Make Your Own Pizza Night @ La Tagliatella

In the spirit of «Make Your Own Pizza», this is your chance to «Make Your Own Review.» Confused? Just follow along…
It was a rainy Sunday evening — one of those Sundays best spent sitting around the house while neglecting to do the laundry, clean the bathroom, and wear pants. It’s 5 minutes to the start of the event, you: (1) put on pants and attend the event; or (2) don’t put on pants and attend the event. Not attending is not an option — there’s gonna be pizza, holla~
If you chose (2), stop right here, and give the event one star. You never make it to the event. As you’re heading up the stairs at Epicentre, a miscreant gives you a gender-​altering wedgie forcing you to flip forward and land on your face. Everyone laughs. Your face hurts, but your pride is hurt more — you hurry back home and call mom to mail you some boxers (with tighter waistbands, please — ones that can’t touch the back of your shoulders).
If you chose (1), you are warmly greeted by the regulars and meet new people there. They compliment you on your pants. (Good call!) La Tagliatelle staff is kind and explain the pizza-​making process. Time to get to it — you: (1) carefully observe others and make an amazing pizza that both Peyton and Wolfgang would approve of; or (2) think of what you like on pizza and haphazardly throw everything on that thin crust hoping it will support everything.
As if (1) was a real option. You chose (2). But lordy, you wish you chose (1). (Please see picture.) Self-​explanatory. Nonetheless, pizza is pizza is pizza. While everyone is busy admiring one another’s creations, you shamefully (yet happily) scarf yours down. You drowned out your shame with multiple glasses of Sangria. After another great event winds down, you: (1) grab a drink with RG and NW at Mortimer’s; or (2) stay behind to polish off any remaining alcohol.
If you chose (2), you would give the event five stars, and the event would give proof that you love alcohol! Seeing as how (2) isn’t anything new, let’s see how (1) turns out.
(1) turns out pretty sweet. Sure, it’s dreary out, but you had pizza, drinks, beers, pants, and some good chats with RG and NW. A very nice way to end the week!
Thank you, Nikki for bringing a little sunshine on a rainy Sunday! (Chef) hats off for a job well done.
dmo out

The menu is great but I didn’t know how to order. I ended up having the vegetable lasagne and it was pretty good. I wish I had tried the pizza cause I think it would have been better.

Charlotte Elites had a chance to get hands-​on at the Make Your Own Pizza Night @ La Tagliatella. I wasn’t sure how hands on we were going to get but LT made it nice and easy for us. No tossing dough, which would have been fun but messy. I envision myself leaving with flour in my hair. For this event, we were provided with pre-​made crusts on a pizza peel. All the toppings were set up in a buffet style bar. My inner chef really enjoyed some of the unique toppings. Speck & Chorizo FTW! The pizzas came out with a cracker like crust that had a ton of crunch. My only regret, overloading the pizza with sauce, cheese, and toppings. It made the middle of my pizza a bit soggy. Like all great Unilocal events, we ate, drank, and laughed! Nikki had little craw-​dude friends for us to take home :)
A huge round of thanks for the staff at La Tagliatella for hosting, Poprock Photography for always catching my good side, and of course, our fantastic CM, Nikki!

Great idea for a Unilocal event. .. . and also for a kids birthday party. Not to say we are amused by the same things as an 8 year old. Just saying great idea.
I was nervous right up until my first bite of my pizza that I would create an epic mess. But with some advice from fellow Unilocalers I was able to create what I think was a great pizza. Not that I think anyone could go wrong with the fresh ingredients that La Tagliatella uses.
The highlight of the evening, not to over shaddow the chef’s hat, was the Sangria. Didn’t really expect to want to drink the day after St. Patty’s day celebration but the Sangria was dangerously good.
I can’t wait to head back and try one of La Tagliatella’s creations!

I was pleasantly surprised to see a weekend Unilocal event and upon receiving the information to RSVP I jumped on it for the later session seeing as how Sundays are reserved for Family time and preparing for the week ahead with business travel.
Making our own pizza was a great idea with the buffet of items to choose from and the seating set up was PERFECT where everyone could see each other and have open communication without having to get up from their spaces. Friday in my household is homemade pizza night so I was SURE that I was a shoe-​in or Best Pie Well that didn’t happen even though my pizza looked and tasted as good as pizza made professionally mark my word.
It was great to mix and mingle with other Unilocal Elite in Charlotte and meet some new people as I’m new to Charlotte and REALLY miss the Unilocal Chicago events that are of course on a much larger scale are almost always a Thursday — Sunday. I won’t complain about the events in Charlotte as I think they are AWESOME considering where we are (Charlotte) moreso for those who are not from Big cities and may not have experienced the caliber of events that I’ve been a part of as an Elite as well as a vendor.
Great event, I look forward to attending more events as they get greater and greater. Hopeful for Chicago caliber as I miss HOME with a PASSION…
Signing Off Unilocaling is a Habit!!!

