MAX AND LEO’S ARTISAN PIZZA
AT GAME ON FENWAY
82 Lansdowne St., Fenway, Boston,
617-351-7001, gameonboston.com.
All major credit cards. Fully accessible.
Prices Pizzas $13.50-$18. Calzones, sandwiches, nachos, wings $8.95-$12.95.
Hours Sun-Wed 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.,
Thu-Sat 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.
Liquor Full bar
What to order Italian calzone, roasted vegetable sandwich, coal-fired nachos, lemon-rosemary wings, habanero wings, chipotle wings, Caesar salad, Margherita pizza, Marley pizza,
Steve’s old-fashioned pizza
If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to drink too many Red Bulls and feel only vaguely attached to terra firma, come to Max and Leo’s Artisan Pizza at Game On Fenway and eat dinner. The dining room has 16 very bright, large screens, and even without the sound it feels frantic. And it’s off season.
Twins Max and Leo, Maximilian and Pantaleon Candidus, 47, are Newton natives who own Max and Leo’s Artisan Pizza, a tiny spot in Newton Corner. In the Fenway venture, they partnered with Patrick Lyons and Ed Sparks of the Lyons Group, which ran the formerly outmoded Game On with a bar-food menu. The bottom level of the newly renovated place is Blazing Paddles, with Ping-Pong tables and access on nongame nights to the visitors’ batting cage at Fenway Park (the property’s landlords). People come here to watch games, drink, bat balls around and high-five one another, and eat, probably in that order.
The twins installed three coal-fired ovens to cook all their food, and some wondered if they could pull off their brilliant, lightly charred pies in a 300-seat sports bar. They’ve succeeded, except when the pizza is laden with Buffalo chicken, pulled pork, and other excesses that don’t belong on dough. But the bigger success is how well done, with few exceptions, everything is.
The menu is essentially well-made snack food, sometimes the best you’ve ever had. One is a giant platter of coal-fired nachos ($9.50), with chips that come lightly blackened on the edges, layered with cheddar and Monterey Jack all the way through, so the cheese isn’t just a melted wad on top with forgotten chips on the bottom. You can customize them with the pizza toppings of your choice ($1.75-$2.50 each).
Wings ($10.50) are juicy and full of flavor, lemony with caramelized onions, or hot and sweet with habanero and honey, or slightly smoky with chipotle. Max’s Italian calzone ($12.50) hasn’t a trace of doughiness, and the layers of mortadella, capicola, soppressata, provolone, and pickled red onion are added with restraint.
Sandwiches come with homemade potato chips, thin, curved, and incredibly crisp. Roasted vegetables ($10) mixes artichoke hearts, eggplant, red peppers, caramelized onions, fresh spinach, and basil, with plenty of olive oil and garlic on toast. Meatballs in a sub ($11), with marinara sauce and provolone, are not very good, and even a fine sauce can’t save them. The grainy balls don’t have enough flavor. On a Caesar ($8.95 and $12.95), a light and delicious dressing is tossed with romaine, shaved Parmesan, and salad vegetables.
Pizzas come on very thin dough that has enough chew at the edges to be satisfying. The best ones don’t have too much topping. Margherita ($13.50) is spread with a thin, bright tomato sauce, mozzarella, and fresh basil; the crust is almost crunchy. The Marley ($15.50) has sauce, mozzarella, shaved Parmesan, arugula, and a sprinkle of balsamic. Steve’s Old-Fashioned ($18) is a beautiful, simple pie with garlic puree, house-made mozzarella (you can ask for “house mozz,’’ as Leo Candidus calls it, on any pie), fresh tomatoes, basil, and olive oil.
Candidus says that he and Max set out to open a “real’’ restaurant but the Game On location had to be a sports bar. During renovations, the cooks who were part of the old establishment spent three months at the Newton place learning how to make and shape dough — “stretch, top, and bake in 8 to 10 minutes,’’ says Candidus.
In fact, everything comes out very fast, but the dining room in winter isn’t very full. Service is sweet and efficient. One night, when our nacho doggie bag goes missing and we wonder about it, the waitress insists on giving us a to-go order.
The Fenway location, says Candidus, “has a totally different crowd from Newton.’’ He thinks there are “true foodies’’ in Boston who will come to the place, so it’s not just sports fans. “We just gotta get them over there,’’ he says.
They should come, but they’re going to be looking at a lot of TVs.
MAX AND LEO’S ARTISAN PIZZA AT GAME ON FENWAY
82 Lansdowne St., Fenway, Boston, 617-351-7001, gameonboston.com. All major credit cards. Fully accessible.
Prices Pizzas $13.50-$18. Calzones, sandwiches, nachos, wings $8.95-$12.95.
Hours Sun-Wed 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Thu-Sat 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.
Liquor Full bar
What to order Italian calzone, roasted vegetable sandwich, coal-fired nachos, lemon-rosemary wings, habanero wings, chipotle wings, Caesar salad, Margherita pizza, Marley pizza, Steve’s old-fashioned pizza
Sheryl Julian can be reached at sheryl.julian@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @sheryljulian.
