Taking a slice: Pizza Centro continues to produce quality pies with lots of options

With football season well under way, it may be time to rethink your Sunday meal plans. Back-to-back games on varying channels may make cooking feel like a big undertaking while the game beckons you to stay right where you are. On the couch, glued to the TV.

This is where pizza comes in. As one of the world’s most popular foods, pizza is versatile, relatively inexpensive, customizable and easy to eat. Plus, pizza is the perfect combination of bread, vegetables, protein and cheese. Crispy, chewy, cheesy, savory, spicy goodness. Pizza can be enjoyed for breakfast, lunch or dinner. According to The Washington Post, Americans chomp on 350 pizza slices every second of the day, and nearly half of Americans eat pizza at least once a week.

When the Dallas Cowboys recently played the San Francisco 49er’s, I knew I wanted to gather with friends for the game. But rather than worry about dinner, I suggested we savor Sunday night football with a Pizza Centro pizza party. No one argued with me.

Pizza Centro has been serving Santa Feans classic New York style pizza since 2009. Brothers Nathan and Jason Aufrichtig hail from the East Coast and have culinary backgrounds. Jason Aufrichtig, who also owns Counter Culture Café, attended culinary school in New York, while Nathan Aufrichtig hopped from pristine pizza joint to pizza joint in and around Manhattan and received hands-on training from several multi-generational pizzerias. Nathan Aufrichtig said, “We love making great pizza and having grown up on the East Coast, we wanted to bring New York pizza to New Mexico.”

Taking a slice: Pizza Centro continues to produce quality pies with lots of options

With two locations in Santa Fe, one downtown in the Santa Fe Design Center and the other on the southside in the San Isidro Plaza shopping center with Lowe’s, Pizza Centro cranks out one of the city’s top New York style pizzas. A smart menu features pizza by the slice, whole pies, calzones, sandwiches and salads and Pizza Centro knows what it does well. The regular pies are off the chart perfection and the hand-tossed dough is made in-house. Crispy crust with black puffy bubbles, the crust is dreamy as is the pizza.

There are a dozen Specialty Pizzas ($22-$33), all named after New York’s most interesting neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, the pizzas also have interesting topping combinations — and each pie has a lot of toppings. The meat lover’s pie, the Chelsea, is the top seller with sausage, homemade meatballs, bacon, onion, green pepper, marinara and mozzarella. Hell’s Kitchen is an eclectic combo that includes sausage, flash-fried eggplant, jalapeño, a taste of New Mexico with green chile, roasted pepper, feta, marinara and mozzarella. There are two vegetarian pies — Central Park and Alphabet City. We had the Alphabet City pie and while we liked it, don’t feel committed to order from the menu, you can custom order your pie however you want.

Being a New York pizza connoisseur, I prefer my pizza with one or maybe two toppings ($14-$21, plus price of toppings, which vary). I typically order garlic pizza, but this time opted for the Gluten-Free Pizza ($18), a dough made in-house using a blend of different gluten-free flours.

This 12-inch square pizza is good enough to tangle with the likes of a glutenous dough pizza. It is as close to that standard pizza dough as I have ever found. And, believe me, I have dedicated traveling miles and walking on foot in search of the best gluten-free pie. Topped with sausage, even the non-gluten-free eaters found this pizza totally acceptable.

But the single most important thing to remember when taking pizza home is to follow the instructions on the box — heat the oven to 425 degrees and let the pizza bake for five minutes. This will restore the pizza to its full glory of hot cheesy goodness.

Not wanting a whole pizza, slices ($3.75-$5.50) can be had until 3 p.m. daily or sold out. If you don’t want a slice, try a Calzone ($10) with ricotta, mozzarella and marinara. Add different ingredients for $1.75 each. Or go for the Sidewalk Special, offered daily until 2 p.m. featuring a different slice of a signature pie and soda for $6.95.

With six salads on the menu, adding greens to the mix allows us to have more pizza. The salad dressings are homemade and all but the ranch dressing is inspired by Counter Culture. We ranked the Caprese ($13) the top for the right ratio of everything. A bed of spring greens and fresh balls of baby mozzarella, tomatoes, green pepper, pesto with a tasty balsamic vinaigrette that made the salad pop. We also had the Classic Caesar ($13) with crispy and cold, chopped romaine hearts, lots of Parmesan and a delicious garlic, anchovy and olive oil dressing. The Caesar dressing was good, but the lettuce was flat and needed a sprinkle of salt. The Small House Salad ($5.50) is small and had lots of sliced onions, as well as cucumber, green pepper and a really nice red wine vinaigrette. Though this is a pizza joint, the salads are not to be overlooked.

Curiosity drew us to order a Pacchetto ($11), a housemade sandwich. Using the pizza dough, they make a pita pocket for the sandwich bread, and it’s a winner because the sandwich is about the filling rather than thick bread. The PLT is outstanding, and we were all hooked at first bite. Steamy prosciutto, sliced tomato, roasted red pepper, mixed greens, mozzarella and balsamic vinaigrette make this sandwich a stand-out, and we can’t wait to have it again — but without the lettuce as it was more than wilted when we got home.

Vegetarians will dig the Caprese or Eggplant sandwiches, while protein lovers will have a hard time choosing between the Ranch with chicken, Tuscan with chicken and vegetables, and the hearty Meatball with marinara and mozzarella. For $13.75, you can have the sandwich and salad, and I think you should.

In the time it has taken you to read this story, more than 63,000 slices of pizza have been consumed. Now that football season is in full swing, you can do your part to ensure these data points remain accurate. With two convenient Pizza Centro locations, you can grab pizza any day of the week, especially on football Sundays.