According to the Uncle Boise Food & Drink Maxim, pizza and beer is a magical combination only rivaled by T&A, S&M, and the Captain & Tennille. Let's face it: it's exceedingly difficult for a restaurant or a bar & grill to do the pizza and beer thing badly. Pizza's main ingredients of bread, meat, and cheese, plus the fact that it doesn't require silverware, makes it the ultimate food. As long as it doesn't taste like Totino's or those rectangular slices you had in high school, it will most definitely make every normal and sensible person happy. And when you add beer to this equation, even your run-of-the-mill American macrobrew, happy times are upon us because we get to combine two of our favorite activities (eating and boozing) into one.

There are a lot of pizza-and-beer joints in the Boise area, but only one of them -- The Front Door -- does the beer-and-pizza thing in a way that sets it apart from the rest. If you think gourmet pizza is a gift from the heavens and you can appreciate a masterfully-assembled beer lineup, this is where you want to be.

I hate to admit it, but I had been walking, driving, and pedaling past The Front Door's 6th and Main location for a long time without ever knowing it was there. It's squeezed in a nondescript space between the new Red Room Tavern (formerly Pair) and Tom Grainey's, and it's directly underneath The Reef. There's a smallish sign for The Front Door above the common entryway to the building, but it's easy to miss unless you happen to be looking for it. They even have a nice west-facing patio right along 6th Street, but chances are you wouldn't realize that it's part of The Front Door unless you happened to see a waitress in a Front Door t-shirt clearing the tables or walking outside with an order.

Here and there, especially among the beer connoisseurs in the area, I started to hear about this magical placed named The Front Door, and being the inquisitive type, I had to have a look at the place for myself. After wandering briefly around an area I thought I knew well enough, it suddenly dawned on me where the place is. If I'd only come to this realization sooner, like two years ago, I could've spent less time debating with my ugly wife over where to go for dinner on our brief and infrequent furloughs away from our demonic children.

I'm not what you would call a pizza connoisseur, but I know a good pizza when I see it, just like our Supreme Court justices know pornography when they see it. During our first visit, my wife and I downed a Godfather (garlic infused olive oil, prosciutto, roasted red peppers, red onions, feta, whole milk mozzarella, granapandano, fresh basil) in about four minutes, after which the wife said, "Well, that's certainly not Chef Boyardee." As I've found out over the years, understatement is the sharp side of her rapier wit.

After numerous repeat trips to confirm our initial experience (I hear the SCOTUS justices do that kind of thing too), I can indeed confirm that the pizza at The Front Door is exceptional. Take your pick from a menu that features twelve pizza pies with names like The Boss, Wise Guy, Borghata, and Gambino. You can't go wrong, and you'll immediately feel a little bit more Italian. They're all fresh-baked gustatory orgasms, and they all feature a sweet fire-baked, semolina-coated crust. When I pressed the young pizza chef to reveal the source of the crust's sweet magnificence, he did divulge its secret, but he made me swear that I wouldn't repeat it. So here I am keeping my pledge. You'll have to do a close inspection for yourself if you really want to know the secret ingredients, or you could probably threaten the pizza dude with a good flogging. He'd probably sing like a bird then.

If you and yours can agree on the same flavor, go ahead and get yourself the large size. It's big enough for two people, but you probably won't have any left to take home. You know how it is; the better something is, the less they give you. However, if your significant other has his or her heart set on artichokes and you find them only slightly more palatable than snot, you can get any of their pizzas in a personal size. Sometimes that's the only way to get what you want in this life. A word of warning, though. Be aware that while you might go to The Front Door for their pizza, you will most certainly end up staying for the beer. It's inevitable, and depending on how much you like beer, you might end up staying for quite awhile.

The folks at The Front Door have a certain philosophy about the juice of the barley. This becomes evident when you see a beer pourer or two wearing a shirt that proudly proclaims The Front Door has been "Domestic free since '06". Although I admire this sentiment and what it entails, it's not exactly true. After all, I would consider any beer made in the United States to be a domestic beer, and they certainly have a lot of American beers there. A more accurate slogan would be "Awful American macrobrew free since '06", but I suppose that would be just a little more difficult to get on the t-shirts. Regardless, I think we can all see what they're getting at, and after taking a look at their offerings you'll quickly realize that the semi-true slogan is not a gimmick that means you'll see a steady lineup of Fat Tire, Sam Adams Boston Lager, and Widmer Hefeweizen. There's nothing wrong with these very recognizable microbrews; it's just that The Front Door's philosophy is to look beyond what's popular and find the stuff that's unique, obscure, or innovative. Given the intricacies of this philosophy, I can understand why they went with "Domestic free since '06". It's a lot easier to remember.

For Jessica Price, the beverage manager at The Front Door, it's all about satisfying the very refined beer palates of Boise's true connoisseurs. "We have a lot of devout regulars who get it," she says. "When we went through a management change a couple years ago, people were terrified they were going to start seeing Coors Light on tap." It's these knowledgeable and demanding regulars who appreciate that The Front Door has 14 non-typical beers on tap and an interesting assortment of bottled beer from the US, England, Belgium, and Germany. Many of these selections can't be found anywhere else around these parts. The regulars can also appreciate the fact that Jessica has started cellaring some of the heftier brews such as Deschutes' Abyss or Laughing Dog's Dogfather for a year or longer to give the flavors a chance to mature and gain complexity. In a twist of irony, many of these cellaring kegs or bottles are kept upstairs in The Reef's cooler, which is much larger. Either way, it's a comforting thought that on those 100-degree days in July there are kegs of the good stuff growing old under the watchful eye of a self-confessed beer snob.

In my opinion, the most impressive thing about The Front Door's beer selection is their attention to detail. The beer lineup, including the taps and everything in bottles, emphasizes appropriate styles for the current season. As a result, the taps are constantly changing. It also means that you might have a hard time finding a clear, bright pilsner in January, and good luck if you've got a hankering in June for a draft pull of an imperial stout. And whatever beer you choose, you can rest assured that it will be served in the appropriate glass and at the appropriate temperature, instead of the one-presentation-fits-all approach at a typical bar & grill. Anyone who has ever drunk a refrigerated stout that actually gets better as it warms can appreciate this.

Although their regulars keep coming back for obvious reasons, Jessica says she can see how it all might be a little intimidating for people who are new the craft beer scene. But never fear. Jessica and the rest of the staff like to share their knowledge as much as they love to quaff a good pint. "If you're scared by the big names, we've got some really good beer people who can help you find something you like," says Jessica. They'll even let you sample anything they've got on tap just to make sure you like what you're getting. After all, beer is meant to be enjoyed, and it's a sin to waste a good hand-crafted ale.

This novel approach to beer ain't easy to pull off, though, says Jessica. In order to make sure she gets her hands on the far-flung or limited-production brews people have come to expect from The Front Door, Jessica says she's in constant contact with breweries and her distributor. In the state of Idaho, all the beer has to come through a distributor, so it's critical to have a good relationship with them. This means multiple face-to-face meetings per week and numerous phone calls, especially when she knows a particular brew is supposed to be released. Being late on an order by even a few hours can be the difference between getting a keg of the good stuff or sitting high and dry while it goes to another market. "It's a lot of work and energy," she says, "but I love what I do."

We certainly love what she does, too.