I have to admit that this past Sunday was such a cold, rainy, yucky day that I dreaded going out and driving uptown for the pizza event at the Epicenter. However, after I arrived and checked in, I am so glad that I made it out! This was another really cool smaller event where you had the opportunity to sit down and spend some time really talking and getting to know other Unilocal Elites. I loved the fun concept of making your own ‘za too… How cool is that?!
La Tagliatella treated us to a couple of beverages and you could choose a standard mimosa, a bellini, or sangria. Of course, I am a big fan of bellinis, so that is what I went for. However, I have to say, the sangria did look very tempting!
So, for my pizza, I decided to go veggie — with basic red sauce, mozzarella, fried eggplant, spinach, mushrooms, fresh tomato, Gruyère, Emmantaler, a drizzle of pesto, and fresh basil. Just before eating, I added a bit of red pepper flakes and parm. Yum, yum! Because of all the yummy veggies, I decided to name my creation La Fattoria (the Farm).
I was initially worried that I had piled too many things on the pizza and it might not hold up with a thinner crust… but it turned out just right!
The staff at La Tagliatella was super friendly and provided excellent service the entire time we were there. (Thanks Shawn & staff!!) They were also kind enough to give out a couple of prizes for best looking pizza and best name. Not to brag, but I am pleased to report that my pizza won for best name in its group. ;-)
I was really happy to have a chance to see some of my favorite Unilocal Elites there and also met a couple of new (or new to me) Elites –so that is always fun! And, of course, our favorite photographer was on hand to capture all the fun — great pics, thanks Tonya! :-)
Nikki, thank you for such a wonderful event… again, you knocked it out of the park! I am so glad we have such a super cool CM who knows how to plan such successful & fun events!!! :-)

What a fantastic afternoon at La Tagliatella! Nikki delivered another creative and fun event at a great venue. The evening started with some awesome swag, including paper chef’s hats to get us in the mood to make our own pizza.
I’ve been to LT before but hadn’t ventured into their pizza menu, and I’m glad I had the chance to try it out. They use a superfine flour for the pizza crust, so the dough is lighter than your average pizza, but it’s still strong enough to hold a heap o’toppings. I wish we’d been able to stretch out our own dough, but in reality I realize it was probably better that the dough was prepared for us – I never would’ve been able to get the dough that thin and uniformly shaped on my own. Their toppings were fresh and flavorful, and their sauces (regular red sauce and pesto) were delicious. I loved my bellini (the lemon twist was such a good touch!), but the sangria was just passable (really sweet — so if that’s your sangria preference you will probably love it). They usually leave out bread and olive oil on the tables, but if you’re a fan of olives then ask for those instead! They had the yummiest little green olives for us, and everyone in our group loved them so much that we asked for refills.
The staff also deserve a shout out: they were just genuinely nice people who were happy to have us there. They helped us pick toppings, brought out a few items upon special request, and kept the food and drinks coming. I’d probably equate LT with a Macaroni Grill on the scale of Italian restaurants — not quite your local, homemade trattoria, but better than Olive Garden — but their friendly staff and convenient uptown location help edge out even that competition.

What better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon than making our own pizza at La Tagliatella! We were seated and served water. We also had little dishes of these briny, tiny olives. Small, but what a punch of flavor! We also had our choice of three drinks: sangria, mimosas and Bellinis. I chose the Bellini, which was served in a super sized glass and garnished with lemon rind. The drinks were a bit odd to serve with pizza, but hey! We got two drinks a piece, and they definitely added to the festive atmosphere.
The general manager, Shawn, talked to us about the restaurant and gave tips about making our pizzas. Sometimes, it was difficult to hear what he was saying, making it easy to miss valuable information. Public speaking is not an easy task, so I felt for him.
So glad that we didn’t make our own crust. That would have been a sure disaster for me. We met the dough chef, who made these exquisite, thin, perfectly shaped crusts. And he was so humble about it!
There was a variety of toppings from which to choose. I narrowed it down to truffle cream sauce, mozzarella, some delicious stinky cheese of which I can’t recall the name, spinach and mushrooms.
We were supposed to name our pizzas and submit a card to Shawn. I missed out on the part where we were supposed to list our ingredients, but looking back, it makes sense. I named my pizza «Pie Rahna.» Which didn’t really fit because I used no meat. I am just a geek for puns!
Even though I caught grief from several of my fellow… er…female Elites, I chose to take my entire pizza home to share with my man. Dinner became a little easier, and I was proud to share my creation.
Once again, Nikki did a fabulous job as organizer and hostess. Thank you for a fun afternoon!

