Satchel's

Ask a UF alumni where they go when they're back in town, and they will, most likely, tell you to make the trip to Satchel's. Why? It seems more ineffable than anything. Sometimes it's because they only accept cash. Sometimes it's about the mini-hippy commune that seems to have sprung up in the back of the place. Sometimes you'll hear a person say they genuinely love a particular menu item, but usually it's more of a "Well, because it's Satchel's!" At this point, they tend to get all Jack Nicholson from The Shining on you and give you some crazy eyes.

I LOVE THEIR SALADS

Fair enough. Far be it from me to rain on your parade. Most of the talk you hear about Satchel's is the mystique surrounding Satchel's. Indeed, I feel compelled to not just stick to the food and mention some stuff because it bears mentioning. Satchel does a very good thing with his business. He treats his employees right. He's really involved/engaged with the community. He donates money he would have had to pay to credit card companies in fees to charity. He does what he can to really make sure you have a good experience. Does this mean he has a good restaurant, though? No. That means he runs an ethical business. Now, I'm sure people who want to support ethical business practices will be turned on by this (I think it's pretty cool,) but that doesn't mean the food is great. It's just the reality. Good food is good food and a strong sense of ethics doesn't make you a better chef. Now that that is all out of the way, let's get to the actual restaurant, eh?

My girlfriend and I arrived at Satchel's at 7 PM on a Saturday to meet with some friends there. I was already a bit apprehensive as 7 PM on Saturday is probably the busiest time of any restaurant. Shockingly, Satchel's was no expectation and the wait given was about 45-50 minutes. Well, I came all the way to NE 23rd so a wait less than a hour wasn't going to break my resolve to review it. Instead, I decided to wander about, checking out the locale. I quickly realized the main problem. This was Florida in mid July. Probably a poor move to have come at the most crowded time, as I don't particularly do well in hot and crowded areas. What was striking was the weird demographics of the place. While hippies were ever present as is the case with most local pizza places in Gainesville, there were families and students, wealthy and poor, old and young. Clearly, Satchel has tapped into something here, but what it is ain't exactly clear.

This album could be put on loop. No one would notice.

I shit you not, I saw a younger guy wearing a utilikilt without irony. Later, I saw a middle aged man wearing a Fleetwood Mac shirt without shame. Let's be real...there should be a little shame when you wear that. Not at Satchel's though. It's the warm, accepting embrace of Gainesville complete with the ever present hippies. I should say that I have no problems with this, as hippies are notoriously good pizza makers. One of my favorite pizzas of all time is made by the good folks at Taos Pizza Out Back in Taos, NM, which might as well be right out of a documentary about Woodstock (the one that didn't have Limp Bizkit headlining.) I'm usually pretty apprehensive if I enter a pizza place, and I can't spot Hippies or Italians. If I come across a Hippy Italian Pizza place, my expectations will be incredibly high. There's probably a marijuana joke in there.

Right behind the restaurant is a little shop filled with odds and ends that, I would guess, are to keep children entertained as you wait for your table. This is where I saw the utilikilt guy. They also have an area for someone to play music, so I'm sure if you came at the right time you'd probably get to hear a jam band laying down a crunchy groove, or whatever the hell they call it. They had a small bar area there as well with a selection of organic beer if that so interests you.

Normally,  I won't provide so much atmospheric color in a review, but I got bored 20 minutes into the 50 minute wait to get seated and started scribbling notes.

Eventually, our table was called. Luckily, the menu is there to explain why things take so long. Satchel's apparently has a small kitchen, which means that if the restaurant is crowded, you can wait as long as 50 minutes for your food. I have nothing against this, personally, but I will admit to having some confusion as pizza is supposed to be one of those types of food that can cook with extraordinary speed. I have no idea what they do to the pizza before they put it in the oven, but the prep, cooking, and serving of a pizza is a pretty quick process with the highly regarded original Neapolitan pizzas cooking in as little as 2 minutes in their special pizza ovens. Whatever though. If the food is good, it won't really matter anyway.

We decided to start out with a salad as my girlfriend basically demanded it. She had raved about the salad before, but I tried to keep my expectations in check. I didn't want to be unfair after all. At $6.50 to serve 2-4 people (as the menu recommended,) it chanced to be a good value at least.

As it turned out, it was in fact a very good deal, giving enough salad for my girlfriend, my buddy, and I. At about 2 dollars a person, a pretty good bed of red and green leaf lettuce, a basic vinaigrette, assorted nuts, diced tomatoes, some apple chunks, a healthy dusting of romano cheese, and a couple other slight touches made this a very good deal. I had heard that the salad was mixed with some form of addictive narcotic, but I felt like it was basically just a pretty good garden salad. I tend to find a fairly simple garden salad to have a pretty secure limit for what can be done with it and, therefore, a threshold regarding how good it can be before it is no longer a basic garden salad. This salad definitely hit the points necessary to be a good at what it was trying to be. It tasted fresh and the ingredient ratio was spot on as well.

