The Margherita Slice from the OG Mama’s Too uptown on Broadway circa 2021.
On the Road Again
For those of you who have been following along via my Instagram stories and posts, then you know that I was consulting on not one but two exciting pizza projects in NYC to wrap up the month of June. It was a really great time to be visiting NYC and I had my hands (and plate) full the entire time I was there.
I arrived just in time to catch the last cool day of spring, followed by not only the first hot and humid day of summer but…the first heat wave. I experienced it all – cool nights, hot days, humidity, rain, all of it. And I wouldn’t have changed a thing. It was the perfect trip.
Photo of Airbnb studio apartment on 96th St between West End and Riverside Drive. The perfect location since the three main locations I needed to visit were all walking distance from the Red Line 1/2/3 Trains.
I got to work on two awesome consulting projects, visit with family and friends in The City and even take a trip to Jersey City for a no-holds barred chefs tasting at Razza Pizza Artigianale, overseen by none other than the man himself, Dan Richer. But we’ll get to that later. Scroll down if you want to skip over all the pizza consulting updates and get some intel on Razza.
Project 1 – Mama’s Too
The most exciting project I consulted on started the day after I arrived in NYC. I took the Express down to 14th Street, got off the train, and strolled down Seventh Avenue to Bleecker Street, my old neighborhood.
This red door leads down to the basement of the building. Home to The Village Vanguard, my all-time favorite jazz club in NY. Also walking distance from my old apartment on Bleecker and 7th Ave.
I walked down to Bleecker, hung a right turn, and before arriving at the pizzeria to begin working, I checked out the competition. Very important in my line of work.
The Burrata Slice at L’Industrie is probably the most popular slice, and I almost always get one. This time I just got the Margherita slice, and it did not disappoint. As I later would learn, pizza dough all over the tri-state area was over-proofed that morning due to the sudden rise in heat and humidity, but you couldn’t really tell at L’Industrie. Even on a less than stellar day, the Margherita slice did not disappoint. I finished it in just a few bites, downed my bottle of water and walked a half block up to Bleecker Street to meet with my new pizza consulting client, Frank Tuttolomomdo, the proud and hardworking owner/operator of Mama’s Too in the West Village.
L’Industrie was not having a great dough day the first time I arrived during this trip, so I’ll substitute a photo from the mothership location from a Scott’s Pizza Tour Outing to Brooklyn in 2001. Much better!
I had met Frank briefly a few years prior, when I popped into his pizzeria on a self-guided pizza crawl with some skeptical family members. I had seen lots of great photos on Instagram, but I wanted to arrive at opening time and see for myself what all the commotion was about. I messaged Frank on Instagram, even though we didn’t actually know each other IRL, and he told me he would probably be around.
When I arrived, he gave me the grand tour. Not much to see on the surface: a small but bustling neighborhood pizzeria, with a counter full of a wide variety of pan pies. And, of course, the thing that I was actually there to behold: big, fat blistered thin-crust rounds. The site was dramatic.
Even more dramatic was the back of house set up, in this case the downstairs basement: small, hot and literally bubbling over with dough. Everywhere I looked, there was dough: in the mixer, on the bench, in bins, boxes. The stuff was everywhere. It was hard to imagine but there it was. One of NY’s most popular pizzerias was literally bursting at the seams. It was a sight to behold, and Frank could not have been more generous or accommodating.
An incredible new pizzeria already firing on all pistons after only three months of opening. And, to add fuel to the proverbial fire, L’Industrie also opened its second location leff than a block away from my home away from home for the week. Both pizzerias had lines out the door on and off all day and night during my visit. It was a virtual block long pizza party West Village Style.
The first day was not a long one. Frank and I spent some quality time together in the basement, talking about what we wanted to accomplish during the week. We stationed ourselves at a prep table in front of his brand new spiral mixer and I asked him to walk me through the entire process of mixing and fermenting his dough and I took copious notes.
Frank downstairs in the basement of Mama’s Too West Village
An incredible new pizzeria already firing on all pistons after only three months of opening. And, to add fuel to the proverbial fire, L’Industrie also opened its second location leff than a block away from my home away from home for the week. Both pizzerias had lines out the door on and off all day and night during my visit. It was a virtual block long pizza party West Village Style.
