Neighborhood pizza shop has heart, soul

We all love getting dressed up and splurging on a fancy dinner once in a while. But the heart and soul of family dining is the neighborhood pizza place where you can come in wearing a sweatsuit with your toddler and mother-in-law, and get some good, inexpensive eats.

The problem is how to find these little treasures.

In our case, we discovered Pearl Street Pizza during the Holiday Stroll where, with a party of about six adults and four kids, we could grab something hot, tasty, inexpensive and fast before we hit the streets. Pearl Street Pizza was all that and more, and that’s why we’ve kept coming back.

Housed in the former Del Vaudo’s, on the corner of West Pearl and Elm streets, the pizzeria still has signs of the former fine-dining venue, including attractively painted gray and yellow walls, window seating and a spacious, clean dining area.

On the night of the Stroll, we couldn’t resist sharing the Mack Attack pizza ($16.99 for an 18-inch, $14.99 for a 12-inch). Be prepared: This baby is monstrous, and one slice is enough to fill you up, but it’s also highly addictive. And yes, it’s kind of like a Big Mac on a pizza, made with ground beef, pickles, onions and a secret sauce. Lettuce is added after it gets out of the oven.

The secret sauce, we believe, is a mayonnaise-type dressing. We hear you. “Pickles and mayonnaise on a pizza?” But I think we need to keep Mr. T for T’s mantra in mind when experimenting with food: “The worse a recipe sounds, the better it has to taste. Remember the best chili is made with grape jelly, and the best New England boiled dinner has pickle juice in it.”

It was weird. It was bad (in the health sense of the word), but the Mack Attack pizza tastes like heaven. We are so glad this did not exist when we had those late nights in college. You have to try it, just to say you did.

Pearl Street has a large variety of special pizzas, many of which are named for Nashua city streets, like the West Hollis ($11.99/$15.99), made with steak, feta cheese, mozzarella, garlic and onions; Spring Street, ($12.99/$16.99), a veggie pizza, with black olives, broccoli, mushroom, onion, peppers and tomato; and the French Hill ($12.99/$15.99), with crushed garlic, feta cheese, meatball, mozzarella, olive oil and oregano, to name a few.

But we also sampled a wide variety of Pearl Street Pizza offerings, and there’s plenty of other equally tasty, but not quite as decadent, choices on the menu.

For appetizers, we’ve tried both the Wing Dings and the Buffalo Chicken Wings (both $6.99). The kids loved the wing dings; they were mild and crunchy, but a little too mild for the grown-ups. Mr. T for T gobbled the buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing. But Mrs. T for T is a wimp when it comes to buffalo sauce, and they were just too hot for her.

Mr. T for T ordered the BBQ Steak Tip Dinner ($9.99), which included fries, Syrian bread and a salad – an excellent deal for a really hearty meal.

The tips were fabulous, with a teriyaki-type sauce and a real grilled flavor, and there were lots of steak tips. The fries were hot, crispy and flavorful, and the salad was surprising. Often in pizza establishments, the salads are an afterthought, usually made with iceberg lettuce and waxy tomatoes. Not so with this salad, made with tender baby spinach and romaine lettuce with tomato, onion and silvered carrots. We ordered the house dressing, expecting it to be an Italian or Greek, but instead tasted a surprising and quite delicious slaw-type dressing – maybe it was the secret sauce used on the Mack Attack. We liked it.

Mrs. T for T hadn’t had a calzone in years and ordered a small ($6.49; large is $9.99). You design your own calzone from a long list of ingredients, including spinach and feta cheese, buffalo chicken, steak and cheese, and four cheese. Mrs. T for T went for a small meatball calzone with sauce, melted cheese, and lettuce and tomato.

The calzone was huge – we can’t imagine how big a large is. This was more than enough for two people. The dough was thin and had a good flavor. The inside was not overstuffed or messy – but with just enough meatballs, sauce and veggies. This was a nice calzone. The meatballs did taste like they might have been frozen instead of homemade, but that didn’t make them bad.

Junior T for T had a personal Cheese Pizza ($4.50), which was devoured, and he even managed to down two or three Chicken Fingers ($5.99), which we all found outstanding. They were made with giant slices of real, white boneless chicken breast, breaded in a crunchy coating and fried. They weren’t greasy, but they were very flavorful.

We even enjoyed dessert at Pearl Street Pizza, honking big homemade Brownies ($1.50) that were fudgy on the inside and crisp on the outside. We ate two.

The restaurant has no liquor license, which is too bad. It would have been great to have a glass of wine with our meal, but that’s what home delivery is for.

Whether you eat in, take out or have food delivered from Pearl Street, we think you can’t go wrong.