In an era when most restaurants seem to have been designed by focus groups, some stand out for quirky ideas and eccentric execution. They’re someone’s peculiar vision, their passion project, recreating an arcane place or time, or a visionary chef’s fusion of two cuisines that nobody has put together before. Sometimes they’re a commercial success, sometimes they aren’t, but they’re always interesting to visit.
One such restaurant is the recently opened Daisy Buchanan’s Pizza Bar, which debuted in the Promenade on the Peninsula about two months ago. The name is a head turner to anyone from Boston, because the Daisy Buchanan’s there was a celebrated dive bar that opened in 1970 and closed in 2014. The smelly, cramped spot was a hangout for sports figures.On any given night you might find the Red Sox, Celtics, and other local teams socializing with fans. They never served food, and their reputation was built on beer and bonhomie. It seemed unlikely that a mall in Rolling Hills was hosting a reemergence of that hangout, but the only other Daisy Buchanan of note was the Great Gatsby’s lover in the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. A pizzeria themed around debauched jazz age socialites seemed even more unlikely, so I assumed that there was some connection to the dive bar.
The tidy and modern setting at the Promenade made a remarkable contrast to the original in Boston, the more so because it’s up a flight of stairs rather than down one. It’s in an odd corner of the Promenade, across from Crème De La Crepe but not on the same level. The sign is invisible from most angles, so if you don’t get curious about what those outdoor tables one level up are for, you wouldn’t know it was there. Once you find Daisy Buchanan’s, it’s a pleasant space, dominated by a long curved bar facing a gleaming stainless steel pizza oven. Blue lights under the counter give the place a modern vibe, old school industrial lighting above might be from the 1930s, so there’s a balance.
The menu is very short – if you want something other than pizza, pasta, and a salad, you’re in the wrong place. Want fancy ingredients on that pizza or in that pasta? You’re in the wrong place. They do everything simple here.
Our party of four ordered Caesar and lemon arugula salads, plus two pizzas. That sounds like a huge meal, but the pizzas here are individual size, the salads appropriate to split between two people. The lemon arugula salad was a mix of chopped cucumbers, arugula, lemon juice, parmesan, a dash of olive oil, and pinenuts. Soaking arugula in lemon juice for even a few minutes moderates the bitterness of the greens, and pairing that with the sweet cucumber is a refreshing combination. I make arugula salads at home and am going to start adding cucumber to mine now that I’ve had this. The Caesar salad was slightly less to my taste because the dressing was on the timid side and lightly applied – I prefer them more robust.
We could have asked for more dressing, but at the time we were there, the place was being run single-handedly by a fellow named Jack, who turned out to be the owner. When asked about the name of the place, he volunteered proudly that he had been a bartender at the original Daisy Buchanan’s in Boston in days gone by. He’s obviously proud of his Boston heritage, and you can expect the TVs here to be tuned to Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics games whenever they are available.
We had chosen a chicken piccata over spaghetti, linguine bolognese, a cheese pizza, and another pizza topped with most of the meats they have available. (One person in our party lives with a vegetarian who does most of the cooking, and orders meaty stuff when he’s dining out of the house). Boston pizzas have a medium crust with a texture that is almost like a biscuit, rather than the airy sourdough rise that is favored on the West Coast. They’re firm and can be topped with moist ingredients without becoming soggy or floppy, and they have a little charring at the edge from the extremely hot oven. The pinkish-orange sauce has light herbal flavors and low garlic, and there is just enough mozzarella to coat the top, not so much that it’s a stringy mess. The result is a satisfying cheese pizza for enjoying basic flavors, and a good platform for the one we ordered, topped with sausage, linguica, and hamburger.
The chicken piccata was a standard item well-made, a grilled skinless chicken breast over al dente pasta swimming in lemon butter and garlic sauce with capers, grated parmesan, and a dusting of herbs. Some bread on the side to help mop up the sauce might have been appreciated, because there was certainly a lot of it, but that’s my only quibble. The pasta Bolognese is usually made with wide pappardelle noodles, but they were out and substituted linguine the evening we were there. The sauce over them was very different from the New York and New Jersey Italian-American style, a thick and garlicky tomato sauce with ground beef submerged in it. Instead, the sauce is as much ground meat and vegetables as it is tomato, and it is lightly applied. It’s a Bolognese that a Northern Italian would approve of, delicate and subtle, and worth trying.
The beverage list here is about as uncomplicated as the food menu – a couple of beers and wines in each category, the standard items from the soda machine, and only a pair of hard kombuchas out of the ordinary. They did have Loire Valley Chateau du Pin red and white by the glass at $13 for a generous pour, and I’d recommend that.
Dessert is available too – ice cream, an ice cream sandwich, a warm brownie, or a chocolate chip cookie. We didn’t find any of these alluring, so gave them a pass. Dinner for four with three glasses of wine ran $138 and was an enjoyable experience.
Do I think Daisy Buchanan’s Pizza Bar will make it, odd concept, tough location, and all? New England expats will probably flock to try it once they know it’s here, and locals may warm to it for a moderately priced meal in a place with quirky character. Passion projects have a certain appeal, and one that turns out a good and good sized pizza for 12 bucks has something going for it.
Daisy Buchanan’s Pizza Bar is at 550 Deep Valley Drive #141A in Rolling Hills Estates. Open daily at noon, close 8 p.m. Sun. –Thurs., 10 p.m. Fri, Sat. Parking in nearby structure. Beer and wine, some vegetarian options. No website. (310) 750-6225.
