Birroteca

Written by Leann Pettit
Birroteca, located on Clipper Rd. in downtown Baltimore (near the Streetcar Museum), has a warm, welcoming atmosphere and a fantastic menu to boot. The restaurant has both a cozy dining room and a comfortable bar space that shows NFL games on Sundays.

The menu features their pizzas prominently, which are big enough for two people to share, or to have a hefty dinner and a good sized lunch the next day. They also offer a few lighter entree options, mostly pastas and salads. And, each day the kitchen offers a family sized meal that serves two or more (on the day we went it was a pound of spaghetti and 9 meatballs...woah.)

We ordered the Duck, Duck Goose pizza, which we read about in a number of magazines and blogs as being one of the best things to eat in Baltimore. It's Birroteca's crispy, yet chewy, crust topped with duck confit, fig-onion jam, cheese and a duck egg and a healthy swish of balsamic vinegar. There is definitely a reason why this pizza is on everyone's list - lordy is it good. The fatty, yet moist and savory duck plays so well paired with the jam, and the egg on top is a wonderfully creamy element to the pizza. The balsamic vinegar really adds a sweet and acidic element to the dish to balance out all of the heavy savory, fatty toppings. It's so good, you are not going to want to share.

We also ordered the butternut squash risotto, which was buttery and creamy and, while we expected it to be sweet and have those seasonings of fall (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, etc.), it didn't, and it was perfect. There were large chunks of butternut squash in the risotto, really highlighting the squash, as opposed to making it second fiddle to the seasonings and rice.