Etna Slice House Oven Upgrade + Charlie Reviews Spak
How important is the oven to pizza making? Plus Charlie goes into deep detail about what makes Spak Bros pizza so great.
The pizza oven is the power house of the pizza enterprise. Much like the mighty mitochondria that generates the energy for the cell’s biochemical reactions. Things like turning food into energy to power the rest of the body. Critical, important stuff. You need mitochondria to accomplish anything in the human body, much like you need an oven to make pizza.
Among all the processes involved in making pizza, it all culminates in the oven. The cheese, dough, sauce go into the oven as three separate entities and emerge as a new fully-formed being. A true, hot and steamy pizza. The alchemy that happens in the oven is astounding. Some applied heat, careful rotations and a keen eye generates a product that surpasses the sum of its parts. At the turn of the century this would be considered dark magic. I’m sure early pizza makers were jailed and run out of town for creating such incredible thought provoking ovals. You used fire to do what?
Ever since Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to humans, harnessing the power of heat to create has allowed us to advance. No where is this more evident than pizza. It was the invention of the gas ovens in the 1940’s that brought about NY Style pizza that we know today. As pizza shops moved away from the hot coal fired ovens, the gas let them make pizza at a lower temperature which gave birth to slice shops and the classic pizza shops in NYC.
The type of oven gives way to entirely different archetypes of pizza. Look at a wood fired pizza compared to gas and coal and you’re looking at three different pizza species.Being a good pizza shop means understanding the nuance of your oven, the hot spots, the cold spots, and how to use its idiosyncrasies to your advantage to create a saucy, masterpiece that even gods would want to dine on.
With all this said, it was very exciting to hear that Massimo at the Etna Slice House was getting a brand new oven for the Etna Slice House. The pizza shop in the same spot prior to Etna Slice House, Pie Hole Pizza, had trouble creating consistent pizzas due to an oven that wasn’t very cooperative. Unable to tame the wild horse, Pie Hole Pizza had to close up shop. The oven sat in an empty building waiting for someone brave enough to break the oven of its way. That person would be Massimo.
Massimo opened Etna Slice House and was immediately serving up high quality pizza in a region that was ready for a curated, artisan pizza. Even though Etna Slice House was able to put out great pizza, the oven wasn’t ideal. With the upgraded ovens I reached out to Massimo to hear from him how this will impact the business. Basically - a great thing is about to be greater.
The new ovens will allow them to make incredible pizza every single time. Whether they’re busy, on a slow day, during the Super Bowl. It won’t matter, you’re going to have a much more consistent pizza experience.
“Every time somebody comes in, I want them to have the best pizza, like the first time they had it, the second time they had it, and hopefully not the last time they had it, have it,” Massimo said. “We just want to produce the same quality p pizza. so you know when you come in, you're getting the getting exactly what you paid for.”
This new oven also gives them the opportunity to experiment with different menu items, cook dough at different temperatures, a variety of bakes. This means a wide variety of pizza with different crispiness, softness, and chew. Additionally, the new ovens have a steamer function so they will be messing around with bread.
“It really opens our our horizons of what we can produce in such a small space and bring to the public, you know, a higher quality product then your average football pizza,” Massimo said about the opportunity ahead. “We're really like an artisan style pizza and we want to bring out that true quality and flavor to the to the public here.”
With the new ovens up and running, be sure to check out Etna Slice House to taste the next evolution of their pizza.
Charlie Reviews Spak Bros Pizza
Almost every Friday our family ends up at Spak Bros for pizza, ranch dressing and French fries. Any time we ask Charlie what she wants to eat she suggests Spak Bros. Recently while I was in NYC our car broke down in front of Spak Bros and Christa and Charlie hung out in the shop as they waited for help. The staff was very helpful to them, supplying shelter and water, and even offered Charlie a job working in the kitchen.
Charlie still talks about what her life would be like if she accepted that offer. “I’d be making French fries right now!” she says.
Spak is a cherished institution in our house, but I wanted to get Charlie on record describing what exactly it is she likes about Spak. Here is the interview below where Charlie breaks down exactly what Spak does to create the perfect pizza.
Wow has the last few weeks been insane for anyone else? Seems like the end of this year is getting suck down the drain at a rapid pace. At least we got some pizza to keep us warm in these cold times. It was cold but it wasn’t cold enough.
Thanks and pizza ya later!
-Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist