Phantom Gourmet: Pigtale In Nashua, New Hampshire
NASHUA - What do you get when you combine a wood fired oven, farm fresh ingredients, and a comfortable, casual space? You get a place called Pigtale. Located in Nashua, New Hampshire, Pigtale Restaurant is a family friendly spot serving farm-to-wood-fired-oven fare in a cozy, rustic space.
Owners Chris Normandin and Robert Jean make it a priority to source the freshest food they can find from local farms, and use them to create amped up versions of the classics.
"We take a lot of things that are recognizable to people and then make them over the top good. So a potato skin is a potato skin times ten," said Robert. "We take a lot of simple things and just elevate those things."
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With the help of their wood fired oven, they're firing a menu lined with pizzas, apps and entrees.
"We're taking all of your farm fresh ingredients that we find in Nashua and the surrounding areas and we're finishing them off with this oven," explained Chris.
To kick off your meal, you can order some of Pigtale's house cured Pork Belly, topped with sweet and sour onions, served over orange honey sour cream; or Deviled Eggs topped with crispy guanciale; and then there's the perfectly crispy dry rubbed chicken wings, presented in a cast iron skillet and served with creamy, smoky barbecue sauce they call 'Camp Fire Sauce'.
It's the so-called Pig Skins that are truly a labor of love. This over the top version of potato skins is made in house using potatoes that are split, scooped, flattened, fried, and then topped with pimento cheese and diced cherry peppers and bacon before they're sent into the wood-fired oven for additional cooking. Top them off with sour cream and scallions, and you have something pretty special.
"You're going to notice that nice, beautiful crunch on every bite you have until it's gone," Chris described. "You're also going to get that beautiful house smoked bacon. On top of that, that beautiful cheese. It's that orange pimento cheese and people absolutely love it."
If you're feeling like a sandwich, Pigtale has got you covered, from double-stacked burgers topped with the good stuff, to a trio of pulled pork sliders smoked in house and stacked with slaw. But nothing quite beats their BLT.
"That's going to have the candied bacon, the beautifully cut to order tomatoes, the Bibb lettuce, that big bulky bread," Chris listed. "It's a BLT you really need two hands for. It's insanely delicious."
The entree menu at Pigtale has all of the classics, from creamy Carbonara spiked with housemade bacon to The Yardbird, a tender piece of chicken served over Swiss chard and Yukon Gold Potatoes.
"By finishing it off in that oven, we're really going to trap all those juices right into that chicken. Every single bite is just melt in your mouth, more delicious than the last," said Chris.
If you're going to trot your way into Pigtale, you should really come to pig out on their pizza, a hybrid which combines the thickness of a New York style slice with the technique behind Neapolitan pies.
You could go for the signature "Pigtale pizza" overloaded with smoked pork, bacon, sausage and pickled onion; or get something more fancy like one topped with duck confit, squash, cranberries, goat cheese and kale. But the simple, yet satisfying, margherita is probably the way to go.
"So the margherita pizza is your quintessential pizza. If you want to taste what a real pizza should taste like, no matter where you go, the first thing you want to do is get their margherita," explained Chris. "That's our beautiful hand-stretched dough. It's our house made mozzarella. It's our San Marzano tomatoes, fresh as humanly possible. And those are finished off right in the oven - right where you can watch."
Pig Skins, a BLT, and the Margherita Pizza. make for THE PERFECT MEAL at Pigtale.
You can find Pigtale at 449 Amherst Street in Nashua, New Hampshire, and online at pigtalepizza.com.
Watch Phantom Gourmet on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 and 11 a.m. on myTV38.
