FROM THE EDITOR
C O N T R I B U TO R S
Zach Bauman
PHOTOGRAPHER
Most of our pizza feature was shot by Zach Bauman, one of the city’s most prolific food photographers. Zach, a dedicated pizza geek, also helped our team pick the spots included.
Anna Petrow
PHOTOGRAPHER
One other photo in the pizza feature comes from Anna Petrow, also an established KC food photographer. Petrow’s moody shots of St. Louis pizza were snapped while sampling pies with her pro-Provel husband, who wrote the piece.
Lauren Fox WRITER
This month’s profile of an Irish singer from Lawrence was written by Lauren Fox, a Notre Dame grad who is the second most-Irish writer on our masthead.
12
KANSAS CITY MARCH 2022
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOANNA GORHAM
E
very Sunday—rain or shine or whiteout blizzard from Hateful Eight—I make pizzas in my backyard. It’s a tradition I started during the pandemic, but it’s also something I grew up with. Every Sunday, my mom would have three dough balls covered in olive oil sitting out to rise on browned and battered aluminum pans. It goes back further than that. I’m a quarter Calabrian and my father grew up in Brier Hill, the Italian neighborhood in Youngstown, Ohio. As a boy, he would take my grandmother’s pies (like others in the neighborhood, she made a distinctive red-topped style with peppers boiled in Sunday sauce and just a sprinkle of Romano) down the block to the wood-fired community pizza oven. All of that is a long way of saying, with apologies to cousin Mike, this issue isn’t just business for me—it’s personal. I’m extremely passionate about pizza. I’ve made pilgrimages to many of the nation’s best, from Patsy’s of Harlem to Frank Pepe’s in New Haven, Buddy’s in Detroit, Flour + Water in San Francisco and Cosa Buona in LA. I lived by Bianco, Apizza Scholls and Ken’s Artisan, and I’m blessed to get a little feedback on my backyard pies from Ken Forkish’s recipe tester/copyeditor. So trust me when I say: Kansas City is currently having a pizza renaissance. When we started working on this issue, I had a conversation with Zach Bauman, the trusty local photographer who shot this month’s pizza package. Zach is a fellow pizza geek and Ooni owner. “I’m surprised you’re doing this—is Kansas City’s pizza game strong enough?” he said to me. So Zach and I started talking about our long list, which includes a lot of new places. We both came away marveling at all the great new pizza projects in the city— like the pie from the Devoured pop-up’s Jhy Coulter on our cover (page 62). I ate that pizza (literally, the one in the photo) and, as someone who makes pies every Sunday, left humbled. Watching Coulter effortlessly and intuitively work her dough before firing that pie in a consumer pizza oven like my own, and then tasting the result, showed me just how far I am from greatness. After a few days of quiet reflection on my inadequacies, I have recommitted myself to the cause—for my grandmother, for my daughter. As I said, we are witnessing a renaissance in KC pizza. No matter what style of pizza you prefer, and no matter how high your standards, there’s now a pie in this city that’s Martin Cizmar EDITOR IN CHIEF going to leave you dazzled. We’re excited to MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM play consigliere starting on page 48.
