Had a pizza for takeout from Max & Leo’s Chelmsford location Tuesday night. Nice leoparding on the crust and proper Neopolitan style, which is a first in our locale. The crust suffered a soggy middle, which may have well been due to the fact that we did takeout.
They don’t seem to be encouraging to-go orders (yet), which I think is smart. This location has only been open about a week. The place was full with eat-in diners at 6:30 on a wintry Tuesday night.
We’ll give it another go when we can to see if the crust holds up better when dining in.
I got corrected once on this board when complaining about tip droop of my Neapolitan pie at Babbo Seaport. I was told that is Neapolitan style, like I guess you’re supposed to eat it with a knife and fork? Which I can’t do, lest I have Jon Stewart on my case.
It’s a fair bet I that will be the next to stand corrected. The middle of our takeout pie was seriously soggy. More so than I have experienced before, and certainly much more so than my ideal pie In our region: Short & Main in Gloucester.
My hypothesis is that our pizza sat in a closed box for too long a time. Not complaining at all as this Max & Leo’s doesn’t seem to be aiming to do takeout yet—staff isn’t even giving out to-go menus—and they accepted our order warmly.
For all these reasons, so far I like the cut of their jib.
As much as I LOVE pizza, I don’t really care about the AVPN standards or even prefer that type of pie. The good pizzas I have had from Max & Leo’s in Newton corner are not of this style and have not been soft in the middle. Sounds like it suffered from the box (as most pizza’s do) or was undercooked from the jump.
The technique I generally use for a true “certified” type pizza is to fold the tip in, fold the slice and go from there. This leads to more than half the slice being gone on one bite, but…
I don’t know if they still do this, but the at the original (Newton Corner) location, they used to discourage takeout, period, because of the degraded quality. Interesting position for a restaurant with 3 tables.
Thanks for this insight. Hmmm, I wonder if that will be the case in the new Chelmsford location as well. Max & Leo’s remodeled a former Friendly’s building at the edge of Chelmsford Center, so there’s more seating available here.
The first time we went there, they definitely did (I think it was one of the owners, and this was shortly after their initial opening.) I think they’ve perhaps reassessed their purity standards.
just read on Boston’s Hidden Restaurant that Alba Mediterranean Market and Bakery in Waltham is closing. That’s a bummer, I went there a couple times (on @Thimes’ suggestion, I think) and it was really cool. They had great homemade yogurt.
Grassona’s in Brookline is closing tonight which is really disappointing as we liked this place a lot for relaxing dinner with great house-made pasta etc.
The Globe reports that Top of the Hub will be close on April 18. Apparently the lease of the restaurant operator was not renewed and the building owner will be redeveloping the space of the restaurant and current observatory into a new observatory space. I could imagine something interactive like the One World Observatory in New York.
Top of the Hub was overpriced with fairly boring food, obviously you were paying for the view. It was an iconic Boston spot though. I liked having cocktails there.
Salt & Olive in Harvard Square will close by the end of February. They recently moved from Mass Ave next to Zinnekens to the old Starbucks space in the Garage in the heart of the square. It is unfortunate as they were a good resource in the neighborhood, but I can’t say it comes as a total surprise.
Where do you buy high quality balsamic at a reasonable price?
We never get to HSq these days but I always feel sad seeing a presumably independent place close.
Kind of in the same vein, where do Boston folks get their high quality single origin olive oil locally? We almost blew through a gallon from California in ~1 month. Not sustainable or smart to get that shipped to us every month. I’d much rather get it locally. I’ve been disappointed in some Greek specimens at Sophia’s. I can start a separate thread but using @uni’s post as a placeholder.
The middle of our takeout pie was seriously soggy. More so than I have experienced before, and certainly much more so than my ideal pie In our region: Short & Main in Gloucester.