Best Bites and Cheap Eats!

"Tony Tutto" my "Best of the Best"!

Yes! We have blog comments, e-mails and Facebook comments coming in featuring answers to our Standards of Excellence Best Bites poll. I will be collating them for Tuesday’s post, so get your answers in.

I asked you all to share with me your answers for the "best thing you ate in 2010", "best cheap eats" and "best winter get away". As I was posting the questions, I  realized Tony Tuttos' Pizza located at 246 East Blithedale Avenue in Mill Valley is my answer to all three questions! The Chanterelle Pizza and the Wild Nettle and Fontina Pizza are ridiculous! Tony creates the best crust, uses the best farmer’s market ingredients and gives the best service. The pizzas are priced so well for the quality, around $10 to $13 for a sharable pizza. Just look at these “Yelp” results, over 80 “Yelpers”, gave Tony four and a half stars out of five. I have never seen such “Yelping”!

Now, "Best Winter Get Away” Really? Last week’s Chanterelle hunting adventure with my husband was followed by a visit to Tony Tutto who offered to cook the chanterelles for us. I told him I was using them for a recipe test. I created a Baked Chicken in Chanterelle Cream recipe for this Saturday’s Standards of Excellence Cooking segments on the Green Morning Show on 960 am. (It is succulent and it works with any mushrooms.)

Then, we experienced the Wild Nettle Pizza, in which he took a gourmet food that people are skittish about (nettles) and used it to the fullest. With Tony, every detail is always given so much thought. The capers he uses are always the better quality salted ones, the fontina cheese is always perfectly distributed in every bite, the rosemary is chopped to a superfine mince to meld perfectly with the silky sautéed leeks. The pine nuts are toasted. With such care for the food and love of ingredients, every single bite is as eye opening as the first one.

We both had the bright and spicy arugula salads and a yummy glass of wine. After many years in the top level of the music world as a manager for Grammy Award winning artists, Tony followed his true dream and became his pizza alter-ego “Tony Tutto”. As always, he chatted "Jazz " with my jazz musician husband and chatted "food" with me. As the rain drizzled down, the warmth of the place surrounded me and John Coltrane's "Lush Life" came to mind...