Walking into Famous Hakki Pizza, I was skeptical. However, the slice ($2) was good. The tomato sauce was well-balanced with a mild tang, and not at all inundated with an excessive array of herbs (which I've never really liked anyway). The cheese almost melted into the sauce, but its mild flavor stood out and nicely complemented the tomato. A little heavier cheese-to-sauce ratio would've been welcome. More
You may know the U.S. Pizza Team as one of two* pizza organizations that represent the U.S. in pizza competitions throughout the world, cooking pizzas and tossing dough in the hopes of taking home awards for the Red, White, and Blue. This pizza competition scene has sort of existed on the fringes, though, with exposure coming in spurts every now and then when pizza-tossing gets picked up by blogs and goes viral. Anyway, could the fact that the U.S. Pizza Team will be marching in the 2010 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade mean that the activity is finally breaking into... More
If you're asking yourself, "Who is the pizza guy in the Visa commercial?" you're not alone. Since Visa started airing the commercial again about a month ago, I've seen a spike in keyword searches coming from Google, where people are looking to ID the pizza-tosser. As we've pointed out before, his name is Juan Hermosillo, and he's a member of the United States Pizza Team, which describes itself as "a group of pizza-makers and dough acrobats whose goal is to bring the world's attention to the talent and camaraderie of the pizza industry." Mr. Hermosillo works for Canadian chain... More
If you missed Pizza: The Movie last week on the Documentary Channel—or, if you're like me and don't have the channel—the folks there have put the movie online in its entirety. Clocking in at more than an hour, it's a long one. So grab some slices, sit back, and enjoy. A warning: If you're looking for pizza history or some really in-depth info about the most-renown names in the pizza world, there's only a little bit of that in this doc (quick interviews with Dom DeMarco, Chris Bianco, and the late Ed LaDou). It focuses mainly on the world... More
While trying to advance their understanding of tiny motors, researchers at the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory of Monash University cracked the physics behind pizza-tossing. Researcher James Friend tells PhysOrg.com: The dough spins just like the rotor spins because the chef tosses the rotor just like the motor does; the differences between the two are just really in the details. Turns out no one had apparently thought about how to really toss pizza, either, so that became a bigger part of what we looked at with this, and when we found that experts tossed pizza exactly as the theory said they should... More
In a Q&A in the New York Times, the paper's advertising columnist answers reader questions. One question: Who is that wonderful pizza man in the Visa commercial? I love the commercial every time I see it.I have to admit that I'm not sure I would want to eat a pizza that has run over his back and down his arm. But oh, I sure like to watch that sexy guy. The short answer: Juan Hermosillo, who works for Pizza Pizza in Ontario. Now you know where he works; maybe you can watch him in person. Related Pizza-Tossing Antics ...... More
"I mean, sure, Colt Seavers could drive the hell out of that truck, but do you think he was actually the one fixing busted axles?" Two Fridays ago. Ed here is like, "Adam, have you heard of this place Pizzeria Del Corso? I saw it mentioned in a story in the Daily News last week about pizza-tossing. The pizza-tossing didn't catch my eye, but the pizzeria did." I guess I had seen that story but had only focused on the Dom DeMarco angle. (Yeah, you know me, right?) And who can blame me? The rest of it was about pizza-tossing.... More
You: A hot, shapely Italian number that I can place my burning wood in. Me: An eager young pizzaiolo used to playing with fire. I've played around most of my life; now looking to settle down with the right oven. In the San Francisco Bay Area, champion pizza-maker Tony Gemignani hopes to open a wood-burning pizzeria with an oven worthy of his talent, according to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Gemignani, long known in the pizza world for his pizza-spinning techniques (he's been called "the Michael Jordan of pizza-tossing"), got tired of dough acrobatics a couple years ago... More
