In Dallas, a passion for pizza
(By KIM PIERCE - courtesy of The Dallas Morning News)
Pizza is happening in and around Dallas, and I’m not talking those cheap, cheesy manhole covers. No, the pizza that’s all the buzz echoes the kind of pizza you find in Italy, with lots of attention to the crust and the keep-it-simple approach to toppings — terrific handmade mozzarella, the best tomatoes, only fresh basil and no dried oregano.

Pizzaiolo Jay Jerrier leads the pack with Cane Rosso, which opened to instant crowds in Deep Ellum in February. Its blazing wood-fired oven cooks each pizza in 90 seconds, and getting just the right char without burning the pie takes a nimble hand.

Read the full article click... HERE.

From Cherry Little Village, CO

On the Wine Trail in Italy
One Upon a Time (again) in America
Thursday, December 03, 2009

One never knows what a day will bring on the wine trail. Yesterday started out with a snow flurry in the morning followed by a lunch with my wine men's group in a local restaurant. The food was good, but I managed to get in an off-kilter mood by looking at the wine list....

Click on the image for the complete story of: On the Wine Trail in Italy

Fadi's Brick Oven Flatbread
By Robb Walsh in Robblog
Thursday, Feb. 5 2009 @ 7:42AM

When you walk in the front door of the new Fadi's Mediterranean restaurant in West Houston, you are looking into the business end of a gorgeous Renato pizza oven. And Fadi's doesn't even make pizza. The new state-of-the-art Fadi's, which is located in the Shadowbriar Shopping Center on Westheimer just east of Dairy-Ashford, uses the wood-burning brick oven to turn out a constant supply of hot flatbread. Although "flatbread" is something of a misnomer in this case since the dough rounds balloon up after a few minutes on the hot bricks and actually look more like pillows when they come out of the oven. But the point of the pizza oven is to turn out a top quality pita that's extra crispy on the outside crust and wonderfully soft and bready in the middle--sort of like a great pizza.

The shiny new Fadi's offers the same buffet line of Middle Eastern dips, salads, and hot dishes found in the other restaurants. The desserts here are stellar, try the bird's nest stuffed with honeyed walnuts and pistachios. This Fadi's location also has an enormous stainless steel chicken rotisserie that's visible from the street. There is also a sign for a drive-through lane, although it isn't open yet. I am thinking drive-through roasted chicken and pizza oven pita is an idea whose time has come.

Robb Walsh

Pizza 101 Class at Liberty Market.

David Traina, executive chef and co-owner of Liberty Market... Nearly three months after launching regular Espresso 101 classes, Liberty Market has unveiled its latest class, Pizza 101. The first session was held from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. today at the downtown Gilbert market.
Click on the image  for details on the Pizza 101 Class at Liberty Market.

Plano Profile Magazine
Click on Cover for article on the Urban Crust.

Click HERE to see all of Renato's Favorite Restaurants including Urban Crust.

Home Design Magazine
Click on the images for a larger view.
Cover and Inside images!

According to Paper City Magazine, Houston-Dallas, Texas (USA) Renatos ovens are:
"THE PORSCHE TURBO-CHARGE OF THE WOODBURNING BRICKOVENS!!!..."

Troy Aikman, ex Dallas Cowboy Super Bowl winning Quarterback, and Sport Personality Star...
"THE MICHELANGELO OF THE BRICK PIZZA OVENS"

Man. Fire. Meat.

That may be why I was so intrigued with "Il Forno," the ceramic, wood-fired oven used by the chefs at The Garlic restaurant in New Smyrna Beach. I was drawn to its warmth on a recent rainy visit, but became enamored of the ways of the Brotherhood as the chefs, my husband, and restaurant owner Jeff Gehris engaged in a deep, methodological study of the cooking practices on this wood-fired oven.

"The comment we get the most is 'Oh, this is a pizza oven.' Wood ovens aren't just for pizza anymore," he says.

Il Forno has an Italian lineage -- it was forged by Renatos of Texas, whose founder, Renato Riccio of Tuscany, Italy, considers it his calling to bring this style of cooking to America.

The prices for the commercial wood-burning ovens range from $10,700 to about $16,484. Groebner says that Europeans consider this style of cooking the only way to cook a steak.
However, the oven isn't just for meat. Fish is seared on cedar oak planks. Brie cheese is blanketed in puff pastry and baked. Chops, chicken and vegetables also explode with flavor when they exit Il Forno and enter your mouth.

I sampled a tomato that had been kissed by the flames of Il Forno... a simple dish that delighted with the heat of a thousand suns bursting from the juices.

"Delicioso!" I think. My eyes roll toward the heavens, my mouth refuses to open to let anything interfere with this experience. I nod my head vigorously.

While Il Forno could probably make a shoe delicious, it's meat that is displayed front and center to entice customers to worship at the oven's feet.

"The meat's incredible," Perri whispers reverently. "It's a beautiful thing."

Chef Francesco Farris entertains
at home, too.

By Paige Phelps
8:21 PM CDT on Saturday, April 12, 2008

Word to the wise: If Francesco Farris asks you to dinner at his 1940s Bluffview bungalow, say yes, cancel everything and get there as fast as you can.

When it comes to entertaining, Mr. Farris, executive chef at Arcodoro & Pomodoro in Dallas, does not cut corners. His impromptu, everyday dinners are legendary. And on a perfect Monday night in early spring, with birds in the trees and the temperature hitting 80 degrees, Mr. Farris, a native Sardinian, lit his cigarette, let it dangle from his mouth and began cooking for his handful of guests.

The menu this night? Nothing short of a masterpiece: penne pasta with mushrooms sautéed with basil and rosemary; tender, grilled Berkshire pork chops; New Zealand snapper grilled inside a shell of sea salt; a caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella; and, of course, his pizza, prepared with a secret Farris sauce and homemade dough, and fired with mesquite and oak woods inside his handmade brick Renato Oven. The oven was made by Italian craftsman Renato Riccio in Garland, and it's the same brand of oven that is used at the restaurant. The oven can reach 700 F and, at that heat, it only takes a few minutes for the pizza to reach perfection: slightly charred on the bottom, but still soft and gooey on top.

It is Mr. Farris' pride and joy, this oven.

"Renato built the shell but everything else is with my hands," Mr. Farris says of his concrete and mud oven stand, the centerpiece of his back yard. "I mixed the mud together with some gold -- that's real gold by the way, real gold paint," he says with a laugh.

But if you think Mr. Farris is just putting on a show for guests, you're wrong, says Matt Ruibal, who owns Ruibal's Plants of Texas and who is one of Mr. Farris' guests this evening.

Photos by WILLIAM DESHAZER Staff Photographer Pizza, chicken and other dishes cooked outdoors await guests at chef Francesco Farris' home.

"I'll come out to landscape and he'll have opened a bottle of wine and then later it's 'now it's time to eat,' and he'll have pasta and steaks. And if you try to leave he says, 'No, one more [glass], stay, stay, stay,' " Mr. Ruibal says.

No wonder Mr. Farris has such an affinity for his friend the gardener, for Mr. Farris grows his own artichokes, sunflowers and tomatoes along with marjoram, rosemary and thyme.

But his favorite is the myrtle he grows; he takes the berries and leaves and creates a traditional Sardinian after-dinner liqueur called mirto.

Myrtle is a very important herb in the Mediterranean, he explains.

For Mr. Farris, casual after-work dinners with five-star menus come naturally.

"I don't work because I have to work, I work because I like to work," he says.

With the laid-back atmosphere at a Farris party, there's only one rule of the house: Absolutely no one may touch or taste the food before it is finished and ready to be served, which is really no problem since guests usually gather at the outdoor tables, smoke, laugh and drink copious amounts of vino.

If it sounds like a grand life, it is. Mr. Farris believes this is what he was born to do -- host and cook and make people happy. In fact, he says, it's a matter of genetics.

"You don't become a chef, you're born a chef," he says.

CHEF FARRIS' RESTAURANTS
Arcodoro & Pomodoro,
2708 Routh St.,
Dallas Texas
214-871-1924
www.arcodoro.com

ACHT Asian Catering Article

junk in, junk out
Speaking of the latest rend in Pizza ovens...
Read the article by clicking on the image.