Feed the Event Calendar on Our New Website
Wait, did he say there's going to be a Local Food Forum website?
Got an Upcoming Event? Get Some Free Publicity
OK, I’ve been keeping this under my hat, but over the summer I’ve been working with an excellent web developer to create a website to complement the Local Food Forum newsletter. I’ll have the big tell very soon about the launch, the benefits of adding a website to this tiny media empire, and new features we’ll be adding.
But that’s not the point of this post (though I am trying to build anticipation so there’s a virtual line around the block when we launch the site).
The point of the post is that one of the new features is going to be a local food events calendar. If you’re a follower of this newsletter, you know that I regularly post information about events involving people and organizations with whom I work closely, or which I stumble on in my daily web work.
But there are many more events in our community, some of which I find out about, unfortunately, after the fact.
Our readers will have a much more comprehensive view of upcoming events (so they can pick the ones they want to attend) if enough folks send in their info about their events. And I’m gambling here that adding a website to the newsletter will also expand our audience, making the events calendar even more valuable to planners.
I’d love to have a robust events calendar when we launch the new site, hence this heads up. If you have an event coming up, please click below for a form that should take you no more than a minute or two to fill out, and submit it.
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Famed New Jersey Pizzaiolo Talks Local Sourcing
When I attended the first day of the two-day Pizza City Fest on Saturday (August 26), I expected to have my full of some delicious slices of our city’s various pizza styles. Yet as a local food advocate, the most inspiring portion of the afternoon came while listening to one of the leading pizza makers from the New York City area talking about his dedication to sourcing local ingredients.
Dan Richer, second from right in the photo, is owner Razza Pizza Artiginale, which he opened in Jersey City in 2012. He participated in a panel called The Dough Whisperers, which also included (from left) Brian Spangler of Apizza Scholls in Portland, Oregon; Rich Labriola of Labriola, located right here on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile; and Francisco Migoya, chef and co-author of the book Modernist Pizza, who moderated.
Most of the conversation focused on technical aspects of the art of pizza making. But Migoya also asked Richer about his sourcing relationships with farmers in his region. His answer, shown below in its entirety, resonated strongly with me as I’m sure it will with many of you.
I started my college career at Cook College, which is a part of Rutgers University in New Jersey. It's a science and agriculture school. I didn't want to have anything to do with agriculture, but it's the only college I got into, so I went. And I was taking all these core classes about science and agriculture, not paying attention.
But once I got out of college, I knew I wanted to cook and to make pizza. So I started visiting farmers markets. And that's when it kind of clicked for me, I could actually have an intelligent conversation with a farmer because I had this background in agriculture. So for me, it's kind of ingrained in the way that I do things.
We don't work with local farmers because of the farm-to-table movement or anything or because of these buzzwords. We work with them because they're really the real people, and agriculture is very important to every location. It's a really bad thing to have all of our food supply come from one location like California. It's so important to have small farms in every location.
And pizza’s my platform for both discovering the world, but also connecting people, working with cheese makers and artisans, salumi makers, vegetable growers. And it's such an amazing thing that we get to connect with them, because they are the raw materials that we use to build our products. And our product is only as good as theirs.
So by connecting with them, we also have input on what they grow. You know, I've been working with a farmer and tell him these specific varieties of tomatoes that we want them to grow, we'll guarantee that we purchase all of them if they grow them, and they are guaranteed the sale. So having that direct connection is so important.
And it's so rewarding. I've made lifelong friends with some of them. One of the farmers that we that we've been working with, they grew the flowers for my wedding. It's just so special to connect with these people, all through pizza.
And man, they taste better.
Now about Pizza City Fest. The first day of the event, which was the one I attended had… issues. I won’t go into great detail because Block Club Chicago, among others, already have.
The short summary is that Murphy’s Law kicked in at the start: the generators that were supposed to provide electricity to most of the 20 pizza makers participating in the event failed to work for the first two hours. This diluted the advantage to those who had paid extra for the VIP hour at the noon start.
The generators kicked in just when I was going inside for that 2 p.m. panel, and the crowd was still pretty moderate. An hour later, when I stepped back outside, I was greeted with the scene in the photo above. The Salt Shed courtyard venue was packed to capacity, and the long lines to get slices at many booths tended to merge together, making it difficult for people to figure out exactly where they were heading.
Naturally a number of angry customers took to social media to slam the event, and the organizers responded by offering refunds. By all accounts, the Sunday session ran much smoother.
There were some Saturday attendees who said they had such long waits that they only got a couple of slices of pizza. That wasn’t my case, though. Maybe it’s the native New Yorker in me, but lines don’t phase me as much as they do some people. (Hot tip: If you’re at a crowded event that has this kind of confusion, go first to the front of the line you want to be in and then follow it to where it ends. Or get adventurous and try a place with a shorter line.)
In any case, I had eight of the maximum 10 slices to which my press pass entitled me, and God’s honest, I might have exploded if I ate any more. I could have had more, as by the time I left around 5, the lines had gotten much shorter. But it was another lesson that I can’t pack it in as I did in my ravenous youth, which actually is a good thing.
Most importantly, I got to sample two highly touted pizzas from places I’ve yet to visit. The top photo is of a slice of exquisite Neapolitan style from Forno Rosso in the West Loop. Below is the deep dish from aforementioned Labriola, which has a much lighter crust than most deep dishes.
I also was impressed with the tavern-style pizza (pepperoni drizzled with hot honey) from J.B. Alberto’s in Rogers Park, seen in whole pie form in the photo at the top.
Pizza City Fest is a fun concept, and hopefully attending on Sunday was a less fraught experience. Hopefully, the organizers will address what went wrong on Saturday and have a trouble-free event in 2024.