The Many Slices of Sal's - Salad/White

After 2 months of residence in Mamaroneck, I've learned it's generally accepted knowledge that our best local pizzeria is Sal's Pizza on Mamaroneck Avenue (316, to be exact) in the main shopping district. Although my sample size is pretty small (I think we've tried, oh, 5 or so different pizza places), I'd have difficulty arguing otherwise thus far and, in general, the overall skill level of pizza makers here in our little corner of New York is impressive (especially when compared to Florida, where Domino's makes it on a top 5 list). Anyway, Sal's has a number of interesting pizza combos beyond the standard cheese-and-tomato (theirs is quite good, by the way) that I wanted to share with my readership, two of which I explored just today.

This is a salad pizza slice.  What on Earth is that, you may ask?  Well, near as I can tell, Sal's takes a perfectly normal plain cheese pizza, lets it cool to room temp, then adds a heaping layer of chopped salad (pretty much just lettuce and chopped tomatoes) that's been mixed with some Italian dressing.  Voila - salad pizza.  I noticed a number of patrons enjoying this peculiarity on my first few visits, so I had to try it out.  It's.....ok, I guess, not as sloppy as I feared (the crust is stiff enough to support the salad when you pick the slice up without it going everywhere), but not exactly my cup of tea.  I don't need to have another.  And lest you think this is a Sal's original, I've seen salad pizza on the menu at several other pizzerias throughout Westchester County, so someone somewhere around here came up with this idea at some point.

White, or tomato sauce-less pizza, is a concept that I'm much more versed in, having grown up with an Italian grandmother whose own version of white pizza (olive oil, garlic, and roasted peppers on heavenly homemade dough, if I remember correctly) makes me swoon in a Proustian fashion. Different pie makers have different ideas of what constitutes a "white" slice, however, and the white pizza at Sal's features a thick slab of ricotta cheese spread nearly across the entire crust surface.  I would have liked the ricotta to have a bit more pizzazz (had I closed my eyes and guessed at what I was eating, I would have immediately thought of mashed potatoes), but, all things considered, an improvement over my salad slice.

More on Sal's pizzas at a later date....there's more to try...