I have a new TV obsession. I’m going to give you a string of emojis to see if you can guess what it is…

👨‍🍳🍕😭👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🌼😭🌱🌅😭

I’m sure it’s completely clear to you that the show is Chef’s Table: Pizza on Netflix. I’m a sucker for cooking shows and as I’m recently learning, anything that showcases someone finding what they’re passionate about and telling the story of how they got to where they are. (Don’t get me started on Drive To Survive, the F1 racing series!) This is neither, exactly. Or maybe it’s better to say it’s all that and more. At first glance, it seems like a show about pizza, but very quickly in the first episode, you realize it’s even more so about love, belonging, starting over, disappointing people, hard work, passion, sickness, family, balance, vision, fame…

Each episode follows a chef and tells the story of what led them to become known for ground-breaking pizza-making. That alone would be interesting enough for me, but the show is full of stunning and creative videography, captivating music, poetic language, and vulnerable interviews. If you wondered why there are so many crying emojis in my clue, it’s because I have been moved to tears repeatedly through the series. Each chef is a dynamic, passionate person who has walked through the highest highs and the lowest lows and talks about it all candidly. I love the high value the show places on family, although it’s not a show appropriate for children to watch. (Cussing, smoking, talk of drug use)

Chris Bianco, Phoenix

“…remade the game…”

“the Yoda of the pizza oven…”

“the greatest pizza maker in America”

Are you intrigued? I was immediately fascinated. I’m not going to tell you Chris’ whole story because, believe me, you’ll get a lot more out of hearing it from him, but my goal with this blog series is to inspire you to 1. make better pizza and 2. find what you were made to do and do it well. I’m on my own journey of learning what my purpose is and how to do the work I was made to do, but that’s another blog for another time. Back to Chris: he’s a husky-voiced, wild-haired, tender-hearted New Yorker who dropped out of high school, disappointed his parents, and went on to unimaginable success. There’s a lot that happened in between each of those commas, though. When he talks about his decision to leave New York, he said, “I just wanted a place or a purpose. I guess I needed just to go somewhere where if I landed and you didn’t know anything else, would you choose me? Would I be welcome?” Doesn’t that make your heart squeeze?

Chris says that pizza is “worth doing right.” What makes his pizza extraordinary is his passion to use the best ingredients straight from the people who produce them. Chef’s Table shows him walking in wheat fields, running his hands through freshly milled wheat, feeding goats, picking cucumbers, shopping in a farm market- all in Arizona- as well as mixing dough by hand, making fresh mozzarella, and squeezing tomatoes for sauce by hand. People would start lining up at 10 am outside his restaurant (which didn’t open til 5 pm), and food critics from all over the country would come to try his food. The pressure on him was enormous.

“The more success I had, the more I feared disappointing people. 1000 people tell me something positive, and I only hear the 1 negative.”

On top of the toll that kind of pressure can take, his long time asthma, aggravated by years of wood-fire smoke and airborne wheat flour caused his doctor to tell him if he didn’t stop making pizza, he was going to die. Chris had to ask himself, “what can I do differently?” I’m going to leave Chris’ story right there and I encourage you to watch this series and really pay attention for the nuggets of wisdom and beauty to be found. Watch all the way to the end…the last scene of Chris watching the Arizona sunset, talking about gratitude took my breath away.

If we had watched this show a few years ago, I don’t think I would have been brave enough to take on next level pizza-making, but I’ve been making bread and cinnamon rolls for a while now and I felt comfortable enough to give it a shot. I’m going to attempt a pizza from each episode on our newly instated monthly family pizza nights. This time I recreated Pizzeria Bianco’s Rosa- topped with red onion, fresh rosemary, and pistachios. Various contributors to the show described it in a voice-over as Chris makes the pizza like this:

“The Rosa pizza is sorta fragrant, singed…it tastes and smells like the desert. I had never had a pizza like that.”

“It came out of Chris’ mind and it came out of Arizona.”

Did I even have a choice?? I made Guy Fieri’s pizza dough recipe and after reading this blog →https://pinchofyum.com/life-changing-fried-pizzas, I knew that’s how I should prepare the crusts for our first pizza night. We went to the farmer’s market for the guys to pick out toppings for their pizza, and we were off!

My pizza/Rosa recreation

I will never forget how Brian reacted when he first tasted this pizza. His eyes got wide as he took a big bite and then he said, “Wow. Wow. That gets a double wow. It tastes like Christmas!” This flavor combination is so unbelievably delicious and unexpected, and that was without the red onion. I can’t believe I forgot the red onion! Don’t be scared of the fried dough, it’s light and crispy and not greasy in the slightest. It cooks so quickly, it doesn’t absorb much oil.

Brian’s pizza

Look at that work of art 😍 This unusual combination was also inspired by Chef’s Table, but it’s from a later episode and we’ll get there later! We all loved the sweet/savory/crispy/melty contrasts. The recipe originally called for a blue cheese dressing drizzle, which Brian opted against, but he wants to try that next time.

Ashton’s pizza

Ashton’s favorite pizza is Hawaiian, so we did an elevated take. It was delicious!

Chef’s Table Bucket List

I want to go to each place mentioned in this series, so here are the bucket list items added this month:

• Pizzeria Bianco (Phoenix, Arizona)
• Mike’s Deli (the Bronx)
• Tratto (Phoenix, Arizona)

I hope you enjoy our pizza journey! Are there any flavor combinations you’d like us to try?