The first day was not a long one. Frank and I spent some quality time together in the basement, talking about what we wanted to accomplish during the week. We stationed ourselves at a prep table in front of his brand new spiral mixer and I asked him to walk me through the entire process of mixing and fermenting his dough and I took copious notes.
This spiral mixer is quite an improvement over the old Hobart I saw overflowing with dough back in 2021 at the Uptown location.
He also walked me through the journey he had taken to arrive at his current recipe and process. Before listing some of the highlights of his recipe and process, he looked at me sideways and told me that he was not in the habit of giving out such information. I understood and assured him that I was in the habit of keeping secrets. I explained that part of my job was to receive and process top secret recipes and processes and that his secrets would be safe with me. We never discussed it again. He told me everything, or mostly everything.
Once he had walked me through his recipe and process and I had taken satisfactory notes, I started back at the beginning and repeated each ingredient and step of the process to him, confirming each and every detail, asking questions where I needed more clarity, and noting where I thought there might be room for examination, if not improvement.
It’s a delicate process to work with people like Frank. Not only is he a very talented, experienced and hard working person, but he and his family have invested their entire lives in their businesses and who am I to walk in off the street and suggest changes or try to identify “yellow flags” as I call them, areas that at least from afar might look suspicious or problematic? But I was there to do a job, and we both understood that.
Frank was very receptive to my questions and concerns and we continued our conversation upstairs in the pizzeria kitchen. He wanted to stretch and bake a few pies for me and show me his dough in action. As I mentioned above, his dough was a little over-proofed according to him on that day and not entirely up to his standards. But he walked me through his stretching and topping process and I stopped him constantly to understand everything that I could about why he did what he did.
Again, he was very open to my questions and feedback. And, of course, the slices were excellent. But I could see where he was concerned. As with all great pizza makers, he was not aspiring for near perfection. He was not happy with 70-80% of his pies being as good as they could. He wanted them all to be great. And I could see why. The many slices that I sampled with Frank over the next few days would be some of the best I had ever eaten in New York City. In particular, the crust had all of the elements that I myself strive for including a multitude of crispy, crunchy textures as well as all the light and airy crumb that any modern pizza maker would want…and of course just the right amount of chew.
I had my work cut out for me. Our original plan was that I was going to work directly with Frank’s head dough guy on Tuesday but, as always with restaurants, that plan did not work out as anticipated. Something came up. So we worked out a Plan B. I would return the next day and work with Frank directly. I’ll try to get to the rest of this story in a future blog post but for now, suffice it to say, I really enjoyed meeting Frank again and working with him and his team so closely. I left Frank with a list of very small but important tweaks that I thought he should consider making to his process, and only one tweak to his recipe. I look forward to returning to New York sometime soon to sample his pizza again.
Project 2 – Leaven Foods
As many of you already know, I’ve been working with a “sourdough start-up” out of San Diego called Leaven Foods since mid 2023. I consulted with them on the first phase to develop a sourdough product prototype which performs like instant yeast but has all the benefits of sourdough, because it is sourdough.
Besides assisting with product development, I also assisted with the next phase which is called “proof of concept,” where I reached out to many of my friends and colleagues in the pizza and bread industry to ask them if they would test the prototype of the product and provide feedback. After sending out sample packages of instant sourdough all over the country and receiving the feedback, we are now in the final phase: fund raising. This phase is going well and I’m happy to say that we may almost be done. Fingers crossed..
Back in February, I walked the floor of the Pizza Expo with guys from Leaven on Day one of the three day event. During the second day, Peter Reinhart invited me to be a guest on his podcast. Just for fun, I invited Cameron to join me on the podcast but unfortunately he was scheduled to fly to San Francisco that morning to meet with different VCs that were interested in investing. So instead I brought his second in command, James. For those of you who missed it, you can find the recording on a recent blog post. It was a noisy day on the convention center floor but the podcast was great and, as always, I enjoyed my time with Peter.
By chance, an investor, and it turns out one of my virtual pizza class students, listened to that podcast recently and, after being impressed with the story and the concept behind the project, he reached out to us directly about the possibility of receiving some sourdough microbes to test. Apparently, he works with a firm in New York which invests heavily in tech- and food-related start-ups and he thought they might be interested in having a closer look at Leaven Foods. Perfect!
