D'Amico & Sons, Golden Valley, Minnesota Field Report

While looking for a place to eat dinner after attending an art exhibition at the Perpich Center for Arts Education I did a "search nearby" and found that there was a D'Amico & Sons location at 7804 Olson Memorial Highway, Golden Valley, MN 55437, about a mile away. Looking at the reviews on Trip Advisor for the restaurant, I saw one where it mentioned "wood fired oven" so that restaurant location seemed worth a try.

This time I didn't have my camera with me, so there are no pictures.

There is a menu that you can download from their page. The actual selections available in the restaurant were a bit broader.

The good news: They really do have and use a wood-fired oven to bake their pizza.

The bad news: They run their oven at a comparatively low 500 degrees or so.

As a result, their wood-fired pizza is just OK.

I ordered their Neapolitan (a highly ironic name considering the temperature of true Neapolitan pizza ovens), which had fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce, and basil. The pizza was thin crust, not overloaded, and had a bit of char on the bottom. It would have definitely benefited from some attention from a bubble popper. A couple of big bubbles had pushed the sauce and cheese away from substantial portions of my pizza.

Even with those problems, it was a pretty tasty pizza, and one I would order again.

Third Street Deli, Pepin, Wisconsin

People in one of my oven-building classes had told me that there was a new wood-fired oven business in Pepin, Wisconsin.

An article in the 7/7/11 Taste section of the StarTribune says in part:

As if Judith Hanks weren't busy enough, what with cooking jumbo breakfasts and lunches at her Third Street Deli along with running an adjacent consignment shop and day spa. No, Hanks recently dove headlong into the outdoor pizza business, and it's a gas.

 They sound interesting. I think I'll be dropping by Third Street Deli the next time I'm in the area when they are open.

Vino in the Valley, near Ellsworth Wisconsin Field Report

I have a previous blog post about Vino In the Valley, near Ellsworth, Wisconsin (their Facebook page).

I had the opportunity to stop at Vino in the Valley during a vacation in western Wisconsin. This was to be our last major outing of our vacation.

What I had heard about Vino in the Valley was that they had an outdoor oven. That turned out to be true. Their oven is outside.

What I had been expecting was that it would be a wood-fired oven. In that, my expectation was not met; it was fired by gas (of some kind). It actually was a two-level oven; it might be that the different decks were maintained at different temperatures.

What I thought might be a kind of vineyard setting (more like Falconer Vineyard’s Vineyard Bistro, Red Wing, Minnesota) turned out to more of an open-air supper club. There was a long building with fabric walls, many tables, a couple of bars, and even a lounge singer (seen below heading for her outdoor stage).

The building has a couple of angles so that the ends bend toward the gazebo that acts as the stage.

You can see the outdoor bar in the background here and many tables with umbrellas for people to wait at. After checking in at the reception desk, we were given one of the squarish electronic devices that vibrates and flashes to let you know when your table is ready. As a couple, we got seated very promptly.

We were actually seated near the front, right next to an indoor bar and close to the oven.

Whoever was running the oven, was very quick. I never had enough time to snap a picture of what was going into or out of the oven with the oven door open.

Unlike some of the other places we ate at on this trip, a small pizza came with a salad and a bread basket. The pizza when we got it was at best OK.

What Vino in the Valley apparently is, is an open-air supper club. They had a big parking lot, and there were a lot of cars in it. What Vino in the Valley is not, is a wood-fired pizza place. There was a mismatch in expectations between what I was hoping to find and what they are. For people who are looking for what they are, they are great. For somebody like me who looks for wood-fired oven pizza, they are not what I was expecting.


For similar places, click on the vineyard and farm labels on the right of the page. There is also a blog post about Wisconsin Pizza Farms.

Third Street Deli, Pepin, Wisconsin Field Report

On the third day of our field trip to Wisconsin, we had dinner at the Third Street Deli in Pepin. I had checked with them about some questions I had, so that when I arrived, I was recognized. We actually stopped by twice, once before they were heating the oven and later after they started serving food out of the oven.

The oven was built last year. It was more massive than they were expecting.  

The oven is part of an outdoor kitchen with some counter seating and an outdoor patio. There is some shelter from the weather while still being out of doors.

It's a pretty big oven. It looks like a relative big barrel-vault oven instead of a hemispherical oven more typical of a pizza-only oven.

