Best of the Day: Bar Pie Thursdays – August 27, 2015

Every Thursday at Puritan & Company, buy a drink and get free pizza.

Welcome to Best of the Day, our daily recommendation for what to check out around town. If you do one thing in Boston today, consider this.


Puritan & Company Bar Pie

Puritan & Company Bar Pie / Courtesy photo

Earlier this summer, we spent a few Langolier-like weeks gnawing through every sauce-covered disc this town has to offer, to bring you our list of “The 21 Best Places to Eat Pizza Right Now.” But let’s be honest here: There’s one kind of pizza that beats ’em all, and that’s a free pizza.

And if you agree, you should be making a beeline for Inman Square’s Puritan & Company, where earlier this month, they launched “Bar Pie Thursdays”: Every Thursday from 9-10 p.m., diners can get a free cheese pizza, “with the purchase of an adult beverage at the bar.” Though we quite admire Puritan’s brunch, we’re certainly not immune to the charms of an evening service—especially not when free pizza is involved.

Chef Will Gilson has always shown a reverence for New England foodways—and though the bar pie might not be as iconic as the bean and the cod, it’s made its way into the local pantheon, thanks to its proliferation all over the South Shore.

So what exactly is bar pizza? This particular regional variation is a thin-crust pizza baked in small pans. Perhaps the most famous exemplar comes from Brockton’s Cape Cod Cafe, where they’ve been cranking out their 10-inchers since before the term “bar pizza” was even coined.

And while Puritan might not yet have served up its 10 millionth bar pie, as Cape Cod Cafe claims to have done a couple years back, they’re just getting started—this free-pizza promotion runs indefinitely.

Bar pies available every Thursday, 9-10 p.m., with drink purchase, Puritan & Company, 1166 Cambridge St., Cambridge, 617-615-6195, puritancambridge.com.