Much longer. Opened in Aug 2013, closed in Aug 2015 due to “an underground fire involving Eversource utility wire which left the entire building in a dangerous and altered state, unfit for occupation or business.” A4 only left after many months of waiting for repairs, which apparently was a mess due to poor coordination between the landlord, Eversource, and the city of Somerville.
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Agree that is seriously good pizza. The dining room is a bit spartan, but for takeout, who cares?
The only reason I like to eat in occasionally, is they do not do the spiedini for takeout. Their spiedini is a log of provolone, wrapped in proscuitto, heated in the pizza oven until the ham is crispy and the cheese melty, and served with some Mike’s hot honey on top. I know why they don’t do it for takeout, as if you were traveling more than 5-10 minutes, it would congeal into an unappetizing blob. The dining room IS rather spartan, but given the size of the space, it’s probably the best they can do. They definitely benefitted from outdoor dining, as it gave them another5-6 tables outside.
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As a curiosity, how was the pizza lacking?
I have found the pizza at the original Area Four in Tech Square to be quite inconsistent. This is judging by dine in pies. Sometimes the pies are a bit underdone and limp in the middle. We did have some enjoyable meals at the outdoor tables on the side of the building when our kids were young and could run around in the Courtyard. They were also always cool about letting us bring our dog and letting her sleep next to the table.
I do like the chocolate chip cookies at the A4 Cafe which opened next door.
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I’ve had this problem in the past, on occasion, but our last six orders (over the last 3 1/2 months) have been consistently good.
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It’s been awhile since the last time I ate there (6 months?) but…the service was atrocious. Having to repeatedly chase down the waitstaff to order, to get the drinks (after the appetizers came out!), to get the check, etc was maddening. And the pizza just wasn’t good enough to make up for it. For a place that makes a big deal out of their crusts, I found them very limp (underdone or overtopped?) and fairly tasteless. Toppings were fine as I recall.
@stevestroud Are you talking about Area Four?
response was to fooddabbler’s question
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Welcome @Stiv. If what you say is true there were two parts to the response:
None of this is good, but none of this is pizza.
As I said above in my reply to @uni, I’ve had the limp crust problem occasionally in the past, but not recently. I’ve always found the crust tasty, in a sourdoughy sort of way. The toppings in my experience have always been better than fine.
Original comment above - “experiences” being the key word. Going out for dinner is the whole ball of wax, if you want to separate the service from the food OK, but I don’t.
If you are fine with what you get at Area Four, good for you. For me it hasn’t been worth it - and I am not interested in having a food fight with you.
No food fights being sought at my end either, but to avoid future confusion I assume @Stiv and @stevestroud are the same entity.
We recently met friends at the Treehouse Brewery in Deerfield. It was really nice to see such a great repurposing and use of the former Channing Bete space, with seemingly little build out. It’s just the type of revitalization WMA needs more of.
While there we ordered a bunch of pizzas to feed our group and were pleasantly surprised (went in with low expectations). It was honestly better than any pizza we have had in the immediate Boston area in a minute. Pizzas are thin crust NY/New Haven hybrid with a nice crispy under carriage. It was busy so we had to wait 30+ min for our pies, but they all came out perfectly cooked (those who don’t know might even call it overcooked). Options are simple, but perfect for our taste (pepperoni, Margherita, vodka). All the ingredients were fresh and high quality. Pepperoni was perfectly cupped as it should be. The vodka pie was the surprise hit among our group.
I’m not a huge beer drinker at this point, and while I enjoy Treehouse, I do find their beers to be somewhat one note. I’m in the minority though, this place was packed. There was plenty of room to spread out though. Sadly, you can’t order these pies to go. They do have boxes for leftovers, but they are not large enough to fit a full pie.
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There’s one closer in Tewksbury (formerly the Tewks Country Club) as well. Always busy; they ended up creating “overflow parking” across the street.
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The pizza at the Tewksbury is definitely not as good as at the Deerfield location, although the Tewksbury location is beautiful. Two different enterprises, two very different pies.
When we visited Deerfield, I remarked to B that it had an abandoned mall from the 1980s. Totally cool they made something outta nuthin’.
They have set their eyes on a Faneuil Hall location which could be just the boost that area needs.
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I just went and looked at the Deerfield location pics (I’ve been inside of neither) - it almost looks like an old school on the outside in the picture at the bottom of their “visit Deerfield” link! (Their Sandwich location looks gorgeous as well!)
And are you saying that the Tewks location is owned/run by someone other than the Deerfield location? Or just the pizza?
I am sure that Tree House owns it all - brewery, pizza, merchandise, and everything else. The actual pizza ovens and the people operating them are different, so that may well account for the differences.
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I believe the pizza joints are run independently. Sandwich has a different food supplier, too (we went once a glorious sunny day, playing hooky, while Spring Onion was at school and it is indeed a fabulous location @LindaWhit).
B is a Treehouse fanboy, if you all haven’t noticed. Like @uni, their offerings have become one-note to me (although I’ve been known to knock back a couple without protest). I even remarked to B after his last haul from Back Bay that I need to do a blind taste test to appreciate the differences.
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Totally agreed on that, even as a fanboy myself. I think I got 8 different beers last time and more or less they wound up in two categories: “Fruitier” or “stronger.” I think Treehouse does the former better than anyone else, and yeah, they all kind of taste the same. (Delicious!) Trillium does a much better job with the latter IMO.
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Out of curiosity, what makes you think that the TH pizza operations are all run independently? You may well be right, but the TH web page suggests that the pizza menus are identical at Deerfield, Tewksbury, and Sandwich so TH must have some control of the operation.
I wonder what happened to pizza at Charlton? They built a huge outdoor oven there at one point but I don’t know if it ever went into operation. I haven’t been to Charlton since Tewksbury opened up.
And for what it’s worth, I 100% agree with you about (at least) their IPAs being one-note. There are only 3-4 of their core beers that I buy. Their myriad variations seem way too subtle to me - I’ve tried them on occasion and just don’t get why they go to all of that energy to make them.
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