Restaurant Review: Black Sheep Pizza (Warehouse District Location)

Coal fired or wood fired pizza? That is what debate over the best pizzeria in Minneapolis comes down to. If you like wood fired, Punch takes the cake; if you prefer coal fired then Black Sheep is what gets your mouth watering. Having already tried Punch earlier this summer Mark and I made time to trudge back over to the warehouse district for some coal fired action.

Obviously Black Sheep had some big shoes to fill. Mark and I loved everything about our pizza from punch, this might not seem fair to Black Sheep for having to go second but someone had to do it. Trust us, as with all restaurants we went in with a completely open mind. Walking in felt like we had just entered a friends' basement, which was a good thing. There was a bar and a bunch of custom-made tables; we were sat at one of the tables. This was fine by us because it gave us a chance to admire the pictures on the tabletops.

One thing I really liked about Black Sheep is that, besides some appetizers, their menu consists of just pizza. That's not to say you don't have choices; there are, but all have to do with pizza toppings. We decided to order two 12 inch pizzas and share so that I could get mine meat-free. Mark went with a hot salami & dried chili pepper because salami is amazing and we had never had it on a pizza before. I chose the tomato & oregano pizza from the menu, but it didn't come with cheese so I went big and added ricotta & artichoke.

Look at the ricotta blob goodness

Both came at the same time, mine stack on top of Mark's, and we couldn't wait to dig into our choices. Mark's came with pepperoni sized slices of salami and red pepper flakes on top. At first we absolutely loved the pizza, although the salami was hardly "hot", but after a few slices (1 for me, 2 for Mark) the saltiness and greasiness became too much for us to handle, and we decided to box the rest for leftovers.

My tomato, oregano, artichoke, and ricotta pizza looked a lot like a margarita pizza except with huge blots of ricotta in place of the fresh mozzarella. Besides not being able to taste the oregano I loved the pizza. The artichoke and ricotta went together better than I ever expected. It took Mark a couple of pieces before he shared my enthusiasm, but after awhile (and one too many pieces of his own pizza) he came around and enjoyed my pizza as well.

As for our rating:

1. Crust: 7.5 - While it was nice on the taste buds, it lacked the airy/bubbly aspect that I adore in my pizza crusts.

2. Sauce: 4 - By the time we wrote this review we couldn't even remember what the sauce tasted like. We settled on a 4 because it obviously wasn't bad enough to be considered horrible.

3. Toppings: For the hot salami & dried chili pepper we gave the toppings a 5 for being way too overpowering; and for the tomato, oregano, artichoke, and ricotta we gave them an 8 because the ricotta took the pizza to the next level.

Overall we give Black Sheep a 5.5. While we had one really good pizza, we both agreed that if we were to find ourselves back in the warehouse district and hungry Be'Wiched would be our first choice.

To follow us on our journey to find the best pizza in Minneapolis click here.