Krog Bar Coal Fired Pizza is a passion project that pays off

Krog Bar Coal Fired Pizza, the newest addition to chef Kevin Rathbun’s fiefdom in Peachtree Hills, is a pure passion project.

That’s a good thing for Atlanta. This resurrected version of Krog Bar serves excellent, New Haven-style-inspired pizza at a fantastic value; only one of the house pies costs more than $20.

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rathbun said he’s just having fun with the new restaurant and that he can charge less because “it’s not about the money.”

That’s not just a line. Rathbun was at the restaurant both times I visited and appeared to be having a blast. He swept up, cleared tables and hobnobbed with guests. Much of the restaurant’s decor was saved from the original Krog Bar, like the door, light fixtures and coat rack.

Rathbun said he especially enjoys having a family-friendly place where kids are a common sight; his other restaurants, KR Steakbar and Kevin Rathbun Steak, are upscale dinner destinations better suited for adults. And while he certainly recognized me on a Saturday afternoon visit, he paid much more attention to my 1-year-old dining partner (who highly appreciated the pizza once he turned his attention from the powdered parmesan cheese).

The centerpiece of the restaurant is the massive, coal-fired oven that Rathbun said had to be lifted into the space with a crane. It’s used to cook every hot item on the menu, and it runs on anthracite coal sourced from mines in Pennsylvania — 120 pounds of it each day. The coal fire is started with wood, so items cooked in the oven have a hint of woodsmoke flavor. The coal burns hot, yet slow and steady, bringing the oven to a predictable 750 degrees without the hotspots and constant maintenance of a wood fire.

The charred artichokes, another canned product, were tasty but didn’t get quite the crisp, flame-kissed exterior I expected.

After the oven, the second-most important element of Krog Bar’s pizza is the dough (which is also used for a few other non-pizza menu items). A key difference between Krog Bar’s pizzas and the popular Neapolitan style is the type of flour used in the dough. Neapolitan-style pizza is famous for its use of soft, low-gluten double-zero flour. It produces a crust that’s tender and airy but less-than-sturdy in the face of heavier toppings. Krog Bar’s pizza, influenced by New Haven and New York styles, uses heartier bread flour, resulting in a more structured crust and a slice that can stand on its own.

The mortazza sandwich is a showcase for the dough’s impressive lightness. The sandwich bread is actually a round pizza crust folded around the filling like a taco. A heavy dough could easily overwhelm the sandwich’s delicate interior of mortadella, ricotta, pistachios and arugula, but Krog Bar’s crust still felt airy, even when doubled over. Such well-made, fresh bread paired with the sophisticated, multi-layered filling makes the mortazza a heavenly sandwich.

Krog Bar is about as simple and streamlined as a full-service pizza restaurant could be, so I would not put it in the category of transcendent, pilgrimage-worthy dining experiences. But when a restaurateur as successful and talented as Rathbun turns his focus to a passion project, it’s the dining public that reaps the rewards.