Jim Lahey Pontificates on Pizza

Posted by Adam Kuban, October 21, 2009 at 3:55 PM

Jim Lahey, stretching dough

Noted no-knead breadman and Co. Company founder Jim Lahey discourses on pizza as he sees it (even lapsing into the third person) on The Atlantic Food Channel:

I sought to open Co., to create this organic place. What I mean is, I don't ask my kitchen staff to manipulate ingredients to fit some pre-exisiting ideal of how a pizza should look. We don't place each piece of cheese perfectly on a pie--where it lands, it lands. Our menu tells guests: "Our Pies are Not Always Round." It's a joke but it isn't. People expect pies to be round. They expect each slice to have 3.5 pieces of pepperoni. I'll never serve what people think is a pepperoni pie....
Forcing a pizza, or anything, to fit into a perfectly round circle takes away from the pleasure of cooking. It compromises the integrity of the ingredients. While my roots are in Italy and the Roman and Neapolitan styles have influenced me greatly, that's not what I want Co. to be. My pies are my bread. Co. is Jim Lahey's version of the modern day global pizza parlor, not a modern day Italian pizza restaurant. But as Co. grows and I grow to create a full cyclical menu with seasonal pies, I think the guests of Co. will begin to understand what we are.

[Hat tip to Daniel Z.]

Co. Company

230 Ninth Avenue, New York NY 10001 (at West 24th Street; map)
212-243-1105; co-pane.com

6 Comments Favorite this! (1)

Tags: Atlantic Food Channel, Co., Company, Jim Lahey

6 Comments:

nice Jim!
that's how i make pizza.
do you need any hourly help?

davidcharlesross1 at 6:18PM on 10/21/09

I like Jim's global pizza philosophy. It opens up the pies to so many possibilities. And from what I've seen he hasn't let those possibilities get out of hand.

Ciao,

Paulie Gee

pauliegee at 7:36PM on 10/21/09

Soooooo this was his response to "Jim, we've noticed your pizzas are rather inconsistent when you aren't around, why is that?"

Prairie at 9:38PM on 10/21/09

For SOME reason i tried to copy and paste a comment i wrote about the cheese on Co. pizzas a while ago
BUT i can't go further than just a while back
SO what i said SPECIFICALLY was that i believe jim puts the cheese on in a sort of Dada-esque manner...meaning wherever it falls, it falls.
i'm glad i was right here!!!! he agreed with me :)
Gianluca
http://www.pizzaandcoffee.com/

nextgospel at 9:48PM on 10/21/09

If I was his partner, I wouldn't allow him to talk to the press ever! Put him in the kitchen, next to the oven.

captpizza at 8:56AM on 10/22/09

Interesting interview...
I recently wrote my own review of Co.
The restaurant is pretty similar to its pizza - super ingredients and passion for purity... but rough around the edges.
See it at: http://demianrepucci.com/2009/10/16/co-pizza-tradition-in-modernist-clothing/

Demian Repucci at 11:23AM on 10/22/09

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