They have some of the tools that I would expect for a wood-fired oven, but not all of them. (It's enough for what they do.)

Once the oven is heated up, they keep a fire in the back to keep the temperature up. That takes some practice to regulate and to cook with.

Here are a couple of calzones in the oven.

One got a little charred. This is apparently a rare problem, and they remade the item (for free of course) for the people who ordered it.

This is a "before" picture of my margherita pizza.

This is the "after" picture of my pizza. It pretty much comes out of the oven and then to the table. (It was only about 5 minutes before the pizza going in and me taking the after picture. Part of that was remembering to get my camera out before I ate the pizza.)

I thought it was a very reasonable price for the pizza ($8). Unlike A to Z Produce (the Pizza Farm), the Third Street Deli does not specialize in pizza; they have a lot of other offerings. (My wife really liked the roasted beet salad.)

The next time I'm in the neighborhood of Pepin on a day when A to Z is closed and Third Street Deli is open (Thursday through Sunday), I would happily go there again for pizza or for something else on the menu.

Rabbit's Bakery, Lake City, Minnesota Field Report

One the second day of a vacation at Stockholm, Wisconsin, we crossed the border back into Minnesota to visit Rabbit's Bakery in Lake City. We got there just before noon, so that baking for the day was over, but the wood-fired oven was being heated up for the next day's baking.

There were lots of tasting things in case waiting to be chosen. We saw lots of people coming in to buy things or to have lunch at the bakery cafe.

There was some breads of the day on the rack waiting to be taken, a menu for drinks on the wall. You can also see a sign for pizza (lower right), which they currently make once a month.

They have their distinctive sign hanging outside their door.

Here you can see the chimney stack and cinder block addition for their wood-fired oven. It looks like they also added some additional venting.

Just in case you can't find it going by the address, they also have a distinctive sign on the exterior wall of their bakery building.

Everything we bought was good. I'll certainly stop by again if I'm in the area.

A to Z Produce, Stockholm, Wisconsin Field Report

For my wife and me, if the weather is good, and the day is Tuesday, the usual question is, "Can we go to Stockholm, Wisconsin for pizza?" A to Z Produce is, as far as I know the original pizza farm.(I have collected many links about them here.)

When my wife and I visited on August 21, we got there early so we could avoid the wait, but there was already a great throng of cars. Still, I think we were still only pizza 38. We found a place to park pretty close to the ovens.

We were amused by the signage they had posted. The rules are few, but important. I told my wife that "Fences zap" is a warning most places would never post and most people would never see. It's a useful warning though because the location is a working farm with cattle, and the cattle fences have to work as intended, meaning live electric fences. (We arrived about 4:45.)

Since A to Z remodeled a few years ago, there is now more shelter over the ovens and for people waiting for their pizza. It is not so important on a pleasant summer evening, but when it's raining or cold, the shelter is very welcome.

The way to order is simple. They list the pizzas they are making, and you pick the kind you want. They will make you a pizza that half one kind and half another, but you need to accept what you get. It seems like every time we have gone there recently, the person taking order simply takes your order and says, "That will be 10 minutes."

Robbi operates the ovens herself. (People were not obeying the "NO FLASH PLEASE" writing over the ovens.) There are two ovens; there is basically a three-stage pipeline. About once a minute, Robbi moves a pizza from the second oven to a pizza box where the cashier will slice it. She then moves and rotates the pizza from the first oven into the second oven. Ted will carry a new pizza from the kitchen and put it into the first oven. When they are operating at full speed, they produce a new pizza in less than one minute.

So, when the person taking the orders says to everybody, "That will be 10 minutes," it is pretty much the truth. (If you come later, you may have to wait longer. The key is not how fast pizzas are made, but how fast people arrive. If a big crowd appears, the back up happens, but it's mainly handling the orders, not making the pizzas. One time when we got there later at 6:25 in the evening they were serving pizza 135 or so. Still faster than one per minute.)

This is the original oven, now used for the second minute of cooking.

They keep a lot of pizza boxes ready, but having them ready to go prevents a delay in boxing up the pizza. If you bring your box back, they knock a dollar off the price of your pizza.

This is Robbi turning a pizza before transferring it.

