Pizza part I

Flatbread's spirited pie

by Joan Lang

THE FLATBREAD COMPANY, 72 Commercial Street. 772-8777

Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, noon to closing (approx. 10:30 PM)

Monday and Tuesday, 5 p.m. to closing

Visa, MasterCard, American Express

Wine and beer

The word pizzeria conjures up certain images -- pepperoni, Formica booths, a strong-armed lad twirling circles of dough. Well, fuhgeddaboudit.

The Flatbread Company is a different breed entirely. The northern outpost of a place in Amesbury, Massachusetts, the Flatbread Company turns the old notion of a pizza parlor on its ear. Housed in a long-derelict building right next door to the island ferry terminal, this brand-new restaurant enjoys a location that should keep it humming even after all the summer people have gone back to wherever it is they come from.

In the meantime, the views through the floor-to-ceiling windows -- an outdoor deck is planned for later this summer -- just add to the excitement. Sitting in the clubby bar one night, we watched as a woman and a teenage boy toted load after load of stuff from their car down the ramp to a waiting water taxi (bags, suitcases, bicycles, and finally an enormous empty fish tank), an easy mark for inventing a story line.

But inside's fun, too: an enormous warehouse of a space, part industrial chic, part summer camp. The floors are painted concrete, the booths and tables assembled from planked pine, not a curved shape in sight. High overhead snakes a giant network of silvery ductwork. The sconces on the exposed columns are handcrafted from empty #10 cans of organic tomatoes.

What you can't help but notice is the giant, hive-shaped clay oven, hunkered down on the floor, front-and-center. It's a Neolithic beast, and the centerpiece of the Flatbread Company's "concept" -- all-natural pizza, made the old-fashioned way, as in primitive. A pizzameister clad in a colorful chef's toque moves the pies (er, sorry, flatbreads) in and around and out of the oven, using a long, rough-handled wooden peel.

To the left is a huge pile of hardwood logs; from time-to-time, one of the aproned cooks comes over and splits a few, with an axe. To the right, a series of tables where the pizza dough is spun and topped, sliced and served, and where the salad and dessert is dished up. Behind them, two giant wood-fired cauldrons for the tomato sauce, and a smaller oven where vegetables are roasted. So much for the kitchen tour.

It all adds up to a cacophonous, kinetic setting, one your Aunt Maude would probably never understand. But if you want a simple salad and the kind of thin, crisp-crusted pie that puts all those goopy Italo-American numbers to shame, this is your place.

The selection is almost daringly stripped-down. There is one salad (organic mesclun with celery and carrots, toasted sesame seeds, seaweed, and ginger-tamari dressing -- really just something to stave off hunger 'til the pizza comes), one dessert (a brownie, topped with ice cream, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream). There are three flatbreads with tomato sauce, four without, topped with the likes of caramelized onions, organic mushrooms, local cheeses, fresh herbs, and nitrate-free sausage or pepperoni.

The menu itself goes on at some length about organically grown flour and restored wheat germ and sustainable living in the balance of the earth -- it's "a place where children, adults, and employees may renew their spirit," after all -- but it's easy enough to ignore, if you'd rather. The point is that those flatbreads are really good, crisp and light and understated, indeed almost virtuous-tasting.

To my mind, the pizzas without the sauce are vastly superior -- if you've never tried a "white" pie before, take your opportunity now. Without that strong tomato flavor in the way, you can really taste the effect of a wood fire on the good dough, the sweetness of the caramelized onions, the subtlety of the cheeses and herbs.

My favorite was actually a mistake: the Casco Bay Community Flatbread (tomato sauce with caramelized onions, mushrooms, cheeses, and herbs) that arrived without the sauce. Discovering the error, Pizza Man brought both and we got to taste them side-by-side, and the tomato-less version was much better.

Good stuff to drink, too, including a clutch of local microbrews and an interesting little wine list, emphasis on the reasonably priced. The seating area adjacent to the bar is a nice place to canoodle, with its sinuous leather coaches and oversized Adirondack chairs for two.

Truth be told, there are some service issues -- inexperienced servers, several listed wines MIA, that pie-in-error -- but everyone's so damn cheerful it's hard to mind much, and time-in-grade should resolve most of the problems.

Joan Lang can be reached at joanmlang@aol.com.