American Flatbread Brings Organic Touch

Author: John Prescott

Sure, Neil and Otto's Pizza Styx provides necessary late-night study and party sustenance (it's pretty bad stuff, let's be honest). Sure, Green Peppers, the Grille, Hamlin and Ross can all make a halfway reasonable pie from time to time.
The bottom line, nonetheless, remains commonly acknowledged and universally bemoaned among Middlebury College's student population: good, solid, heart-warming, damn-that's-tasty pizza is simply not available within a thirty mile radius.
Well, make that was not available. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a new rolling-pin-sheriff in town, winning converts every weekend down at Marble Works with his style of thin-crust pizza baked in a "primitive wood-fired earthen oven." His name? American Flatbread.
A minimalist by nature, Flatbread prepares only a few different things but makes sure they are all done the right way. This seems, from a management perspective, the way to run a restaurant — the menu has only nine items, and guess what? Eight are pizzas.
To start, Flatbread offers an "Evolution Salad": organic sweet leaf and mesclun lettuces mixed with carrot, celery, sliced seaweed, sesame seeds and a ginger-tamari vinaigrette. Refreshingly sharp and bitter, the salad offers a nice contrast to the richness of the pizza that follows.
Rich is right. Sweet, savory, soft, crisp, warm, cheesy: everything thing you want in a thinner-crust experience is all here.
No matter what particular pizza order you make, the essential Flatbread experience remains the same.
Having said this, Flatbread offers a number of different flavor combinations. My favorite pie is definitely the "Punctuated Equilibrium Flatbread", an affectionately named combination of calamata olives, sweet roasted red peppers, goat cheese, fresh rosemary, red onions, garlic, and other cheeses. Mmm-mmm-mmm.
Other popular pizzas include the "Sun-Dried Tomato and Mushroom," a blend of home cured dried tomatoes, mushrooms, caramelized onions, cheeses, and herbs, as well as a roasted chicken, garlic, spinach and basil pesto, grape tomato, organic eggplant pie they often offer as a special. Mmm-mmm-mmm again.
Feeling less adventurous (more boring)? They will assemble whatever combination of delicious ingredients you want, meaning one's lack of culinary audacity is not an acceptable excuse for not trying the place out.
Oh yeah, being a pizza place, it's worth noting that American Flatbread has a nice selection of various beers and sodas, including a "China Cola" which is basically an all-natural version of Classic Coke.
Which reminds me that besides the pie itself, there were a couple of things that struck me immediately during my first visit to the restaurant. First of all, there is a decided emphasis — from the menu to the décor — on the virtues and pleasures of all things natural and organic. Posters throughout the dining room proudly proclaim the tomatoes, garlic, wheat, and other ingredients are organic; the menu contains words such as "kosher," "naturally-raised," and "nitrate-free."
More than this, there is just an old-school man-meets-fire feel to American Flatbread, a simple and rustic atmosphere created principally by the enormous wood-burning oven that glows cheerfully in the dead center of the restaurant.
Of course, the borderline ridiculous literature that accompanies the menu —"there is a place at the edge of a deep forest where a very special pizza is made…from the union of fire and rock" — also hints a bit at the pastoral nature of the place. Practically and philosophically speaking, the heart of restaurant is its oven.
OK, so there are a couple caveats worth mentioning. Flatbread is only open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, doesn't deliver, and depending on the crowds, takeout is not always available.
And during Flatbread's busiest moments — the dining room has been packed all three times I've been there — it does take a bit of time for your pizza to be prepared, so don't come looking for a quick meal.
Feeling the need to reconnect with the primitive pyromaniac inside you? Just looking for a damn good pie? American Flatbread shouldn't disappoint.