Adventure #70: Umami Mia

Umami Mia - yet another pizzeria in the 78704. Having revamped the spot where Romeo's used to sit on Barton Springs, they promise to serve up "umami bombs" of flavor. It sure looks good, doesn't it? (The light was just gorgeous in here.)

The "Here Piggy"

We made it in to Umami Mia on off-peak hours, so the place was pretty dead and soft afternoon light filtered through the windows. It was peaceful. I'm a fan of peace; I try to avoid the area around Barton Springs and Lamar when possible because it's just plain crowded. 

I promise, I'm not 28 going on 80. I just hate crowds. Enough with the confessional, how was the pizza?

Crust looks good

We settled on two pizzas from the Umami section of the menu. Go hard or go home, right? Pies here are only offered in 12", so that's the size we got. Below you see the Here Piggy: tomato sauce, braised bacon,

crispy fried carrot, house pickled jalapeño, blue cheese

Here Piggy #2: those are fried carrots!

I loved the pickled jalapeño. Karin loved the fried carrots. We both agreed that this pizza was good but not great. There are flavors here, and they're all good, but they don't feel cohesive. My theory is that there's just too damn much going on here. Again, each element is damn fine. Ok, so Karin said the sauce was a little too sweet to her, but that was the only concrete complaint.

So we had an appetizer.

Appetizer Interlude: Fresh mozzarella

The mozzarella wasn't standout to either of us, but as with most things I liked it more than Karin (burn!). What I didn't like were those little dark tomatoes. Egads they just struck me the wrong way. No complaints from the rest of the table though.

On to the star of the show. . .

The Mean Green

The Mean Green: umami citrus soy pesto, mozzarella, chili flakes, lemon zest, parmesan. THIS is what you expect when you go to a place espousing flavor bombs. Umami citrus soy pesto? More like crack pesto. The lemon zest cuts through the cheese and commingles with the oil, leaving you with a thick and rich feeling . . .is it? is it? . . .

Umami.

Folks, I'm not going to lie. I'm not sure how I feel paying $13 to $15 for a 12-inch pizza when I'm not sure if it's going to be a knockout. I DO feel comfortable paying that for the Mean Green, though, so maybe there are some other gems on the menu. 

- Ian

PS: About the menu. They're going for a subway theme in here, and I love the decor of the place and how they've decorated, but I can't abide by the menu. I feel that the fonts are too small and that the menu isn't very easy to navigate. Having not lived in New York, maybe this is part of the subway theme? Also, the PDF menu on the website requires you to zoom because they've got a full page menu at the bottom that fits to page. Info delivery fail.