Long story short, I arranged with my student and now prospective investor to not only bring him some sourdough microbes in person, but to mix a few batches of dough together with him in his Upper Westside apartment in New York City. And since he had already taken a few of my classes, including my Advanced Level 1 On-Demand Class, he assured me that he had all of the equipment and smallwares to prepare the high hydration dough that I had taught him to make in the class but also the sourdough that I had in mind for the mix for this project. It seemed too good to be true, but it wasn’t.
Next, I asked Frank at Mama’s Too if it would be possible to do an impromptu tasting in his pizzeria? Frank hooked me up!
There’s a lot about this project that I cannot yet make public, but I can say that this is one of the things that keeps my work feeling fresh and exciting. Baking with sourdough is not an easy task to begin with. But then when you add a few variables to the mix, the challenge becomes impossibly difficult – and I love those challenges.
Transporting flour and microbes and smallwares to New York by plane is no big thing by itself, but getting all the pieces of the puzzle to fit together just right can be a challenge, especially when you’re on the road. This story too will one day necessitate its own blog post but, and then some, for now I’ll tell you this. Things could not have gone better from my POV.
I was able to score an Airbnb with a small kitchen and a home refrigerator, which is key for making and storing dough on the road. Hotel room refrigerators are usually too small to store large amounts of dough in, and trying to mix or ball dough in hotel bathrooms has its obvious drawbacks, though you’d probably be surprised how well a bathtub works for mixing dough on the fly. Or maybe not.
Whatever the case, we topped off the sourdough tasting at Mama’s Too with a trip to Razza. Cameron and I hosted the investor for a once in a lifetime tasting at Razza and Dan hooked us up in the biggest of ways of course. Unfortunately I did not take any photos of the meal but I did snap this photo of Cameron and our new friend outside of Razza after he had won a friendly bet with Frank. I’m not at liberty to discuss the wager at this time but suffice to say our new friend will never have to wait in line at Mama’s Too ever again…
Cameron Martino on the right and our new friend Gary on the left, celebrating our tiny victory before going into Razza for our mega-pizza-tasting.
Project 3 – The Tasting at Razza
I’m fortunate to have dined at Razza on several occasions and to have spent time with Dan both eating his pizza and teaching pizza classes with him online. His book is a true wonder, if you don’t already own it, and a part of my personal library at home. I know that many of you know him but I also know that many of you do not. So I think I’ll end this blog post with some links to some podcasts Dan has done for those of you who are not yet initiated along with a few parting thoughts.
Chef Dan Richer of Razza | Photo by Cole Saladino for Thrillist
There are a lot of great bakers and pizza makers out there. There are also a lot of people who are exceptional at explaining the process behind great pizza. There are very, very few people who are elite at both…but Dan Richer is one of them. Dan has put in his 10,000 hours learning to craft what could be the best pie out there and he’s still adding logging hours on that quest every day because for him there is no finish line. Maybe that’s the reason he’s so unbelievably clear and concise in his answers? Why he can take years of hard-fought lessons and distill them down to their essence? Eh, that and he was born for this.
Don’t believe me? You’ve heard a lot of bakers talk about fermentation, but what about when it comes to butter? The late and very great Andrew Bellucci got to ask him about Razza’s signature bread and cultured butter at a visit to Razza last year. This video isn’t some viral thing, there’s only three-hundred views or so. But if this is what Dan can give you off the cuff during service, imagine what you can learn in a focused class.
Or listen to Dan talk about his pizza origins and how he forged Razza on The Moment with Brian Koppelma.
Don’t believe me? He gets more specific about his craft on This is TASTE
And here’s a taste of what he serves up in one of our classes.
He can go deep on how you build culture and grow your staff or how olive oil from a specific region will pair better with his lights out meatballs. He can even go deep on guitars (maybe that’s for another blog).
There’s a confidence you get when you’ve tried so many different approaches. We might not be able to learn insatiable curiosity or the will to keep innovating after you reach the top of the proverbial top of the pizza mountain, but we can all learn from the people that do. You just have to listen!
