BEST PIZZA
Pizza 101 South
Engineering the perfect pizza (and mighty good salad) Having degrees in industrial, mechanical and manufacturing engineering might not be the norm for most restaurant owners, but for Dustin Gerstenschlager, owner of Pizza 101 South on 101 S. Division St. in Bonne Terre, it helped build a second-time winner of Best Pizza. In his other occupation, Gerstenschlager helps launch new, manufactured products: coming up with the design for the manufacturing lines, determining how much work each person does on the line, finding the most cost-effective, efficient way to produce goods. He’s traveled around the world and tried different cuisines in every country he’s visited. So when he decided to move a restaurant into the former Politte’s Key Club Tavern building – which had seen a few different businesses from the time it closed almost 20 years ago — he took three years while renovating to apply his engineering skills in his own kitchen, honing his recipes.
“There are key elements involved in manufacturing anything. With the recipes, I probably approached it more like the manufacturing industry than the restaurant industry,” he said. “I did different recipes, multiple tastings, we went through a number of different methods, got different opinions. I put it all in an Excel spreadsheet and got the data that way. I also put together a matrix of every pizza place in two counties, of everything they make, and prices, and prices per square inch, and that’s how I came up with my prices.” And it’s good data. You can taste it. Gerstenschlager recently shared, for starters, an order of generously-cheesed, World Famous Garlic Cheese bread with Pizza 101’s ultra-rich, thick, meaty red sauce on the side. “Many people order that and a salad for lunch, they love it,” he said. Then came the popular Greek salad, which Gerstenschlager is convinced helped Pizza 101 also become a fi-
The World Famous Garlic Cheese Bread, Greek Salad and Total Package pizza at Pizza 101 South are favorites.
Owner Dustin Gerstenschlager shares his pride in the restaurant he took three years to build. The engineer came up with his own recipes. nalist for Best Salad because it features a particularly fresh Romaine and spinach blend with red onions, black olives, green olives, artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and feta, tossed with the House seasoning and olive oil. It came with the crowdpleaser: the Total Package. This $13 specialty pizza – add $2 for a cauliflower crust – features the incredible red pizza sauce, house-blend cheese, pepperoni, sausage, hamburger, green pepper, red onion, mushroom, black olives and bacon on a thin crust that uses a dough recipe Gerstenschlager created. The dough is a two-day process of letting it rise, slowing the rise, and rolling it into balls that are pressed. “That’s what sets us apart, too, we don’t just come up with our own recipes, we cook
it in a wood-fired, 650-degree oven that takes 90 seconds to cook your pizza,” he said. Other specialty pizzas include Hot Mama, Herbivore, Carnivore, Fly Me to the Moon and the Aloha. Gerstenschlager said he had his arm twisted to include the ham and pineapple pizza, although he admits the wood-fired oven caramelizes the pineapple very nicely. The full menu of pizzas, toppings, pastas, appetizers and Gerstenschlager’s respectable 30-beer list can be found at www.pizza101south.com or on their Facebook page. “I’m also blessed to have an incredible staff working here,” he said. “Paige Prasuhn is my general manager, she’s always moving, Aaron Tripp and Cody Helm my shift managers — I couldn’t do it without them.”
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