Little Beast sits at 5600 Connecticut Avenue, a few doors down from the Avalon Theatre.
I’ve gone with friends and I’ve written about different pizzas there a couple of times, here and here. This visit revealed an astounding new dimension to the Little Beast’s attractions.
I’ll back up and note that on the frequent perambulations that are the core of my desperate weight control efforts, I’d noticed how often Little Beast is packed with families with two or more small children, far more than any other local spots\. It’s not an inexpensive place. They charge $20 for a hamburger, so dinner for two adults and three children adds up. I now know the key to their popularity with families.
I wound up there for lunch with two six year olds recently, Lily and her classmate Eleanor. I picked them up at school and suggested Pete’s APizza, which serves slices and also gelato, two stops in one, and where I can get a nice 10-inch Neapolitan, spicy or puttanesca, as the mood strikes. Also Lily could not order a $30 crab cake there, as is her wont. Eleanor suggested Little Beast, so to Little Beast we went, with the prospect of ice cream at Jetties in the same block. We arrived, grabbed a table, and ordered. Two kids’ cheese pizzas, a lemonade and a Shirley Temple for the girls and a Mortazza and water for me.
The girls behaved much better than you’d expect of two six year olds in a pizza parlor with no competent adult in charge. The two pizzas arrived. I was immediately asked to separate the slices. That kept me busy so I couldn’t get a photo of the pristine pizzas. Here they are —
and
Those are two ten inch pizzas, easily enough for two or three small children. Lots of cheese, lovely puffy crusts. At first I assumed that there was a mistake, that I’d gotten two $20 adult pizzas, but no. Two $10 kids’ pizzas, each big enough to feed three kids. Imagine! You can feed as many as three children for $3.33 each there. Of course that’s where you take small children. D’oh!
Oh, yes. My sandwich.
The mortazza is a pizza dough sandwich filled with stracciatella (de bufala, not the soup or the gelato), sliced mortadella, pesto, and pistachios. It came with kettle chips which the girls sampled avidly. Here it is.
This was a good sandwich. The dough was good, and some basil flecks graced the oh, so creamy stracciatella. The pesto added its dependable burst of goodness, the pistachios added flavor and texture, and the pizza dough was full of flavor. I enjoyed the mortadella, and think it’s a great addition to Italian subs. In an ideal world I’d have preferred something with more punch, like soppressata or prosciutto, but I realize that meats with their greater resistance would have the stracciatella squirting all over the place. Perhaps you, too, recently have been reminded that this is not an ideal world. It was a very good sandwich, and I may well get one again. I’ll certainly suggest Little Beast to Ella and Lily and their friends next time I’m in charge of lunch out.
There was a lot of leftover pizza. It was later duly consumed by Lily’s and Eleanor’s parents in a late dinner after a long round of kids’ birthday parties. Take your kids to Little Beast.
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