Fire & Stone fans, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and his wife Billie at home in Duxbury with a quartet of Jeffcote’s pizzas. Photo Aaron Perry
IN THE KITCHEN There’s something so easy about takeout: You don’t have to get dressed, for one thing. But where to get good takeout in the suburbs? It’s usually an afterthought at restaurants and you might want higher quality fare than you can get at a fast-food place. This was Christopher Jeffcote’s thinking when he decided to open Fire & Stone Trattoria in Duxbury for takeout only. “In the takeout industry there are no expectations about the food, but we’ve flipped that around,” Jeffcote said. “We make almost everything from scratch and take immense pride in our sourcing. Our whole motivation is to do something different.”
Duxbury’s Fire & Stone takeout trattoria photo Joan Wilder
THE LOCALE Fire & Stone started in 2015 when Jeffcote, a stone mason, built a shack with two wood-fired ovens in a parking lot and started making pizza as a summer side thing. When business exploded and a space opened up across the street, Jeffcote expanded into a year-round restaurant with a full menu. Fire & Stone is a pleasing storefront in a pretty cedar-shingled building in the new part of the old Millbrook Station. The airy space is almost all kitchen, with a counter for ordering and another in the front window with a couple of stools. Two 6-foot-deep, stone, wood-fired ovens blaze along one wall. The wooden planks of the vaulted ceiling are painted in watery tones, and stacks of wood are piled for feeding the fires.
Jeffcote’s fig and goat cheese burger made with beef from a family farm in Vermont. Photo Aaron Perry
ON THE MENU You have to love a chef who can recite the (arcane) Italian regulations governing how a real Neapolitan pizza must be made, uses high-quality olive oil in his dishes, and gets his antibiotic-free beef from a family farm in Vermont.
“We’ve got three kinds of customers,” Jeffcote said. “The kind that call us a pizza place, the kind that call us a burger place, and the kind that call us a fish place.” That’s about the size of Fire & Stone’s menu, but it doesn’t convey the whole story. The restaurant also offers salads, appetizers, sides, and a variety of wonderful sandwiches made with the Italian flatbread piadina.
I love the grilled (vegetarian) three-cheese eggplant piadina ($9), with its meaty strips of roasted eggplant, spinach, red peppers, and cheeses. Good, too, is the satisfying Italian meatball piadina ($9) thick with slices of meatballs in marinara topped with provolone and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It’s as weighty as a meatball sub, but the thin, grilled piadina holds everything together deliciously without adding the bulk of a roll. Half-pound burgers, sided with great fries, come with a variety of toppings. The fig and goat cheese version ($12) is all a burger can be. Served on a bun from Plymouth’s Hearth Artisan Bread, the sandwich delivers a salty sweetness from the fig and pancetta and the luscious gooeyness of warm goat cheese. Jeffcote’s pizzas are beautiful, too: their thin crusts blistered and charred lightly. Pizzas are individually priced and start at $10 for a 14-inch pie. Each can also be ordered in a smaller, personal size, making it inviting to sample various kinds. Sven and Kristoff’s creation ($20/$11) is a beautiful pie with a caramelized onion and mushroom reduction that lends a rich flavor to its mozzarella, chorizo, and wood-grilled asparagus toppings. The good haddock sandwich ($12), like the house haddock and chips ($15), comes with fab fries and delicious homemade tartar sauce. Always order the fried dough ($5): It’s a large warm oval of crispy, yet light and flaky, dough topped with a bit of butter, cinnamon, and sugar. It’s a rustic confection that’s as sweet as can be.
Fire & Stone Trattoria, 285 Saint George St., Duxbury, 781-934-6310, www.fireandstoneduxbury.com.
Joan Wilder can be reached at joan.wilder@gmail.com.
