Hype is real: Angie’s is making one of the best pizzas in the U.S.

The most important meals of my life stay with me. There’s the family dinner at Boston’s Union Oyster House in 2006, when I realized I could and would eat just about anything. The Laotian meal nearly 15 years ago in Manhattan that unlocked food as its own language. Taverna Alekos in 2015, when Sifis the restaurant’s Cretian owner kept shoving meat this, potato that, and carafes of red wine onto the table.

Then there’s a pizza I had in April 2019. I grew up about 20 steps from a pizzeria in the center of Rocky Balboa Philadelphia. I’d order a slice with ground beef every day for lunch each summer. Across the way is a famous tomato-pie spot we visited on special occassions. I know pizza and pizza knows me.

But in April 2019 I sat at the counter of Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix dumbfounded about how I didn’t know pizza enough anymore. How a paper-thin crust can have such complexity. How it still tasted like the wood-fired oven. I had the Chris Bianco’s rosa, which has thin-sliced red onions and pistachios and is basically heaven. It’s arguably the best single pizza I’ve had in my life.

And now, I can tell you that Houston has a comparable pizza, and of course, it’s by Bianco’s protégé.

Throw all the hype you want at Angie’s, the new casual Italian restaurant from Angelo Emiliani that opened in late July, but I mean it when I say this is the best pizza I’ve had in years. Which isn’t to say there ain’t good pizza in Houston; on the contrary, but I swear to the portly Italian chef on pizza boxes nationwide that I nearly cried while devouring the humble margherita pie simply because I had found something that had been missing from my life. 

The Black Gold at Angie’s in Houston. In background, owner Angelo Emiliani works the pizza oven. (Timothy Malcolm/Chron)

Umami nirvana

And I didn’t even get to the even better Black Gold pie. The dried porcini and fired maitake, the Comté gruyère melting down from block form, the black garlic spilling all over the thing. The ultimate in umami that had me feeling like the guy in the old Maxell commercials, my soul pulling away from my body as I tried to keep composed. I couldn’t believe it: Angie’s is as good as people are saying, and that’s annoying because it’ll stay packed and you’ll have to plan your visits around schedules, but you know what? That’s fine. Sometimes we need a pizzeria in Houston that makes you wait a little bit.

Emiliani has had wild success in Houston, though at times that success has come with unfortunate stoppages. The native Houstonian came back home in late 2020 after a stint working with Bianco in Los Angeles to sling pop-up pies. People, including I, loved them. Then the pop-up pies stopped about six months later. In 2022, Emiliani opened a restaurant in Houston’s East End that had outstanding pasta dishes and an honest-to-god best-in-city shrimp cocktail. Then that closed.

We all hope Angie’s will stay alive for a lot longer than those pursuits. Emiliani is a gifted pizzaolo, raves are coming in about non-pizza menu items, and the bar program looks stacked and exciting. I’m pretty sure it’ll all work out this time, especially because I now have another memory lodged in my brain, another meal that’ll stay with me through my middle age, and guess what-all those places I mentioned at the top are still open to this day, still finding new fans with each service. I got a damn good track record.

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This article originally published at Hype is real: Angie’s is making one of the best pizzas in the U.S..