My wife and I made a recent Sunday trip over to Iowa City to hit the Trader Joe's store in Coralville. My wife had suggested a place in Iowa City to go to for lunch, but when we got there it was packed and there would be a wait. We went to another place I thought about, but it turned out they were closed. A third and fourth place in Coralville were respectively closed as well. My wife and I were incredulous that these many places would be closed, even though it was a Sunday. Finally, my wife said, "There's a place down in the (Iowa River) Landing in Coralville that (her sister) and I noticed one time. Let's try that place out." She gave me directions how to get there and it turned out this place was open. We were going to check out Marquee Pizzeria.
Marquee Pizzeria was started by the same group of people - Sam Hall and siblings Ravi Patel, Raj Patel and Sajni Patel - who started La Vecina, a wood-fired Mexican restaurant just around the corner from Marquee Pizzeria. (Click here to see our visit to La Vecina. Also, quite interestingly, La Vecina is closed on Sunday.) The group was also involved with the Clinton Street Social Club and the Patel's are all part of the family who owns the Hawkeye Hotels hospitality group of hotels and restaurants.
After purchasing the Clinton Street Social Club, the group came up with a concept of a restaurant that had communal dining. The logical food selection was pizza which large groups can enjoy. They wanted to make the restaurant festive, sort of a "Brooklyn, NY comes to Iowa City" vibe and they wanted a large space with sort of a "backyard party" touch. Strings of Edison lights were hung from the ceiling and criss-crossed over the tables of the space.
The type of pizza was also important to the group. Neo-Neapolitan-style pizzas were selected, but they added a type of New York signature to their pizzas - thin crust with a crispy underside to the pizza. And they had to be wood-fired pizzas, so the group turned to the world renown Pavasi Forni Modena company located in Modena, Italy for their oven. The oven is capable of reaching temperatures of 900 degrees (F) to be able to cook the pizzas quickly.
Finding the right kind of dough was also crucial to Sam Hall's vision of what makes an exceptional pizza. Hall worked with five or six different types of dough structures before deciding up on a naturally leavened dough that takes 48 hours from the time it's mixed to the time it's portioned out in dough balls. With a wood-fired oven, it takes more time to prepare the pizza - shaping the dough and putting housemade mozzarella, sauce and premium toppings on top - than it does to cook it. Pizzas at Marquee Pizzeria are usually fully cooked in as little as 90 seconds.
With everything in place, Marquee Pizzeria started out with a soft-opening in October of 2017 to help shake the kinks out. They opened their doors with full menu dining in November of that year.
Pulling up in front of Marquee Pizzeria, we weren't certain that IT was open, either. (see map) But as we turned the corner to go into the public parking ramp at the Iowa River Landing, we saw that there were people inside.
After parking the car, we came in the back door of the place and found that the hostess stand was up to the front of dining room underneath a replica portrait of the Mona Lisa. A full bar with seating was along one wall with a number of tables throughout the place. We were greeted by a young lady who said we could sit anywhere, so we took a table up front next to a large garage door that opened out to a small patio in front of the restaurant.
In the back of restaurant was the large wood-fired pizza oven. The large red oven was difficult to miss. It had char marks on the top of the opening from a number of wood-fired pizzas made over the last two-and-a-half years.
Our server that day was a friendly young man by the name of Nate. I have to say that Nate had a good sense of humor, was more than helpful with suggestions and requests, and was more than accommodating during our time at Marquee Pizzeria. He was what you would categorize as a "good guy".
Nate dropped off a couple menus on the table and wanted to know what we would like to drink. My wife ordered her usual Tito's and cranberry juice, while I asked if I could get a bloody mary. Nate said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry. We don't have bloody mary's. I don't know why, but we don't have the mix for them." I was sort of crestfallen when he told me that as I was craving a bloody mary. And I was sort of confused as they appeared to have a full bar as they certainly had vodka, but didn't have bloody mary mix. But that didn't matter all that much as I found out they had a number of craft beers on tap. I ended up ordering a Toppling Goliath Pompeii mosaic IPA, one of my favorite hazy IPA's.
The menu at Marquee Pizzeria featured a handful of shareable appetizers and salads. They had a handful of pasta dishes, but the main aspect of the menu are their pizzas. They have a number of speciality pizzas on the menu including a margherita pizza that sounded wonderful with their housemade mozzarella, a red sauce and fresh basil. The Vice City pizza consisted of smoked mozzarella, locally-sourced sausage and pepperoni, with a pickled pepper sauce and hot honey. And the Prosciutto Primavera featured - of course - prosciutto, housemade mozzarella, Prairie Breeze aged-white cheddar cheese from the Milton Creamery in Milton, IA, red pepper flakes, garlic-oiled arugula with Calabrian olive oil drizzled on top. Marquee also had a vegan pizza available, as well.
My wife likes to have some greens when she can and she was sort of interested in the Classic Italian Salad - romaine lettuce, sliced cherry tomatoes on sliced cucumbers, chopped red onions, pepperoncini, with parmesan cheese and bread crumbs on top with a red wine vinaigrette on the side. We decided to get a full size salad to share as I thought it sounded good. Well, it looked even better than the description on the menu. My wife remarked that it was almost too nice to dig in to. The presentation was equalled by the fresh taste of the ingredients on the salad. It was a great start for our lunch.
We ordered up the Falco pizza - probably the most popular one on the menu according to Nate. It consisted of locally-sourced pork sausage with a red sauce, then sliced red onions, breadcrumbs, garlic, fresh basil and parmigiano cheese were all added. I asked Nate if he could add some of the locally-sourced pepperoni to the pizza and he said it would be no problem.
The pizza was a 12" pizza - as are all the pizzas at Marquee Pizzeria. It was thicker on the blistered outer ridge, but nice and thin in the middle - just as my wife and I like our pizza. And from the first bite, we could easily tell it was a quality pizza. The fresh flavors of the basil, tomato sauce, the sausage and the pepperoni exploded with each bite. The dough was perfect with little to no sag with each piece.
My wife and I have experienced some pretty good Neapolitan-style pizza in our travels and I would have to say that the pizza we had a Marquee Pizzeria would rival many of the better ones we've had. Everything about the pizza was wonderful - the fresh toppings were flavorful, the dough was spongy, but still had a crispiness to it, and the overall taste was very good. I can't say enough about our server Nate who was attentive and accommodating throughout our visit, going about his job in a friendly and jovial kind of fashion. The only drawback - and a minor one, at that - is that for a place with a full bar, I was surprised that they didn't have a bloody mary mix. But it still seemed like a nice place to gather and even with a number of very good pizza options in the Iowa City area, I'd go back to Marquee Pizzeria at some point.
A lot of restaurants are closed on certain days or have reduced hours because they can't get enough people to work. Now that states are starting to cut back on the pandemic unemployment benefits it will force people to go out and look for jobs.
Posted by: Danny W. | May 12, 2021 at 07:47 AM