After we got our pizza home, I forgot to grab the camera to take a picture of it before getting slices out of the box. According to the time stamp on the picture, I took this picture at 5:16, which means we ordered the pizza, received the pizza, drove to where we staying, and then served the pizza all in 31 minutes.

This is the place that got me hooked on wood-fired oven pizza and the benchmark against which I compare all other wood-fired pizza places.

When we left, I checked the vehicles parked on the road around the farm. There were licenses representing five states, mostly Minnesota and Wisconsin, but also Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio. This is a place that doesn't care if you find them or not; they already have enough business. (This was highlighted in a recent blog post by Mark Leslie that he called "Old MacDonald had a ... Pizza Farm??")

We are already fans, but we enjoy reading about how other people react when they discover "the Pizza Farm."

Oven Building Classes

This blog gets searched for subjects like "bread oven building class" or "pizza oven building class" or even "brick oven building class" (according to my blog's search statistics).

While I have a few posts here about specific classes, I do maintain a more general list of class information on a page as part of my main Quest for Ovens links pages. The class information is organized by state (for the US) or country.

The information might not be current; I record classes as I find them mentioned without tidying up past links. Partly that's because a place that once held a class is more likely to do so in the future.

This provides the best info available at the time.

If you are going to be hosting an oven-building class, I would be happy to mention it here and link to it if a link is available. Just leave a comment on the blog or use the mailto link on the web site.

Portable Brick Oven Features

I put together an initial web page describing the features of the portable brick ovens that I teach people how to build in my classes. It seems only fair to discuss what's good and bad about my oven designs.

Update 11/24/2012: Just to save you some mouse clicks, note that my oven designs are for ovens that are portable in sense that they are built of unmortared bricks cleverly stacked together. The ovens can be moved by moving the bricks from the starting location to the ending location and rebuilding the oven (which takes less time than you might think, about an hour, less with help). It you are looking for some other kind of portability (what I might describe as a mobile oven), you will need to look elsewhere.

AOA Bar & Grill, New York, New York

My Google alert pulls through again, this time finding a mention of the AOA Bar & Grill in New York City.

This looks like a real beer and pizza place ("25 craft beers and over 50 bottled").

In addition, they have a regularly scheduled pizza-making class. (Now I know why people were thinking the price for my all-day oven-building class was not out of line with New York prices.)

I did find a limited-time offer for the class at a significant discount (but check out the fine print).

GardenFork.TV, a blog that mentioned wood-fired ovens

Sometimes I see the blogs of other people with interests that overlap mine.

One case of this is a blog that has its own simple charm: GardenFork.TV.

I added a collection of links to pages of theirs that I found interesting or useful.

They do both their own stuff and republish other people's contributions that are related to what they have done.

They did a brick oven pizza video that got some responses from other people who had done something very similar, somewhat less similar, or not so similar.

Their brick oven pizza video even got picked up and repackages for a Make posting.

Their approach certainly seems to work, even if it's not the way I do it, but good for them.

Bottaro Wood-Fired Pizza, San Diego, California

An article in the Encinitas Patch profiled a firefighter who started a mobile oven business as a sideline to prepare for retirement.

The article says in part:

After almost 30 years with the Encinitas Fire Department, firefighter John Gonzales began contemplating his upcoming retirement in 2015.

He thought it was time to shake things up in his life, and make a move, and this past July, he started Bottaro Wood Fired Pizza. Bottaro is the maiden name of his mother, an Italian-American.

In launching a business, Gonzales decided on a product that he loved himself and knew something about.

The business is Bottaro Wood-Fired Pizza, San Diego, California. The home page says in part:

Bottaro Wood Fired Pizza is an oven on wheels and as we like to call it "Pizza A-Go-Go". We also have salads and appetizers and cook all our food on site. You can find us at Street Fairs and Farmers Markets and also cater Private Parties and Events.

We use the freshest, local produce available, make our own sausage and use organic flour from Utah. Your pizza will bake in about 90 seconds in temperatures of 700 to 900 degrees. All your Family and Friends will appreciate the uniqueness of a Wood Burning Oven as we prepare and cook their food using "Old World" techniques right in your backyard or favorite setting.

This sounds like an interesting variation on the mobile oven business.

Oven and Shaker, Portland, Oregon

A Willamette Week restaurant review covered two wood-fired pizza places in Portland, Oregon at once.

The second restaurant reviewed was Oven and Shaker, Portland, Oregon.

