New Haven is a city known for its pizza. Think traditional – thin-crust topped with red sauce and mozzarella, and maybe meat

or a vegetable. While a pizza like this from Pepe’s is delicious, there’s always room for change, and that’s where Kitchen Zinc comes in.

Located on 966 Chapel St. (down a little alleyway behind Zinc), KZ serves what they call “artisan” pizza, topped with fresh, local ingredients that are arranged in ways you’ve never thought of. These pies are unlike anything else you’ll find in New Haven. At 5:00 p.m. last Friday, we were the only customers there; not a bad thing, because our orders were taken as soon as we finally decided what we wanted. The menu is small, but each pizza has a number of different toppings, making it a little difficult if, for example, you don’t like olives on one choice but don’t like eggplant on another. That’s not to say you can’t ask for a pizza without one of the toppings, but with so many options, we wanted to try something different.

We settled on two pizzas – one red and one white. The red was the Smoked Chicken pizza, topped with artichokes, green olives, fontina, mozzarella cheese, and of course, smoked chicken. The white was the Prosciutto pizza, made with oven roasted tomatoes, pine nuts, parmesan, mozzarella, and topped with prosciutto di parma and a balsamic drizzle.

Thanks to the artichokes, the Smoked Chicken was the agreed favorite. They gave the pizza its freshness, and without them, it would have tasted like any regular pizza. The chicken also stood out, but because it tasted so much like bacon, we thought bacon was on it. We like bacon, but if you order this pizza with white meat in mind, you might be a little startled by the result.

The Prosciutto pizza was good, but a little bland. The tomatoes, like the artichokes, made the pizza good by being so fresh. However, the balsamic drizzle definitely threw us off. It’s probably our personal tastes, but we would have preferred this pizza with another dressing or sauce.

To us, KZ seems better as a bar. If you’re of age, they have a great selection of local beer as well as distinctive martinis – raspberry chocolate was a Valentine’s special. Our suggestion is to stop in with a friend on Friday or Saturday for happy hour (9-11 p.m.), grab a pizza to split, and enjoy a drink. The atmosphere is excellent and the employees are friendly.

We will definitely try Kitchen Zinc again. While we didn’t love our pizzas, we think they’d be great with a drink (we did, after all, have them with water) and we love any restaurant that supports local food.

Overall: 3 out of 5 stars

Category: Pizza, Locally grown ingredients

Service: Relaxed, Great

Selection: Limited but intriguing, great drink selection

Aesthetics: Small, Hip, Very trendy

Atmosphere: Social, Adult