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Real Detroit Weekly

August 08, 2012 Food » Clean Plate Club

Pizzeria Biga

by Paul Biondi

We can't count how many times we've said we'd happily and hungrily eat pizza for every meal, every day. If only pizza was good for you. Well hold onto your hats, we found healthy, good for you, good to the last bite pizza and we found it in a sparkly new space in downtown Royal Oak. Pizzeria Biga serves up savory and sensational pies lightning fast from a 900-degree natural oven and each and every variety is a crispy work of art.

Upon entering the beautifully designed, open and airy two-story structure, your eyes immediately fall on the 6,000-lb. wood-burning oven in the center of the busy and fun show kitchen. Imported directly from Italy, the oven is the sole cooking method for every dish the kitchen crafts and it boasts rocks that were harvested from the fallout from Mount Vesuvius' epic eruption centuries ago. Needless to say, it knows how to get hot! And it's that heat that allows the highly trained staff to cook your pizza in a scant 90 seconds.

Biga is pizza napoletana at its finest with a thin crust that has numerous health and taste benefits, including being probiotic. Made of locally harvested wild yeast, the dough slow rises for up to five days. Sans sugar, this process produces a distinctive "sourdoughy" tang. This unique and flavorful crust is the canvas owner and chef Luciano del Signore envisioned when he set out to create Italian cuisine that is rooted in simple preparation using only the highest quality ingredients.

Within five minutes of being seated, four different and delicious looking pies arrived at our table. The manilla clam version grabbed our attention right away, as its surface came studded with several small, freshly-popped juicy clams still in their shells. They perfectly complimented the pancetta, garlic, spicy chile, parsley and house blend mozzarella that accompanied them. An instant favorite for sure.

Other favorites include the scrumptiously simple margherita that paired succulent homemade tomato sauce with imported Italian buffalo mozzarella, making it very light, luscious and healthy. We also loved the capicolla pizza with hot peppers, black olives and the super premium house blend mozzarella that mellowed the cured pork and spicy peppers perfectly. We also loved the duck prosciutto pizza with gorgonzola and house roasted peppers that really accented the succulent duck meat topping.

The courteous and friendly wait staff suggested we try the Miller's Farm natural chicken wood-roasted wings. They're herb-marinated with roasted onions and then inserted into that oven. The intense heat sears in the juices while it finishes the meaty wings to a tee. The lengthy menu offers several other appetizers, small plates and salads including the Biga Chop Salad, featuring hearts of palm, ceci beans, hard salami and a silky Dijon red wine vinaigrette.

There's no doubt Biga's pizza will leave you satisfied, but if you must have dessert, we encourage you to try their gelato. It's made from scratch in small batches with hormone-free dairy from Guernsey Farms in Northville. The salted caramel parfait is light and creamy with a wonderfully salty-sweet interplay that combined to create the pitch perfect closing notes to the symphony of flavors that proceeded it. | RDW

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