Second Helpings

Mystic Pizza

    “Meet me at Oliveto Cafe at 9 and we can have the breakfast pizza,” she says. Pizza for breakfast? “Great idea,” I lie, certain it won’t be my choice.
    I’m there at 9 a.m., thinking croissant and coffee. By 9:15, I’m thinking I got the time wrong. By 9:30, I’m thinking I got the day wrong. At 9:45, I realize I’ve been stood up. A little concerned (Is she OK?); relieved (I won’t have to say “no” to pizza); and peckish from all the pacing, I take myself in for breakfast.
    And there it is on the menu: breakfast pizza with one farm egg, $8.
    “I’ll have that,” I hear myself say.
    “Do you want it with the pancetta?” the server asks. Oliveto gets the pigs for the Italian bacon from a farmer in Iowa, she says, “but it’s house-cured. We make it here—ourselves.”
    “Sure,” I say, (it’s $10 with one egg plus the pancetta) and wait to be surprised. The pizza arrives—the size of the large flat white dinner plate it’s sitting on. “It’s huge,” I say. “It is,” she agrees.
    It’s almost wafer-thin, covered with a layer of house-made tomato conserve, with garlic and capers; topped with shavings of roughly grated mozzarella. The egg must have been broken onto the surface before the pizza finished baking, as the white is firm and blended with the cheese while the yolk is perfectly soft and yellow. The pancetta—lots of it in small crimped pieces, deliciously salty and decadently fatty—is scattered over the surface. Like the egg, it is lightly baked into the mozzarella. A sprinkling of fresh parsley garnishes the dish.
    The pizza is a perfect size to share. My absent breakfast date (who was fine—she just forgot) must have had that in mind. Halfway through, I’m full but the flavor is sublime. It won’t be as good reheated. So I think of what my father drummed into me about the starving children in Ethiopia—and clean my plate.