Varasano's Pizzeria

His story has become legend — all part of the buildup — but I'll review briefly for the five or so of us left not obsessed with every oven calculation he makes: He moved to Atlanta from New York in 1998 and couldn't find good pizza here. So he decided to make his own, using his abilities as an engineer. First, he judged the best pie to be that of Patsy's in East Harlem, and made that his gold standard. Second, he began experimenting with pizzas and zeppole for guests in his Buckhead home — a phenom that became such a sensation that he was written about in The New York Times and the AJC..

Third, to get his oven to the very high heat (around 1, 000 degrees) needed to blister the perfect pizza crust, he jury-rigged the heck out of it, dismantling the cleaning cycle's safety latch. He's stirred up quite a commotion on the Internet with his Website, dedicated to his pizza recipe (which emulates Patsy's formula for dough with a "poolish" yeast starter) and his list of the best pizza joints in the world, an undertaking far more impressive than his restaurant.

Because of course the next move would be to open your own pizza joint, right? That's exactly what Varasano did on March 25 in the newly minted Mezzo Building on Peachtree Street.

There, he serves a modest menu of pizzas (nine offerings), along with salads, salumi and a few desserts, including the aforementioned zeppole, which he calls Italian doughnuts on the menu.

I have never met Varasano, but he comes across as a bit of a pizza tyrant on his Website, doling out the information he's garnered over the years as gospel, and knocking pizzerias the world over (including Fritti, in Inman Park) as "fake." He gives much praise, too, for the places he likes.

I think the one calculation he forgot is that baking for guests in your home is a wee bit different from owning and working in a restaurant. Of course his recipe for the dough can be duplicated — he's shared it on the Internet. But actually making all that char and blister come out of the oven a few hundred times a night is harder than it looks, and Varasano has never owned a restaurant before now. And for all his talk of oven temperature being one of the three most important factors in pizza making (the other two, he says, are kneading technique and proper fermentation), his oven is not coal burning. Nor is it wood burning. It is electric, imported from Sweden, though it still fires up beyond 800 degrees. The pizzas bake in about three minutes, not the 90 seconds or so that a coal burner can blaze a perfectly charred crust.

And so hype collides with reality, and Varasano's Pizzeria serves piatti mediocri. There are pies well worth the $10 to $15 you'll spend — the "nucci" is a prettily charred-and-blistered combination of Emmental cheese with olives, arugula, capicola and herbs, and the tangy Swiss cheese makes another appearance on a not-too-sweet pizza with caramelized onions.

But often the pizzas are soggy and laden — and worse, inconsistent. A "New Haven clam" pie touts clams, mussels, lots of garlic and either a white or red sauce (all of which are far better on a mound of linguine than a mound of dough), at one offering limp and lifeless and at another much more appropriately crisped.

The rest of the menu is as uneven as the pizzas: the zeppole are a fun, but nothing sensational. Insalata Caprese is made with mealy heirloom tomatoes prepped ahead of time so that the entire salad is ice cold when it's served, making it as much a heap of "tasteless cardboard" as Varasano so infamously calls Fritti's pizza on his website.

It ain't bragging if you can do it, goes the old baseball saying goes. Varasano's Pizzeria has a little more doing to do.

VARASANO'S PIZZERIA

Overall rating:

Food:

Pizza

Service:

Cordial — sweet even. But spotty with lulls between ordering and receiving

Price range:

$ - $$

Credit cards:

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover

Hours of operation:

Open daily for lunch and dinner from 11:

30 a.m.

Best dishes:

Nucci pizza with olives, Emmental, arugula and capicola; caramelized onion pizza; dolce pizza with Medjool dates and fontina cheese

Vegetarian selections:

Plenty of meatless pies and salads

Children:

For sure

Parking:

Complimentary valet. Self parking at lunch

Reservations:

Parties of five or more

Wheelchair access:

Yes

Smoking:

Patio only

Noise level:

Medium

Patio:

Yes

Takeout:

Yes, but keep in mind that the pizzas cook in three minutes or less. Management recommends coming in to order.

Address, telephone:

2171 Peachtree Road N.E. Atlanta, 404-352-8216

Web site:

KEY TO RATINGS

Outstanding:

Sets the standard for fine dining in the region.

Excellent:

One of the best in the Atlanta area.

Very good:

Merits a drive if you're looking for this kind of dining.

Good:

A worthy addition to its neighborhood, but food may be hit or miss.

Fair:

The food is more miss than hit.

Restaurants that do not meet these criteria may be rated

Poor

.

PRICING CODE:

$$$$$

means more than $75;

$$$$

means $75 and less;

$$$

means $50 and less;

$$

means $25 and less;

$

means $15 and less. (The price code represents a meal for one that includes appetizer, entree and dessert without including tax, tip and cocktails.)