Enjoy mixing your food with fun? Davis Square’s Flatbread Company happens to share a venue with Sacco’s Bowl Haven, a funky candlepin bowling alley that is the last alley standing of those opened by the famous Sacco bowling family. The Saccos allowed Flatbread to take over the building as well as the bowling alley, and now the restaurant has become a Davis fan favorite for those who know where to look. Located on Day Street, Flatbread is just a block away from the heart of the square, but many Jumbos could go their entire time at Tufts without ever noticing the brick building with its fairly humble sign hanging above the door. This is especially true as no other businesses are on the street. The restaurant has no reason to fret, though. Rave reviews by word-of-mouth mean a surplus of customers on Friday and Saturday evenings, ready for some of the best all-natural, wood-fired, clay-oven pizza around.
Flatbread’s menu is simple, but it still offers a wide variety of options. The menu features salad and pizza, and customers can choose pre-designed items or go the “no boundaries” way and build their own. One of the standouts is Flatbread’s own organic salad, which includes mesclun and sweet leaf lettuces mixed with celery, carrots, toasted sesame seeds, Maine sea kelp and homemade berry vinaigrette. You can add locally made aged blue cheese or Vermont artisan goat cheese for an extra $1.25. The “no boundaries” salad translates to the organic salad along with any additional ingredients chosen from a lengthy list which doubles as a pizza toppings list.
As for the pizza menu, flatbreads come either in whole (in the $13-18 range) or small (around $8-10) portions and the restaurant advertises that a whole is typically enough for two diners. For the gluten intolerant, a gluten-free flatbread is available for a few extra bucks. There are a number of innovative Flatbread creations, some with the restaurant’s own wood-fired cauldron tomato sauce and some without. The unusual — but well-liked — Mopsy’s Kalua Pork Pie is topped with free-range pork shoulder, homemade chipotle BBQ sauce, red onions, pineapple and several cheeses. A safer bet, however, might be the classic Jay’s Heart pizza — an unpretentious pie combining organic tomato sauce, whole-milk mozzarella and Parmesan with garlic, oil and herbs. If none of those suits your tastes, you can go “no boundaries” on the entree as well. Start with a Cheese & Herb or Jay’s Heart pie — Cheese & Herb is Jay’s Heart without the tomato sauce — and then go wild, picking from ingredients like maple fennel sausage, Kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, fire-roasted red peppers, caramelized onions and nitrate-free pepperoni. Hint: make sure to ask about the daily specials, as there’s a different veggie and carne special every day and one may spark your interest.
Although few people go to Flatbread intending to order dessert, some of the dessert options will leave you forgetting you came for anything else. Barbra’s Homemade Ice Cream Sandwich, which includes two warm homemade chocolate chip cookies, is a must. Sarah’s Chocolate Chip Banana Bread isn’t bad either. And don’t worry, no matter which dessert you choose, you’ll get a scoop or two of Annabelle’s all-natural ice cream from Portsmouth, N.H. and a side of homemade whipped cream sweetened with local maple syrup.
If you’re up for a few games of bowling with your meal, there are a few logistics to be aware of before heading into Davis. If you have eight or more people in your group, you can reserve a lane at the cost of $25 per hour. For walk-ins, bowling is $4 per string (New England speak for a single game of candlepin bowling) per person. Shoe rentals run $2. Don’t worry about reservations taking up all the lanes, though: Flatbread designates certain lanes as walk-in only, which are doled out on a “first-come first-serve” basis.
The atmosphere is carefree, but family-friendly. It’s unlikely you’ll get through a meal at Flatbread without seeing at least one or two youngsters wandering away from their tables to gaze wonderingly at the enormous clay oven or the ongoing bowling. You won’t spend more than $15 for your meal and, sure, it’s pizza, but you know that you’re eating at a restaurant that really cares about the ingredients you’re putting into your body. You can also sense that the restaurant sincerely cares about supporting the community in its effort to bring in locally grown foods. By supporting Flatbread, you are supporting your community — so the logic goes that you should frequent Flatbread as often as possible.
