R&D: Research and Development, Recipe Deliverance

The face/hands/stomach behind our often odd specials and staple menu items is Steve. And even though we may know who Steve is and you may not, we still find ourselves thinking, How does one end up with a spaghetti and meatballs pizza? Or a pho pizza?

Often what we’re working towards is not an entirely new concept but rather the recreation of a food concept in pizza form. Some classic food combos can be translated into pizza relatively easily, the R&D phase will take around 2-3 weeks. More adventurous pizza-fications can take much longer. One of our favorite examples is The Elote slice. With culturally specific food concepts, we want to make sure the pizza version is well-crafted, with giving proper consideration to the flavors. Where do they come from? How will they work together on the slice? It is not always so natural to pair mozzarella with just any food. These ideas cannot and should not be thrown together haphazardly. 

The goal is to replicate the emotions and experiences of the concept food. The Mac&Cheese slice for example, is a blurring of two foods. At its core it’s pizza, you’re eating it drunk at 2am, or after a work day so long you thought you’d die there. But once you’re eating it, and it’s warm and a little messy, and tastes way better than you thought it would, and you’re thinking man this does really taste like mac and cheese, and then maybe you’re thinking back to your grandma's mac and cheese that she’d make Wednesday nights when your parents were working late. And it’s not that we're competing with grandma but we want to do something new, fun, innovative, but also reminiscent of something else, something that’ll provoke a reaction. 

Turning a food concept into a pizza slice is all about finding balance, the fat from the cheese, the crisp salty crust, the moisture and acidity of the sauces and toppings. Even the visuals are important. To Steve, “The biggest thing is not overwhelming the crust with too much. So you generally are just trying to reduce the moisture in ingredients, and punch up the flavors, so things aren’t lost, or destroy the structural integrity of the crust.”
 

And not everything works. Shocker. Steve has scrapped many ideas over the years. To him, the line is crossed when “it becomes more about the concept than the food.” For a long time he wanted to figure out a way for us to do a version of a stuffed crust pizza. But we always have to consider our volume on the line. How efficiently can our prep team or in-store cooks execute the idea? And we have to keep in mind the tastes and personalities of our customers. This isn’t even the same cross-neighborhoods. Wrigleyville, Logan Square, and Lincoln Square are notably different. Walk around each and you can see and feel it. But we want our pizzas to strike a chord with each of these customer bases. 

The slices are ultimately for you. Steve tells us, “The job though is to cook for the room, not yourself.” And you are the room. The room is also the cooks in store, and the ones selling you the slices. The room is Steve’s wife, “If she doesn't like it, I know before a single customer ever does.” The room is you, or your kid, or your friend visiting from out of town. And while we’re at it we’d like to keep the room entertained. We’re chasing the rush  of the ever-rotating special, the what’ll-it-be-this-time excitement. It’s a chance for us to push the boundaries of pizza, the boundaries of your tastebuds.

But we also must be upfront about all this. It is unfortunately quite laborious. While it may seem that Steve is coming to these ideas in a sparkly, dream state, this is only a small fraction of the process. He tells us, “Inspiration's the easy part, that happens in the shower or at 2am after a night out. The other ninety five percent is unglamorous repetition.” But it’s worth it! The payoff is something we hopefully all enjoy. And at the very least we will all be entertained. So what now. What’s next? You’ll have to wait and see. 

Love,

Dimo’s