So — I was finally able to make it to a Unilocal event. What can I say, I live and work in BFE and am typically only available on the weekends. Well, with that in mind I wasn’t going to let the cold monsoon-​like rain keep me away.
What a great event. Nikki did a great job coordinating things and good times were had by all.
First the staff — they were all super sweet and nice and seemed to genuinely enjoy having us. Shawn the manager was a bit tough to understand, I think he was a little nervous and it was a touch highschool presentation-ish…but he was nice and tried to engage us. The pizza maker and other kitchen/​wait staff were also super helpful.
Onto the drinks — we were offered Sangria, Mimosas and Bellini’s. The Bellini’s were delicious. The Sangria looked heavy on the fruit juice/​light on the red wine so I regret I didn’t try any.
Now the main event — the food. The pizza dough was unlike any i’d ever tried before. I think it’s the flour. It’s incredibly thin, but withstood the toppings I heaped on it (several cheeses, bacon, chorizo, tomatoes all with a white sauce). Now here’s where i“m going to nit pick a touch… the white sauce came from a package. Yes, a package. They only had red sauce out and I had to ask for white sauce… they told me to hold on… and I did. The cook pulled a package out of the freezer, sliced it open and let it thaw in the pizza oven. Yeah like Schwan’s style. That was off putting and makes me wonder about the freshness of their other ingredients.
Stay tuned for a review of La Tagliatella — it seems to have some promise. If for nothing else I’ll bring my friends back to convince them there’s another pizza joint in the Epicenter besides Liberretto’s. You wouldn’t believe how many of my friends were like La what when I told them I was going to a pizza making class.

I will admit I was real conflicted on committing to this last minute. It was a very rough Sunday after a lavish St. Patrick’s celebration the night before. Sure, the event was in the afternoon, my session even at 5p, but I was absolutely borderline right up until my decision to jump in the car and fight the monsoon rain out here. OK so enough soap box and complaining– the skinny of it was that it was absolutely worth it!
After rolling up in pure hoodlum clothes, I swapped my Philadelphia Eagles snow cap for a chef hat and got started on a makeshift pizza to be initially sampled by the Unilocal crew during creation of our own custom pies. All of which came out real good, even though I’m fairly confident most of our «chefs» had little prior experience.
Funny thing though, I must’ve missed the announcement that each pizza was everyones personal pies after the initial few communal pies we had created earlier, so of course I go right up to Bianka and straight up gank a slice off hers. LOL. Sorry Bianka! I owe ya!
It was surprising to see that just by slapping together a few quality ingredients you can create something so friggin’ delish. Obviously pizza is a little more involved, but if you have someone gloss over the dough process for you, you can create pretty phenomenal dishes from very few secondary ingredients.
Ok so what else… my pie– «Truffle Surprise», utilized a truffle sauce base, mozz, bacon, spinach, mushrooms, some «goat-​like» cheese that I can’t recall the name of, parm, red pepper flakes, as well as a drizzled, spicy EVOO. The surprise was the bacon. Bam. Mind blown, I know. Surprisingly I didn’t win the best named pizza contest. Probably rigged.
Drinks– Offered a Sangria, Bellini and Mimosa. Had the Bellini myself, and liked it, but it was still a little sweet for *my* taste. Very generous of Tagliatella nonetheless.
Overall, absolutely a well put together event by both vendor and CM– Nikki. Great to hear the background on the restaurant as well as other info pertaining to recipe creations. Can’t wait to try them again!

Mega props to Nikki for coordinating, overseeing and cheerleading this event!
I’d never been to La Tagliatella before. For a chain, I like it. Yeah, the interior is not terribly original and the atmosphere is a bit move em in, feed em, and move em out. But the food was high quality. Making your own pizza was an awesome idea, so e-​fistbumps to whoever came up with it.
The manager was a sweet guy, though you could tell he wasn’t used to public speaking. Nerves? Anyway, I felt a little sorry for him, so I talked him up to get more info on the place and he seemed to relax a little.
The pizza toppings options were very good. The fact that they offered taleggio put it over the top for me. Chorizo? Speck? Bacon? Yes, yes, all very good. But taleggio? BLAARRRRBBLKGDDSAJGSKJGNEPAIGJWPAOE. Excuse me, that was the sound of me drooling all over myself. I experimented a bit and added honey to offset the acidity of all the meat, sauce and cheese. Worked out perfectly!
The red sangria was good, but a little too sweet for me. I like my sangria to taste a little more wine-​y (although, this is coming from a guy that bought and drank Carlo Rossi Sangria by the gallon in college). There was definitely wine in it though, so it got the job done. I think La Tagliatella could do itself a favor by adding more cut up fruit (grapes, more berries, etc.).
Anyway, in spite of the currently low-​ish Unilocal reviews for La Tagliatella, this event has convinced me to give them a shot on my own. Stay tuned — review forthcoming.

