Happy Pizza Day, y'all!
Easy, cheesy and super greasy comes the news this Friday
Happy Pizza Day everybody, hope you had or plan to land a slice of your favorite pie today. (Maybe leave a comment with your favorite slice??)
I ran by Rendezvous Pizza for a slice with the 405 diningscape’s No. 1 pizza lover, Rob Crissinger. Rob, a veteran communications specialist, music enthusiast and generally good dude, is no pizza cultist. When say he’s a pizza lover, it’s not hyperbole, and Wednesday’s story will prove it.
Friday marked the fourth time Rob and I have met over pie since last September? The pizza tour we’ve embarked upon shows no signs of slowing, so come Feb. 14 the first installment of this ongoing Pizzabout will slide into inboxes.
On Friday, we met up at Rendezvous again to re-up on pizza, and make sweet, sweet social media. By luck we, ran into general manager Jennifer Reardon and chef Klaudya Barcenas beforehand. I know those two from the three spectacular years of El Toro Chino in Norman.
More details about them and the New York- and Detroit-style pizzas they serve on Wednesday, but I can tell you when it comes to non-pizza items the wings are outstanding and the Pepperoni Rolls are fantastic. On our first trip back in September, the Pepperoni Rolls had just been added to the menu. We agreed they were good, but by Friday’s return everything had changed. They’d gone from good to good gracious in just a few months. Klaudya told us she was dissatisfied with aspects of the previous iteration she solved by turning to the Detroit dough for help.
“That solved everything,” she told us. “They didn’t believe me, but when they tasted it they were blown away.”
Now they’re like perfect little cinnamon roll-shaped pepperoni pastries we found difficult to stop eating. We also caught a little breaking news from Jen Reardon who insisted we come back when they begin release their new Chicago-style thin crust pizza. Yep, it’s a thing. It’s due at Rendezvous locations next month.
If you’ve got friends who worship pizza, now is a good time to share the Food Dood Feed with them. Rob and I will not only be going on Pizzabout around Oklahoma, but we’ll be sharing tips for making pizza, heating it up and even dressing up those frozen Red Barons.
All of that is due Wednesday, but it won’t be the only pizza news to land in the 405 diningscape that day. Also on Hump Day, chef Jeff Chanchaleune will announce his menu for the just-announced collaboration with East Side Pizza House.
The current James Beard Award semifinalist, who’s been nominated twice before, will reach into his culinary bag of tricks to present a pair of pies plus a salad starting at 5 p.m. next Friday. The pies will be available until 8 p.m., unless they sell out earlier. (They will.)
Chanchaleune isn’t the only chef doing a pizza smash-up next week. Chef Zack Walters of Sedalia’s Oyster and Seafood will collaborate with Fair Weather Friend Beer and Pizza on Friday, too. Walters will bring the seafood game that earned Sedalia’s a place on Bon Appetit’s Top 24 New Restaurants in America last summer. Expect baked clams, fresh oysters, pozole, a Po Boy, and fried chicken with caviar to go along with the beer and pies from FWF. That service runs 2 to 8 p.m., so there will be plenty of time to enjoy both.
Keep your inboxes close by this weekend. Tomorrow, I’ll share images from a trip to Tulsa this week that includes visits to NATV, Et Al and Bar Serra along with news about a brand change coming next month and a primer for how to handle a week that includes Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras and Valentine’s Day.
On Sunday, look for a Foggy Bottom Breakdown of the latest news in the ongoing Swadley’s Bar-B-Q/Foggy Bottom Kitchen scandal. Three indictments were handed down, but when the Attorney General’s Office announced them it did not address what I consider the single most fundamental question about the case. I began looking into the case in July of 2021 and have seen about every public record available and talked to everyone with knowledge about it and the courage to speak up between then and the time the Oklahoma Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency announced laid out its concerns about the deal on March 31, 2022.