The Calzones were described by the menu as "addictive," so I felt like I should include them in my review along with the pizza to come. At $12.50, I got the calzone called the Hot Rope, which came with spicy Italian sausage, green peppers, onions, ricotta, and mozzarella cheese. It came with a side of sauce as well.

The larger pictures is so you can see the sauce more easily.

The Calzone is easily enough for a full meal for one person. More likely being enough for one and a half meals. The ingredient ratio was good again. The balance was correct. The sauce was served on the side as opposed to inside the Calzone itself, which is neither here nor there for me. I tried the Calzone with and without it. Upon trying with the sauce, I came to my first qualm with the meal. The sauce they use is not very flavorful. I'd say that it's actually a bit bland. I first thought something might have been up when it came out in full blended form with remarkably uniform consistency. You can see some visible seasoning, but it just didn't have much punch to it. You will notice the crust looks strange for a normal calzone. This is actually the main thing I think Satchel's does best, but I'll get to that later. Overall, I'd say it's a little overpriced for what it delivers considering the sauce, but the calzone is well done, and I'd recommend it if you like calzones.

Finally, we come to the pizza. When I asked my friend what he liked best about Satchel's he responded, after a brief pause to consider, "The Pizza." Andy Hutchins over at the local UF sports blog Alligator Army is not shy about referring to it as the best pizza in Gainesville. But is it reallly? We got one of their "deal" pizzas: A medium 14" inch pizza with 4 toppings called "The Mama" for $18. This was a mixture of basil, sundried tomatoes, garlic, and their spicy sausage.

At about 1.25 a piece, they didn't skimp on the toppings

Thought you can't see it particularly well in this picture, the crust was of a similar type of the Calzone. What is it that gives in that particular color and body. Well, luckily, it's something I've seen and tasted before. This pizza used, at some point, a sourdough base. I don't think I've seen someone use a sourdough base for their dough here in Florida before. My taste for pizza is straight from San Francisco's Little Italy, and those places do this little trick pretty frequently as well to really add depth to the crust. This is apparently fairly common in the well regarded pizza places of New Haven, CT as well. Neapolitan pizzas are commonly made using this method. Personally, I'm a big fan. I'm tired of nearly every pizza place I eat in Florida being inspired by the usually insipid New Yorker bastardization of the Neapolitan style. To complete my pissing off the invariable descendent of a New York transplant, the Yankees suck, the weather there blows, and most of the city gives off a weird odor.

Moving on, I believe you can see in the picture that the pizza is drooping fairly substantially at the tip. Something is afoot:

Some color but no char. We can see the coloring is uneven as well. Near the center, we can see the dough is lighter, which means the pizza wasn't evenly cooked. I'm really curious to know how they cooked their pizza to get such an uneven bottom. One things for sure, it did not have a char, which really prevents this crust from being all star quality. We know they aren't using the brick ovens that get past 700 degrees to make, in my opinion, truly the greatest pizzas. All the same, the crust does have good flavor (even making that awesome crunchy sound of great sourdough bread.) I just wish the effort that had clearly gone into making the crust had been fulfilled on the cooking end.

The cheese was of good quality. It wasn't the ideal super fresh mozzarella you get at the better pizza places (ie: ones not in Gainesville,) but it certainly accomplished what it had to. The toppings were of decent quality though I do wish I had gotten a bit more of the sausage on the pizza considering how well stuffed with sausage the calzone was.

The big disappointment with this pizza was that it seemed like they used the same sauce that they used for the calzone. Pizza sauce can really add a ton to a pizza. Really, this seemed to add more of a slight tomato note with the liquidy texture instead of the more robust sauces I prefer. They likely could improve this sauce in any number of ways, but largely I just wish they would improve it to live up to the rest of the pizza.

At 18 dollars for a 4 topping 14" pizza, I'm sure some people are curious regarding the value. I've gone back and forth on this to be honest. I'm reticent to say that it isn't a good value because, honestly, it is the best pizza in Gainesville. Relatively speaking, they could probably charge more, and still make a killing. When you're the best in town, you're the best in town. Could a restaurant come along, take the same quality of crust, improve the cheese, sauce, and cooking of the pizza, and still make profit by charging less than Satchel's? As a person who is no stranger towards making pizza, I can see that as very doable. Granted, Satchel's goal isn't to bottom out prices as you can see what he does for his employees and they are still recovering from a kitchen fire that had them shut down for a while.

In the end, I have to recommend this place. It's basically that I have no choice. They have the best pizza in Gainesville, but being the best in Gainesville in restaurant terms means fairly little. As a result, it'll probably be a while before I visit the ATM and head to Satchel's again, but I do know, once I wait a hour and a half from arriving to having the food come out, I'll be able to eat the best pizza Gainesville has to offer.

-Charles