The Peace of Pizza

Food can be a transporting experience. One taste can catapult you back to a place where emotions became bound up with the sensations of taste and smell and impressed into memory. In the charming Pixar film Ratatouille, the acerbic food critic Anton Ego becomes a child again with one taste of the eponymous humble vegetable stew — the flavor and aroma unlocked a remembrance of warmth, comfort and love.

For me, a well-executed East Coast-style thin-crust pizza holds the key to such a journey. And so it was that when business took me to Sandpoint, I found a reason to visit the Loading Dock, a combination pizzeria and convenience store in the heart of downtown. Late last summer, on my only previous visit to the Loading Dock, I had experienced one of those transcendent food moments: Sitting on the back deck overlooking Sand Creek and the bridge to City Beach, the pizza had carried me 3,000 miles east and 40 years back in time. As the immediacy of that day faded, however, I wondered if something as simple as nostalgic yearning could have influenced my perception. Could the pizza possibly be as good as I remembered?

Luckily this time I had an impartial companion: Tamara McGregor is not an East Coast kid (although she’s a self-proclaimed food geek), so she has no threads of nostalgia to be plucked by a simple pizza pie. I knew I could trust Tamara to judge the pizza on taste, within the context of the current national boom in artisan pizza.

As the hour approached noon on a postcard-perfect Sandpoint day — bright sun, blue skies, light breeze — we sauntered into the pizzeria, already relaxed by the town’s laidback vacation vibe. All pizzas at the Loading Dock are the same size (13 inches) and the same price ($12). Combos include the Aglio (with puttanesca sauce, roasted garlic and goat cheese), the Spaniard (chorizo, piquillo peppers, smoked mozzarella and caramelized onions) and the Stoney (with barbecued chicken). But nostalgia is a tough taskmaster, so we went with the classic margherita: red sauce, slices of fresh Roma tomato, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil.

The Loading Dock also sells wraps and oven-roasted hot dogs, along with a variety of surprising salads from the deli case, all made in-house ($8 per pound) — both the cauliflower and the broccoli with bacon looked delicious, as did the stuffed roasted red peppers. The case also holds an array of scratch-baked desserts, including a chocolate-peanut butter cake that’s on my list for next time. Beverage choices include sodas, a handful of beers on tap, plus house-made white sangria (clean and light, although crying out for fruit) and huckleberry lemonade (refreshing and well-balanced between tart and sweet) — or you can buy a six-pack or a bottle of wine and drink that with your meal.

We took our beverages and an 8-ounce side dish of Greek salad — tender-crisp zucchini half-moons, green and black olives, artichoke hearts, red onions, tomato wedges and pepperoncini slices, dressed in olive oil, lemon and a touch of oregano — and settled in on the deck, under the overhanging roof and a row of Chinese paper lanterns. Jack Johnson sang to us from the speakers overhead; outdoorsy types pedaled past on fat-tire cruisers. Moms with strollers, kids in flip-flops, hipster-wannabes on skateboards, aging bohemians — Sandpoint’s summer diversity rolled by, just a few feet away.

After an impressively short wait, our pizza arrived, wafting the scent of fresh basil in its wake. The outer edge of the crust was dark brown and crispy. As I pulled the first slice, the cheese stretched into telltale strings. I folded the piece just slightly and took my first bite — molten cheese melded with sweet tomato and a kick of oregano in a chewy, gooey, messy burst of flavor. Lake Pend Oreille and my surroundings disappeared, replaced by the old red Naugahyde booths and dark-wood tables of Kitty’s Restaurant near Boston, and I was 10 years old again, enjoying a rare meal out with my family.

The music shifted — Bob Marley — and I was back in Sandpoint. My first slice was gone. I had no memory of finishing it. I took another and studied it: the thinnest of crusts, a simple dough that had been hand-stretched moments after we’d ordered; a schmear of sauce, with the sweetness of reduced tomato; chewy buffalo mozzarella, not too thick, with a pleasing touch of saltiness that complements the tomato’s sweet nature; pieces of fresh basil scattered over the top, grounding the flavors with an earthy greenness.

The simplicity of the margherita pizza leaves little room for error. If there’s a weakness in this pizza, it’s the Roma tomato slices — they’re a little too thick, and their texture comes close to overwhelming the delicate interplay of sauce, cheese and crust. But that’s a tiny quibble. Tiny. This is, arguably, one of the best pizzas I’ve had on this side of the country.

Wanting to be sure that my judgment isn’t clouded by nostalgia, I ask Tamara if she thinks the pizza is good. She nods, chewing, not pausing to speak.

“So you like it?” I persist.

She nods again, swallowing. “I like it,” she says. “I’ll be coming back here.”

Qualitative judgments on something like pizza are so subjective. What I think is simple pizza perfection might strike you as lacking depth. And I haven’t yet tried the Loading Dock’s other creative combos, so I can’t rate them — although they look and smell delicious. But I can tell you that this pizza was delicious. And sitting on the deck, on a spectacular Northwest summer day, with the lake and the blue-green hills in the background, it carried me home.