At Lamp Cafe, Scottsdale's most underrated pizza maker expands reach with tasty sandwiches
Matt Pilato's new Lamp Cafe is a casual restaurant and bar focusing on sandwiches, salads and mignulata, a stuffed Sicilian bread that nearly steals the show from his pizza at Lamp Pizzeria next door.
- Matt and Lindsay Pilato opened Lamp Cafe next to their Lamp Wood Oven Pizzeria in October
- The sandwich and salad shop serves lunch and dinner six days a week, and shares elements of the pizza joint's menu
- About a dozen sandwiches, served on Pilato's "focaccia/ciabatta hybrid," are varied and delicious
First Bite:Our critic shares some thoughts about a new (or new to him) restaurant after an informal visit or two.
Matt Pilato is a man obsessed, driven by an almost clinical attention to detail.
He and his wife, Lindsay, own and run Lamp Wood Oven Pizzeria, one of the best pizza joints in town. Perhaps due in part to its location off Pinnacle Peak and Pima roads in north Scottsdale, Lamp is too often glossed over in discussions that focus on more centrally located heavyweights. But the quality of Pilato’s product has won over the local crowd, and on most nights he slings pies to a packed house.
What’s unclear is whether his new venture, Lamp Cafe, will ease or increase the congestion.
In October, Pilato opened the casual restaurant and bar focusing on sandwiches, salads and mignulata, a stuffed Sicilian bread that nearly steals the show from his pizza, served next door at Lamp Pizzeria. A cynic’s interpretation would be that Lamp Cafe exists to capture an overflow crowd on nights when the pizza oven gets backed up. A more charitable take would acknowledge Pilato’s drive to evangelize, as he expands his meticulous care and knack for finding just the right ingredients to a new but similarly familiar format.
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Whatever the motivation behind its genesis, the freshly minted Lamp Cafe is already a tasty partner to its pizza-pushing sibling.
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The scene
Combining a bar and small dining room, Lamp Cafe serves both lunch and dinner six days a week (closed Mondays), pairing signature cocktails, beer and wine with sandwiches, salads and charcuterie-centered bar noshes. In particular, Pilato has placed an emphasis on happy hour, making the cafe a logical stop for a snack and a drink before sliding next door for a pizza.
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Still, while the menu’s structure will undoubtedly draw lunch and pre-dinner crowds, it would be unwise to overlook its potential for an evening meal.
The food
There’s a great deal of cross-pollination between the pizzeria and the cafe. The ingredients and flavors at the latter, including some dish components, will be familiar to fans of the former. In fact, some of the same starters and salads, like a bright white bean and crostini salad ($11) and an intensely rich roasted tomato soup ($6), here with shaved Gouda, adorn both menus. But at the cafe, Pilato has traded his crisp, golden pizza crust for what he calls a “ciabatta/focaccia hybrid,” sturdy bread with a light crust and a bit of chew that’s still tender and pliable enough that the contents don’t go squirting out the other end when you take a bite.
The Meyer ($11) is a simple, meaty affair, topping sliced, grilled meatballs with a muffaletta-type olive salad and sharp provolone. Taking a slightly sweeter stance is the Agrodolce ($12.50), which touches sausage or salami with a sweet-sour red onion relish, the tart zip of piquante peppers (aka Peppadews) and just a whisper of Gorgonzola.
Less meaty, if you like, is the Fofo ($12), which can be made with sausage or tender zucchini cakes, spiked with spicy pickled vegetables, roasted red peppers and a handful of crisp arugula. Meanwhile, taking a more traditional comforting Italian-American bent is the Eggplant Parm ($11), a tender and melty mess of a classic that’s better than most.
And for all of the ill-conceived BLT variants out there, it’s nice to see one that’s using its head. the PLT ($10.50) swaps one crisp, salty meat for another, subbing in near-crunchy pepperoni for bacon, and adding a touch of basil and peppers to the requisite lettuce and tomato.
But the most welcome development on Lamp Cafe’s menu may be the inclusion of Pilato’s mignulata.
A taste of his ancestral Sicilian home, the mignulata is the unsung star of Lamp Pizzeria’s menu, and one of the best bread products in the state. Pilato rolls up dough, jelly-roll style, with fresh sausage, slivered onions, roasted cauliflower and pecorino. He bakes the resulting log, then slices it on a bias and crisps the spiral slabs in the oven before service. The mignulata is a study in textures, transitioning from crunchy to crisp to tender to almost molten as you approach the core, and the flavor of its long proofed dough is strikingly well-balanced with the fillings, which are restrained enough to keep the focus on the bread.
Lamp Cafe also serves the mignulata, which is starting to multiply. Pilato’s Classic is now joined by the Villager, stuffed with potato, pea and sausage; and the Cordellia, stuffed with potato, sausage and a bit of salty speck. For $10.50, you get a plate with three slices, in any combination, along with a deftly prepared side salad.
Lowdown
A little more than a month in, Pilato is still tinkering, but Lamp Cafe is easy to recommend just as it is. Recent years have seen no shortage of thoughtful, quality sandwich shops in the Valley, and I see no reason not to be greedy. Pilato isn’t making it any easier to decide whether to get a pizza or a sandwich, but I enthusiastically welcome the choice.
Reach Armato at dominic.armato@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8533. Interact with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Lamp Cafe
Where: 8900 E. Pinnacle Peak Road, Scottsdale (next to Lamp Wood Oven Pizzeria).
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays (happy hour from 3-6 p.m.)
Details: 480-272-6889, lampcafeaz.com.
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