While sad that I was not able to demonstrate my pizza dough tossing skills earned during my college days as a pizza maker, this was definitely a «Specktacular» event.
Upon arriving, we were seated in a group of tables placed together in a U shape and provided with the all-​important chef’s hat. You cannot cook a pizza unless you look the part… right?
After a brief overview of the restaurant by our host Shawn, we were introduced to the toppings available to us for the pizza making session of our visit. All the toppings mentioned were top notch. My ears really perked up when I heard they were offering speck and chorizo. I though «What a specktacular offering»! It is with the mentioned ingredients that I decided to create my session award-​wining (by name) dish… The Specktacular Chorizo pizza!
Sounds delicious you say. What’s in it they say? Well, this pizza consisted of tomato sauce, red pepper flakes, buffalo mozzarella, regular mozzarella, chorizo sausage, and speck.
While I am not a fan of super thin and almost cracker in texture crust, the flavors from the provided quality toppings more than made up for the shell’s thinness.
The two complementary glasses of Sangria were very tasty and a tad sweet… almost too sweet. It is safe to say that these drinks went down extremely easy. I liked the blackberries and the maraschino cherry in the drink but normally see a few apple slices in my Sangria.
Overall, I had a great time and a nice Sunday meal.
A big thanks goes out to Nikki for arranging the event, Poprock Photography for capturing the fun, and to La Tagliatella for hosting us. Now that I will be in Uptown more often, I will be sure to check out La Tagliatella for lunch, as I look forward to trying the other dishes they have to offer.

Great event! Although, I was looking forward to making the dough myself, I could have never made it so perfectly round. I made it into a heart shape, so i think I did a good job of killing the circle.
Quickly being offered the fantastic beverages, I chose the Bellini. YUMMY! Just the right balance of prosecco and peach simple syrup. I was thrown off by the bellini being clear but it tasted great, so I quickly forgot about that.
We were offered olives on the table that were very good. They had a wonderful display of toppings for the pizzas. We each were handed a pizza board with the crust pre-​made. We created our own masterpiece and after a quick bake in the oven, got to enjoy said masterpiece.
Mine was aptly named «Be Still My Heart» because of the heart-​shaped crust. It was a great pizza with light tomato sauce, mozzarella, pesto, mushroom, fresh tomato & basil. I must say it was quite tasty. Molto buono!
Shawn & the staff were amazing, very attentive. I even got to see their pizza dough making skills before we left. Shawn gave us a great overview of the restaurant and the chain. He knew a good bit about the menu, décor and Italian traditions but he should definitely get a chance to visit and learn in Italy someday soon. What an opportunity!
Overall, really enjoyed the event. Perfect number of Unilocalers for this type of event to connect with everyone and for the contest.

This was a fun elite event. 2 sessions with 15 Elites each were invited to La Tagliatella to learn about the restaurant and make their own pizza.
La Tagliatella provided the rolled out dough and Elites were able to choose from various sauces, cheeses, meats and fresh ingredients such as spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggplant and more. Everyone also had their choice of Mimosa, Bellini or Sangria to drink.
You then had to name your pizza and the best two pizzas won a gift card to the restaurant.
Fun event, the décor of the restaurant is interesting. It was also interesting to note that our former CM, Ben, was doing a similar event the same night in ATL. It looked like their event had more toppings. Just saying.
Thanks to Nikki, the folks at La Tagliatella and Tonya from PopRock for the photos!

Definitely fun to make your own pizza — there was a bit of a disagreement on whether or not it would have been more fun to toss the dough or not, but in the end, it’s probably better to have them take care of that task.
After being seated, presentation-​style (I don’t think this is typical, but never having been there before, I really can’t say) and given a quick introduction to La Tagliatella, we were given free reign to come up with our own pizza creation. I opted for the Chadlicious — tomato sauce, four cheese, fried eggplant, bacon crumbles, honey, balsamic and arugula. Somewhat surprisingly, the thin crust held up well.
Though thin, it’s not crispy (though this could be influenced by the amount of cheese I had on there) — still it did an admirable job, and the end result was indeed tasty. Much like Genghis Grill or some other «create your own» type place, as fresh as the ingredients were, I wouldn’t have had anyone else to blame but myself.
Other than the Chadlicious, the Sangria was pretty awesome, full of tasty fruits (though you did have to dig for them), easily outpacing the other drinks in popularity. Then again, I was going through them pretty quickly — so it’s tough to say what everyone else was drinking.
The atmosphere of LaTag is pretty decent, though certainly on the chain-​y side of things. I don’t think the «make your own» pizza is on the menu, but I can say it would be worth it if it is because it was a blast, and Shawn was a most excellent host. Thanks to him and the staff for having us, and our gal Nikki for putting this shindig together. I’m sure we put the same event in Atlanta to shame (happening at the same time over there).