Week 2: Brix Pizza & Wine Bar

It's Saturday night, which means it's time to hit the road, and make our next stop on the 52 week pizza adventure. For week 2's destination, we decided to try someplace that would be a little more relaxing, and offer more atmosphere than Pizza by Marco.  With that in mind, we locked in Brix Pizza & Wine Bar (brixpizzeria.com) into the GPS, and we headed to Oak Street in Roanoke. This half mile strip of restaurants has quickly become a "hot spot" in the northern suburbs of Ft. Worth.



Our first impression was a very optimistic one, and we had our fingers crossed that the pizza was as good as the location itself.  Upon entering the restaurant, we were immediately greeted by the General Manager, Leonardo Pisani, and promptly seated in the dining area of over 25 tables.  In the far back corner of the restaurant we we could see the wood-fire pizza oven, which got us excited.  Brix opened it's doors late in 2010, and the place still had the "new restaurant smell" inside.


Now let's do a quick review the menu.  The wine selection consisted of over 70 bottled wines ($16-98), of which almost 30 were offered by the glass ($5-12).  The Malbec we selected was sold out, but we were easy to please with a bottle of California red zinfandel to share.  We obviously passed on the appetizers and entrees for this visit, however there were several that caught our eye.  The pizza menu listed 12 different specialty pizzas and 2 calzones.  We opted for 3 small pies (10") which ranged from $9-12, and were also sold in 14" and 18" sizes.  The pizzas were on our table in what seemed like record time, which with 2 toddlers, was fine with us! 

Now down to business.  First off, the pizzas looked fantastic!  We chose the Margherita which was lightly dusted with fresh basil.  Second, the "Snow White" was a pizza name that our 3 year old daughter couldn't pass up, which was a white pizza with mozzarella, parmigiano, gorgonzola, and prosciutto. Our third choice was called "4 Seasons," and was loaded with five different types of vegetables.  Before our plates even hit the table, I had taken a first bite of the Snow White pizza.  My immediate thought was that the pizza tasted very salty, and the crust didn't impress me.  Could it be possible that these three beautiful pizzas could fall short of our expectations?  We continued to take our time sampling each of the three pizza offerings, and kept hoping that things would get better.  Sure, the pizzas were edible, but we both agreed that the crust was chewy and boring.  When the waitress removed our plates at the end of the meal, they were littered with uneaten crusts.  The Margherita didn't hit us with the "wow factor" we had anticipated, and the vegetables on the "4 Seasons" had a soggy texture.  In general the toppings lacked the flavor that may have saved the crust from its mediocre score.  We were unable to finish all of the pizza this week, so we humbly took home five slices for lunch on Sunday.  After a second try with the leftovers, we were still hoping for more...

The 4 Seasons

The Margherita

The Snow White (1/2 prosciutto 1/2 without)

The Final Report: 5.5 out of 10

Overall, we really enjoyed our dining experience, and Brix Pizza & Wine Bar delivered on many levels.  However, the pizza by itself... was just average.