though I still wanted to try some other choices on the menu).

I liked the whimsical decor of the restaurant (there are globes hanging from the ceilings with animals glued upside down to the continent they’re from) and the service was good (we were the only table the waitress had to deal with), but the pizza definitely didn’t blow me away.