The Best Pizza in Cambridge
One bite of the crisp and verdant spinach leaves of Emma's trademark salad and you'll instinctively close your eyes to savor the fresh, earthy flavors. In that moment of sheer deliciousness, you may convince yourself you're sunning at a Berkeley sidewalk bistro, reveling in the abundance of flavorful produce grown in the most fecund of climates. But this legendary Cambridge, MA pizza establishment is ensconced within the other Bay Area, the blustery Massachusetts Bay, epicenter of hostile winters and mercilessly short fertile seasons. And yet the impossibly gifted culinary team at Emma's somehow secures ingredients of unparalleled freshness, which are then showcased on the most creative --- and addictive --- thin crust pizzas around.
That salad - curiously referred to as The Famous Fling, though famous it certainly ought to be --- is a case of orchard's goodness embodied between knife and fork. Said spinach leaves are balanced in flavor and texture with thick wedges of green apples, diminutive slices of red onion, a sprinkling of piquant blue cheese, and sliced, toasted almonds. Mum's the word on the house dressing --- though bright notes of citrus and a resolute sweetness do escape the secret's shroud.
The virtual geographic journey continues with the ever so generously portioned appetizer - grilled toast points with fresh, creamy goat cheese marinated in olive oil and fresh herbs. The heaping mound of creamy cheese, proudly hoisted on a bed of choice olives and dressed greens, is as indulgently textured as a finale of cheesecake. The kalamata olives combine with the chevre to enliven an otherwise colorless winter day in Boston with the visual and edible palate of the Mediterranean.
While the selection of appetizers and salads is modest, the possibilities of pizzas are endless. You can choose from among the menu's 25 pre-ordained pizza combinations, or your can assemble your own from the impressive roster of ingreidents: Sauces include classic tomato-oregano, tomato-rosemary, or garlic-infused olive oil; cheeses include ricotta, gorgonzola, fresh mozzarella, smoked mozzarella, goat and feta. And the toppings? The toppings are a valentine to pizza ingenuity. Highlights range from thyme roasted mushrooms to crispy smoked bacon to garlicky green olives to yukon gold potatoes to hot cherry peppers. Those for whom large eyes are their stomach's undoing may wish to temper gluttony with a "half and half pizza": One large pizza, two entirely different sets of toppings. Half of our pie featured Emma's pizza #3: roasted sweet potato, goat cheese, mozzarella, caramelized onions, and fresh spinach; the other half was inspired by the recommended artichoke heart-roasted tomato-garlic-mozzarella-ricotta version, to which we added broccoli and bacon. On previous visits I've had the #3 with the added springtime freshness of cilantro and a burst of vibrant cranberries --- two items rarely found, if ever ordered, at a pizza parlor --- and have left feeling inspired as to boundless limits of pizza.
In the absence of a dessert menu you'll call it an early night; by this point in the meal anyhow, the line of famished and drooling would-be dinner companions leaking into the Cambridge cold will shame you out of your seat. That is, if you aren't patiently waiting for the kitchen to make that secondary pizza you've ordered to-go with giddy expectation of Emma's leftovers the next night (the pies reheat marvelously). I recommend arriving super early in the dinner hour on weekends --- no reservations! --- or allot extra time to contend with hungry patrons flocking to or fleeing from the nearby Kendall movie cinema.
Viva Emma's, my pick for Cambridge's best pizza.
