Roxy's Pipe Organ Pizza

Inside Fiesta Hotel

If you're looking for a little pizza with your organ music, I've found the perfect place. It's called Roxy's Pipe Organ Pizza in the Fiesta Hotel and it's proof positive that musicians in a restaurant tend to ruin both the music and the food. And when they say pipe organ, they mean it. The music in this case is provided by a world-class organ, and a fifty foot wall of Rube Goldberg musicality that is an eye- and earful of pipes, bells and whistles. These contraptions--and the overworked organist--put out a never-ending medley of tunes that run the musical gamut from A to B. It's a fair bet that this talented guy could run off a Bach fugue without breaking a sweat, but his low-roller audience keeps him firmly entrenched in sondheim sap and show-tune triviality.

The tunes are free though, so you're getting what you pay for, but the pizza isn't and that's what the owners of the Fiesta are pawning off as a dead ringer for Boston's best. You see, Regina's in the north of Boston is a brick oven institution that turns out some of the tastiest tomato pies this food critic has ever swallowed. Back there, the charcoal-fired brick ovens give the thin yet remarkably chewy crust a crispy char that is a perfect foundation for the herb, tomato and cheese topping that barely seems to cover it. Sad to say, the pale imitation at the Fiesta is so mediocre, it should be arrested for false impersonation. Go for the north end original recipe if you must, but steer clear of the specialty pizzas. These overloaded compositions bizarrely feature two inches of crudely cut "toppings" stacked upon an overmatched crust. They're both disgusting to look at and impossible to eat.

And, while we're at it, there's nothing remotely brick about these ovens either, unless you count the brick façade conspicuously placed in front of them. As far as I'm concerned, they're only good for one thing, burning up the sheet music.

This is John Curtas.

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