{"id":966,"date":"2012-05-21T12:28:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T16:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fornobravo.com\/pizzaquest\/2012\/05\/21\/the-grand-opening\/"},"modified":"2012-05-21T12:28:11","modified_gmt":"2012-05-21T16:28:11","slug":"the-grand-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fornobravo.com\/pizzaquest\/the-grand-opening\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grand Opening"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Grand Opening of the Public Market, a portent of things to come, we hope!<\/p><\/div>It’s taken me longer than I expected to report on the Grand Opening of the Seventh Street Public Market because this was also graduation week at Johnson & Wales University.\u00a0 I remember last year writing a mushy piece about how much I love seeing the grads marching up to receive their diplomas so I won’t do another tribute other than to say how proud I am of everyone who made it. We had over 1,000 grads at just our campus (there are 4 JWU campuses) and I started thinking how nearly all of the them — about 99% according to the school’s stats — will all be working in the industry by summer’s end or sooner. Hospitality is one industry where hiring still takes place, it’s insatiably looking for talent, and our grads make us proud out there.<\/p>\n

Pure Pizza just before the opening bell! Note the cans of Bianco DiNapoli Tomatoes on the far right!<\/p><\/div>Now, back to last week’s Grand Opening. Yes, it was a wonderful, festival-like day after six months of ramping up preceded by 18 months of fund raising, organizational planning, and building up-fit. We had a great turnout, as you can see from the photo, as hundreds of folks checked out our many vendors.\u00a0 A number of cities have created public markets similar to ours, so I imagine that many of you have places like this to support.\u00a0 I hope so; it’s more than just a place a shop, but also provides a sense of community where like-minded people can support businesses that share the same values as the shoppers. Our Meat & Fish Market, for instance, headed up by Dawn and Michael LaVecchia, not only brings in local, beautiful, and sustainably raised proteins, but also publishes a weekly newsletter that tells the stories of the ranchers and fishermen who all, in their own way with their own products, are like you pizza questers, always searching for the best, artisans in their own right. Michael LaVecchia and I will be appearing on a local NPR show called Charlotte Talks, on Wednesday, the 23rd, on the topic of sustainable seafood, along with a spokesperson from Whole Foods Market, which just made front page news for taking a strong stand against certain fishing practices, refusing to carry fish that hasn’t been caught in a humane fashion.\u00a0 It’s very controversial because it affects the livelihood of a very difficult and tenuous profession, so I’m counting on Michael to give us the small merchant’s perspective — should be a lively hour. Even if you’re not in Charlotte, you can pick it up via live streaming on WFAE.org at 9 AM Eastern time or on the archive podcasts beginning the next day. <\/p>\n

NOT JUST COFFEE features the newest coffee rage, Pour-Over-Drip, made to order.<\/p><\/div>Not Just Coffee, celebrates the craft of being a barista, not just with with latte art and\u00a0 thoughtful blends of premium beans, but with the newly popular pour-over method pictured here. I was impressed by the clarity of the flavors that this technique draws out of the beans, fulfilling a similar goal to what I call the “Baker’s Mission: To evoke the full potential of flavor trapped in the grain.”\u00a0 In San Francisoco, Blue Bottle Coffee has gotten national press for helping to popularize the pour-over method, so I’m glad to see it getting traction here in our town as well.<\/p>\n

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Me and Austin Crum, our head pizzaiolo, demonstrating how to stretch a dough before a hungry audience waiting for samples.<\/p><\/div>And, of course, Pure Pizza had a record day, cranking out pizzas as fast as our team and oven could manage.\u00a0 Our head pizzaiolo, Austin Crum, and I did two demos on the temporary cooking stage (the market will soon be building a permanent stage, replete with brand new equipment and a regular demo schedule — more on that at a later date when it’s official), showing the audience our classic Neapolitan and also our 100% whole grain pizza doughs, made with flour from Lindley Mills. Joe Lindley and his family drove all the way down from Graham, NC (Near Chapel Hill), about 2 1\/2 hours away, to taste, for the first time, these pizzas made with their flour. I especially wanted them to taste the gluten-free pizza that we make with their sprouted ancient grain <\/em>blend (millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, and sorghum), so Austin and I showed everyone that one in our second demo. Lindley Mills, located on the site of a Revolutionary War battlefield, mills the organic line for King Arthur Flour, so many of you are already using their flour without knowing it (we use the King Arthur Organic “Artisan” flour for our classic dough), but the sprouted whole wheat, as well as the ancient grain blend, are milled in small batches at Lindley Mills and, unless you call the mill directly at (336) 376-6190 (hint hint), they are only available to a few select clients. <\/p>\n

The Pure Pizza breakfast special, with local sausage and bacon and 2 sunny side eggs, with the yolk spread over the top.<\/p><\/div>We’ve been having fun at Pure Pizza with a chorizo pizza developed by Austin, using locally made chorizo, cilantro, and topped with a radish slice and lime wedge. His goal was to create a street taco experience on a pizza crust and I think he nailed it. We run out of chorizo nearly every day as this one grows in popularity. We’ve also just started making a breakfast pizza, along the lines of what Brad English blogged about last week, with bacon, sausage, and eggs baked on top. This one is especially popular on Saturday mornings, when we open earlier, but some of us like breakfast all day long so we’re now seeing an upward tick in sales throughout the day. We’ve also been getting some seriously good truffle oil from another Public Market vendor, The House of Olives, which gets drizzled over the top of our wild mushroom pizza after it comes out of the oven. Truffles are intoxicating — the more you taste the more you want.\u00a0 As you can see, we’re enjoying this honeymoon phase of the launch and plan on continuing developing new pizza concepts and see where it leads us. The owners of Pure Pizza (I’m just the consulting partner), Juli Ghazi and Jeff Spry, have been working round the clock, along with our ace team of pizzaiolos, so it was wonderfully affirming to see all the smiles of enjoyment at the tables during the Grand Opening. <\/p>\n

Custom pie with Bosky Farm goat cheese, local wild mushrooms and herbs, and a drizzle of our Secret Sauce.<\/p><\/div>I don’t want to want to hog the spotlight for Pure Pizza when there are so many other excellent pizzerias and pizza trucks out there doing great work, but since I get to blog here on Pizza Quest it’s nice to have a place and a product that I can brag about. Speaking of hog, we even have a Carolina-style pulled pork pizza garnished with our own “secret sauce.”\u00a0 During the Grand Opening we also featured three other sauces, the winners of a recent competition to represent this region at the upcoming DNC (Democratic National Convention), which will be held one block from the Market. So, we offered customers their choice of any sauce while the sauces lasted.\u00a0 Every now and then I’ll post newsy things about Pure Pizza (like new pizza concepts we come up with), but for the real scoop and ongoing news\u00a0 and photos you can “like” Pure Pizza at http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PurePizza <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, when you come to Pure Pizza, do let the team know if you read about them here. And enjoy the Seventh Street Public Market too — the vendors are there from Tuesday through Saturday, but Pure Pizza is also open on Monday (there will soon be two other food vendors joining us there, probably in early June). It’s all so exciting — a wonderful adventure…hope you can make it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s taken me longer than I expected to report on the Grand Opening of the Seventh Street Public Market because this was also graduation week at Johnson & Wales University.\u00a0 I remember last year writing a mushy piece about how much I love seeing the grads marching up to receive their diplomas so I won’t do another tribute other than to say how proud I am of everyone who made…Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":348,"featured_media":960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c44-peters-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Grand Opening - Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fornobravo.com\/pizzaquest\/the-grand-opening\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Grand Opening - 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