The review says in part,

Oven and Shaker’s wood-burning oven came ... from Italy, but Whims’ devotion to Northwestern bounty is reflected in her thoroughly untraditional pizza toppings, which include bosc pear, roasted squash and Oregon anchovy. Best of all is the chanterelle, radicchio, fontina, leeks and fried capers pizza ($15), which tastes like a crisp December morning. (If you’d rather not experiment, you can get a standard Margherita or salami pie.)

The web site for Oven and Shaker says in part:

Oven and Shaker is a new urban saloon, bringing delectable wood-burning oven pizza, Italian street food, and ingredient-driven, classic cocktails to Portland’s Pearl District. Oven and Shaker is the collective vision of three Portland hospitality veterans: three-time James Beard nominated chef Cathy Whims (Nostrana), veteran Northwest bartender Ryan Magarian, and ChefStable visionary Kurt Huffman.

This sounds like an Oregon locavore's dream

Via Tribunali, Portland, Oregon

A Willamette Week restaurant review covered two wood-fired pizza places in Portland, Oregon at once.

The first restaurant that it covered was Via Tribunali, Portland, Oregon. (This location is part of a chain of Via Tribunali restaurants.)

The review says in part:

There seems to be no disorder in the kitchen, though. Via Tribunali’s oven runs so hot—1,200 degrees Fahrenheit—that pizzas arrive within 10 minutes of ordering even on a busy night. They are impeccable: thin, very chewy, 12-inch pies, their bottoms charred, their sauces fragrant. The house special ($17) is a rolled-edge thing, topped with tomato sauce, smoked mozzarella, cherry tomato, ricotta, buffalo mozzarella, grana padano and basil, that’s about halfway to a calzone. It’s good, but too doughy for my taste. I prefer the basic Margherita ($13, though it’s worth paying another $3 to upgrade to springy, tangy buffalo mozzarella) or, better, the quattro formaggi. The latter is among the best things I’ve eaten this year, covered in a thick-but-not-too-thick stratum of mozzarella, smoked provola and grana padano studded with little land mines of Gorgonzola that detonate on the palate. There are things other than pizza on the menu—a very good mixed salumi board and pleasant, unremarkable salads—and the bar makes a very fine Negroni, but everything is overshadowed by the pizza.

It sounds like an interesting outpost for the Seattle-based chain.

Olio Pizza e Piu, New York, New York

A New York Times article reviewing a different restaurant mentioned Olio Pizza e Piu, New York, New York.

Their home page says in part:

Olio Pizza e Piu brings the West Village something it hasn’t had in a long time, an authentic Neapolitan restaurant. Unique amongst Italian restaurants, Olio is at the intersection of two cities of great cultural and culinary wealth, Naples and New York. Synonymous with pizza for many, Neapolitan food has reached the four corners of the world like few other cuisines. However, the farther it has reached, the food has strayed from the cuisine that originated in Italy, which brought it fame and admiration For this reason, Olio preserves the true richness and character of pizzas, antipasti and pasta, conjuring the smells and tastes that fill the streets of southern Italy. Our love for true Neapolitan food inspires us to make gourmet pizzas and genuine Neapolitan dishes in a wood-burning brick oven as they have for generations in Italy. The only way to truly match our generous menu and exquisite service is to buy a plane ticket for Europe's gorgeous boot.

They also have a Facebook page.

Bottaro Wood-Fired Pizza, San Diego, California

An article in the Encinitas Patch profiled a firefighter who started a mobile oven business as a sideline to prepare for retirement.

The article says in part:

After almost 30 years with the Encinitas Fire Department, firefighter John Gonzales began contemplating his upcoming retirement in 2015.

He thought it was time to shake things up in his life, and make a move, and this past July, he started Bottaro Wood Fired Pizza. Bottaro is the maiden name of his mother, an Italian-American.

In launching a business, Gonzales decided on a product that he loved himself and knew something about.

The business is Bottaro Wood-Fired Pizza, San Diego, California. The home page says in part:

Bottaro Wood Fired Pizza is an oven on wheels and as we like to call it "Pizza A-Go-Go". We also have salads and appetizers and cook all our food on site. You can find us at Street Fairs and Farmers Markets and also cater Private Parties and Events.

