Ten things to love # 8: Bacchus, Troy NY

When I work with reporters one of the first things I do is get them to focus. One idea per sentence, one story per story, I tell them. Well, tonight, a bit drunk on fatigue and, perhaps, the mind-altering effects of eating more pizza in the last three days than I've eaten in the last three years, I say bunk.

What fun is focus?

So, in the spirit of the chick in the corner of the bar who has convinced herself that she really is good at pool, I give you a story about pizza and yoga, about nervous love and conversation, about spice and sauce and the taste of fire, and how after 17 years of marriage, it may be time to start dating again.

Let's start with Saturday night.

There is a moment some years after having three children when you burst back in to the adult world gasping for air and wincing in the glint of a sleep-filled life that doesn't smell like crushed Cheerios. For me this was Saturday.

My mother had offered to take the three kids overnight.

My husband and I were facing 15 hours -- count 'um -- 15 hours of uninterrupted time. Months of unspoken thoughts and un-retrieved snippets of conversation. Longing and loneliness. Jokes with forgotten punch lines and stories saved for such a moment that no longer seemed to matter. They all seemed to stare up at me like heaps of dirty laundry. Driving away from my mother's house, the car eerily quiet, I willed myself not to speak. If I opened my mouth, I might blow it.

The car swept along 787 toward Troy. I watched the gray Hudson meander in the end-of-the-day light, and some part of me started to relax into the silence. Thank God we'd decided against getting all dolled up and going out for a big fancy meal. Too much pressure. Pay that much money and put on that much make up, and it had better be a Moment, capital M memory making and all.

But that's the thing about our lives. We aren't lacking in moments. Children, especially premature asthmatic twins, are full of drama. And what alone time we've had has been, by the nature of its brevity, monumental.

What's been missing isn't the once-a-year fillet mignon; it's the casual Saturday night cheap bottle of Chianti and thin-crust pizza eaten slowly over jokes and silly stories and observations about the news. In food as well as marriage, fillet mignon is nice, but pizza is essential.

So I've got one thing to say to the owners of Bacchus, the new wood-fired, thin-crust-pizza spot in Troy: Your timing couldn't have been better. The restaurant opened two months ago in the basement space under Daisy Baker's, one of Troy's fancier dining spots. It's owned by the same people but fills a very different and much needed niche.

My marriage isn't the only thing suffering from too many "special" moments. The area dinner scene is cluttered with $20-a-plate experiences. Or -- on the other end of the spectrum -- spots to eat plates of mozzarella sticks and nachos in the dim light of video gaming machines and captioned TV news. Outside of a handful of Asian restaurants and curry houses, much of what's left of the middle ground has been ceded to chains and diners.

Bacchus is just what's been missing. It's the perfect place to start dating one's husband, or anyone else for that matter. The basement setting is warm, yet unpretentious, with worn brick walls and sitting nooks. The wood-fired oven feels like a roaring hearth in the back of the room.

And the food, well, where do I start. There is the attention to detail, the fresh parsley finishes and fine ingredients. There is the wispy taste of smoke and the little charred bits that you can only get by sliding a pizza next to a pile of glowing wood. But to tell you about Bacchus, I have to tell you about the sauce. It's the sauce that takes this place from college-study-break spot to date destination.

I had my first Bacchus pizza on Friday. I thought I'd slip in and check the place out after reading a nice recommendation on Dish and Dirt. I'd just finished a yoga class and was a bit scruffy looking -- no shower, ill-fitting workout clothes, you get the idea. But how dressed up did you need to get to eat pizza in a basement? I schlumped in and ordered my favorite solo pie: mushrooms and anchovies. When it arrived, I knew just by smelling it that I was underdressed for the occasion. I ordered a glass of wine to compensate.

This was no desperate mommy pizza, ordered takeout on a Tuesday night and served half warm, the thick globs of cheese and grease already starting to harden before reaching the bloodstream. This pie was fragrant even delicate. Something you could conceivably eat after a yoga class. Even so, the first bite took me by surprise. The sauce glowed in my mouth like a warm summer day in an Italian garden.

I stood up and walked over to the guy behind the counter.

"Did you make this sauce," I asked him.

His name was Chris Davies, and, yes, he was the guy behind the sauce. He danced around the details. And I understand, I wouldn't give away the keys to the kingdom, either. But he did share that the sauce was raw, meaning that he blended the tomatoes and the other ingredients but didn't cook them ahead of the pizza.

The crust was good, but didn't quite live up to the sauce. It needed air and that push-pull of crisp and tender, of light and chewy, of the taste of fire and the flavor of protection. I thought of my yoga teacher moving us over our toes and then back on our heels. Somewhere in there was balance. This crust was still on the journey.

So on Saturday night, when I finally did speak as my husband and I walked hand and hand to the Bacchus entrance, it was of pizza dough. This night we would leave behind the dirty laundry along with the logistics talks and even the great secrets of our hearts. We would make like people who spent Saturday nights drinking wine and eating pizza. We would chat.

We tucked ourselves into an oven-side table at Bacchus and spent the next two-and-a-half hours talking, poking into each other's food, and sipping a $22 bottle of Chianti. I remembered that my steady, common-sense engineer of a husband could zing one-liners when you least expect it. I threw my head back and laughed.

Even the crust was much improved, although still not the equal of the sauce. Bacchus is not a perfect place, but the flaws tend to be moments of regularity that you wouldn't notice if they weren't set against such quality.

Take the pasta dishes. I've tried the basic spaghetti and meatballs and the more complicated shrimp caprarius - roasted shrimp, garlic and tomatoes sautéed in olive oil and finished with feta cheese, avocado, lemon and a splash of Pernod and served over linguine. (No, I'm still not convinced you can warm an avocado.) But again, the sauces are the stars, alive with depth and layers of taste, yet the pasta is cooked just a point past aldente, so it has trouble holding up its end of the flavor bargain.

The house's lemon-vinaigrette salad dressing is good enough that it wants to be tossed rather than drizzled. But these are small things.

When we finally departed full and happy, I left my purse behind. I swear it was an accident. The next day I had to go back, and my son begged me to go along and try the pizza we'd been raving about. So for the third day in a row, I sat by the light of the open oven, this time with two of my children. We tried the sausage pizza, and it was the best. A perfect foil for the sauce.

Laughing with my kids, a hint of emptiness crept in. I wished my husband were there. I caught myself stowing stories for him.

I am not sure when we will get a chance to go to Bacchus again. But it makes me happy just to know it's there. Waiting for the next night when we can laugh, drink wine and and debate the merits of sauce and dough.

Details:
Bacchus Wood Fired
32 2nd Street, Troy, NY 12180
(518) 687-0345

Prices:
Pasta, around $10 - $16 for dinner portions. $7 to $11 for lunch. Child portions are available on request.
Pizza, around $7 -$10 for an 8 inch (more to add your own special toppings or sauces). $11 - $16 for a 12 inch pie.

Hours:
Tuesday - Thursday -- lunch and dinner

Friday, Saturday, Sunday -- dinner

Monday -- closed