Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart

Hi everyone, I’m Peter Reinhart, your Pizza Quest guide, and this is our first ever webisode. We’re going to leave this opening segment on the front page for all newcomers to the site, but please feel free to navigate over to the Webisode page if you really want to catch up on all the webisode segments. We’ll continue posting additional webisodes that will take us to some of the stops…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! Kyle Ahlgren returns with some great news regarding the online baking courses he has created for Central Milling’s Artisan Baking Center. He’s also offering a special discount code for all Pizza Quest viewers and listeners (and your friends). In our conversation, Kyle takes us behind the scenes regarding what it involves to create these terrific baking courses with a number of the best teachers/bakers in…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! This week we welcome six-time James Beard Award finalist, Chef Cathy Whims, owner of Portland’s beloved restaurant, Nostrana. which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. I first met Cathy when she was the chef and co-owner of Portland’s celebrated fine dining Italian restaurant Genoa, where I enjoyed a memorable six-course tasting menu along with the famous bread book author, Carol Field (The Italian Baker). That…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! NYC is a treacherous place to open a new pizzeria.  The competition is fierce and public is vocal and not always diplomatic. But the lure of reaching for holy grail of pizza is hard to resist, and now Chef Ian Coogan, formerly of Eleven Madison Park and the Jean George lineage of great chefs (among other top-tier mentors), and currently the culinary director at the…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! My long time friend, Peter Scott Ruben, is the best guitar player I know, having personally watched him jam with some of the great rock and blues musicians of the seventies (Joe Perry in his pre-Aerosmith days and Kim Simmonds of The Savoy Brown Blues Band are two who immediately come to mind — I just read that Simmonds died two years ago in England…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! Elizabeth Brasch is committed to delivering what she calls, “a higher order of pizza,” at Mellow Mushroom, where she serves as VP of Marketing and Menu Innovation. As anyone who has been to any Mellow Mushroom location knows, the notion of a pizzadelic experience is not at all far-fetched. And, for those who own their brands, this conversation with Elizabeth will be especially enlightening as…Read More…

Welcome Back to Pizza Quest! As you know, our usual focus is on the celebration of artisanship in pizza and anywhere else we find it. But what if the next generation of “artisan” pizza makers are robots? Or is this a non sequitur? Hey, before you shoot the messenger, listen to this revelatory conversation with Nipun Sharma, the CEO of Appetronix, who is about to launch the first fully robotic…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! There’s something special happening in Pukalani, on the island of Maui, where Chef Jeff Scheer and his wife Kaili (along with their trusted friend and restaurant anchor, Chef Chris), are drawing big crowds and James Beard Award attention at their non-touristy, upcountry restaurant, Marlow. It starts with fabulous wood-fired sourdough pizzas (both traditional and inventive) but also, drawing on Jeff’s background as a fine dining chef,  includes duck…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest!  It’s been a while since we’ve caught up with our two most recurring and most popular guests, pizza legends John Arena (Metro Pizza in Las Vegas) and Brian Spangler (Apizza Scholl’s, Portland, OR). Not only have they both been there and done it all, but they are also trusted mentors to many pizza operator newbies and, over these past years on Pizza Quest, have served…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest, Our guests this week are the co-hosts of the popular Pizza Pod Party Podcast, Arthur Bovino and Alfred Schulz. They recently completed their first season of 52 episodes with a star-studded roster of  guests including Mo Rocca, Andrew Zimmern, Tony Dukoupil, Guy Raz (“How I Built This”), Candace Bushnell (yes, who wrote “Sex in the City”), George R.R. Martin (“Game of Thrones,” anyone?), Susan Orlean…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! In this episode, we welcome Brett McKay, the founder of the immensely popular website/newsletter/podcast, The Art of Manliness. For the past fifteen+ years Brett, along with his wife Kate, have been on their own quest to explore every aspect of what it means to be a man — really, a human — at this particular time in history. Their site has clearly struck a chord,…Read More…