We use the freshest, local produce available, make our own sausage and use organic flour from Utah. Your pizza will bake in about 90 seconds in temperatures of 700 to 900 degrees. All your Family and Friends will appreciate the uniqueness of a Wood Burning Oven as we prepare and cook their food using "Old World" techniques right in your backyard or favorite setting.

This sounds like an interesting variation on the mobile oven business.

Adriatic Grill, Tacoma, Washington

What happens when you have find a restaurant that uses a wood-fired oven, but doesn't even let people know about it on its web site? You can only find out about it by chance.

Well, by chance, I saw a review of the Adriatic Grill, Tacoma, Washington in a Tacoma News Tribune on-line review. The review says in part:

Adriatic Grill resides within one of the toughest neighborhoods for upscale dining. I've tried convincing friends that a restaurant near the mall - yes, that mall - serves superb Kobe flat-iron steak, turns out pizza from a wood-fired oven, masters garlicky Bolognese with al dente chewy pull, and doses grilled peaches with sweetened balsamic for dessert.

I looked at the Asiatic Grill's web site, it doesn't say anything about a wood-fired oven. What a shame.

Jimmy's Bar and Oven, Brookline, Massachusetts

Two different reviewers for the Brookline Patch covered Jimmy's Bar and Oven, Brookline, Massachusetts. (Their web site is minimal, but at least says where they are and when they are open, even if it doesn't offer a clue about what you will find there.)

The first review says in part:

He said the restaurant’s trendy atmosphere was inspired by a lower-Manhattan hotspot Barbutto, including its rubber floors, chalkboard walls with handwritten specials, and garage doors in front.

But Hamelburg said they built the place mainly around the giant WoodStone Oven in the kitchen, which he claims is definitely a focal point of the room.

“Will you look at the flame in the back?” Hamelburg exclaims. “It’s the coolest thing ever!”

The second review says in part:

Though Boston might not have the pizza definitude of, say, New York, or Chicago, we know what we like, and we have some dang fine pies to our name. Which brings me to Jimmy's Bar and Oven on Beacon Street, where the 'oven' in the restaurant's name is a Wood Stone model, churning out pizzas from a fire that burns close to a thousand degrees Farenheit. The benefit of that heat appears in the crust: a high baking temperature produces a crispier crust and more even cooking. Jimmy's crust is substantial enough to hold all the toppings, but not so thick that it overshadows the toppings. And, it's crispy all the way through—a rarity, even among some of the best pizza makers.

Sounds like a hot spot worth visiting.

Felicia's Pizza Kitchen, Ardmore, Pennsylvania

My Google Alert brought a patch.com localized review of Felcia's Pizza Kitchen in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

That's the good news. The bad news is they don't have a web site. I did find a few other mentions of them.

• Felicia's Pizza Kitchen - Ardmore-Merion-Wynnewood, PA Patch
• Felicia's Brick Oven Pizza - Ardmore Restaurant - MenuPages Pizza, Sandwiches Restaurant Search
• Felicias Pizza Kitchen - Ardmore, PA

Sounds like an interesting place.

Bricks Wood Fired Pizza, Lombard, Illinois

Once again I have a little time to post in my blog.

This time my Google Alert found a news post from Lombard, IL.

There is a good picture of a pizza and an interview with the owners of Bricks Wood Fired Pizza, Lombard, Illinois. Their oven is apparently a genuine Italian import.

Unlike many wood-fired pizza places I have found, these folks deliver (if you are in their territory of course).

I don't get that way very often, but I might again someday, in which case I'll see if I can make a field report.

Olive Pizza, Minneapolis, Minnesota

While doing some shopping at Midtown Farmers Market in Minneapolis on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011, I spied a tent with the legend "wood-fired pizza" emblazoned on it.

Checking it out I saw a pizza oven built into a trailer, and a crew running a wood-fired oven to make pizza.

This turned out to belong to a business I had not heard about, Olive Pizza, Mobile Wood-Fired Pizza.

Their web site doesn't give a lot of detail about their business. The earliest date currently showing on their calendar is August 27, 2011.

They were selling a variety of pizzas for $7 each. I did not have the opportunity to try one.

I did take a few pictures, but I'm not able to upload them at this point.

I wish them luck. (I can't say I'm impressed by their web site.)

June 28, 2012: I saw that their web site says that they are at the Bloomington Farmers Market, no longer at the Midtown Farmers Market.