This was our first time in The Garage Food Hall in downtown Indy - what a happening place! If you want to do some people watching and feel like you're 25 again, head down to The Garage. It's all different kinds of street food and quick places with central seating so everyone can get their favorites but then come back to sit together. Abbiocco Pizzeria is sort of tucked away at the very far edge of the larger hall and their work station is all but filled with coolers and boxes.
The website says pizza with Peruvian flair but I'm not really sure what that means, it just looked like pizza to me, nothing special about the ingredients or the large oven with pizza screens. After inspecting the menu, I guess their calzone twists are somewhat Peruvian with cumin and Peruvian chicken stew.
They have a display case with example pizzas but they are not the reheated slices like at a New York style place - more like a visual menu.
We got a tray full of food! We had to try the pepperoni stuffed breadsticks, we each got a pizza, and I saw something called a Panzerotti in the display case that I got too.
The stuffed breadsticks were really good, not too greasy but still very plump and warm. Chris said if he worked downtown he would just come down here and get stuffed breadsticks for lunch, they were pretty filling and overall pretty great.
My Panzerotti, which looks like a bread bowl or an open faced Stromboli or something, looks better than it tastes. The outer dough is good, similar to the breadsticks, but the inside was a let down. They put in sausage, then pepperoni, then the cheese on top in layers - so the cheese never actually touches the sausage because it's blocked by a blanket of pepperoni. It would have been much better if everything was mixed together instead of just a pool of melted cheese on top of 'dry' ingredients below.
My pizza was much better, and the ingredients were super fresh and you can tell it was made with love to be visually stunning. I got tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella slices. It got a little under cooked and flimsy toward the middle. And although the pizza is visually impressive with fresh mozzarella on top of tomato topped with a whole basil leaf, this actually makes it prone to having the entire topping stack slide off in a single bite.
This didn't happen with Chris' pizza, he got pepperoni and crumbly bacon and his toppings stayed in place. He agreed it was slightly under cooked in the middle but not as noticeable as mine.
I think if I had to sum it up, I would say with the exception of the stuffed breadsticks this place looks better than it tastes. I think maybe a hotter oven or cooking it a bit longer could help a lot of this. It was alright but I'll probably try something else next time we're in The Garage Food Hall.