Year Of The Pizza

Pizza Hacker Jeff Krupman's Verdict: Unimpressed

During SXSW I met up with Jeff Krupman, better known as The Pizza Hacker, a mobile street vendor in San Francisco who creates artisinal pizzas out of a hacked Weber BBQ.  The “FrankenWeber“, as he dubs it, reaches up to 1000°F, and supposedly creates damn good pizzas.  He emphatically says that he doesn’t do drunk pizza, and only uses the best ingredients like local organic heirloom tomatoes, alderwood smoked salt, etc.

He’s a remarkable guy.  He just figures stuff out and makes it work.  While he loves making pizzas in parks, he hopes to market and sell FrankenWebers all over, and his website mentions a desire to create a high-end tomato sauce.  His entrepreneurial energy allows him to try one thing, see how it plays out, and alter the idea on the fly.  Pizza Hacker indeed.

We’d been exchanging emails for a couple of months, and he said that he always wanted to open a pizza place called Home Slice, and was sorry that they‘d beaten him to the name.  He came to Austin for SXSW as a part of The Startup Bus, where his team created Txtli, a program that allows others to anonymously text you when your car is about to get towed or ticketed or whatever.  It was hard to carve out a time to meet since there was so much going on during SXSW, but we made it work towards the end of the week.

I felt paternally nervous when I took him to Home Slice.  Would he like it?  Find a problem with the sauce?  He’s a pizza maestro, and can knowledgeably dissect every aspect of pizza.  When he found out that Homeslice didn’t use sauce on their margherita, he was initially shocked before he resumed his “when in Rome” attitude.  He’ll give anything a try, so we got a half margherita (with sauce) and half anchovies, artichoke hearts, fried eggplant and garlic.

Sadly, he didn’t like the pizza.  After a meditative bite, he shrugged and politely told me “it’s alright”.  He certainly wasn’t trying to be rude, he was just offering his honest opinion.  My heart sorta sunk, it was like if I had asked him about my granddaughter’s cuteness.  It’s his right, and he certainly knows pizza, but I was still a little bummed.  He was crazy sick (his cough was mind-blowing and chest-shaking), and Erin thinks that might’ve clouded his tastebuds’ ability to appreciate quality, but his taste in other food around Austin seemed pretty spot on.  If anything, his dismissal of Homeslice made me want to try his pizza even more.

During a recent interview with Slice, the granddaddy of pizza blogs, he had this great quote that sums up his philosophical approach to pizza which I feel compelled to reproduce:

I make about $5 an hour (maybe less, I don’t have time to calculate) selling my pizzas for $12 to $18 a pizza. They are truly a labor of love. I mix the dough by hand, pick/can the sauce by hand. Make/transport the oven, etc. I spend more on olive oil or wood per pizza than Domino’s does on ingredients for a whole pie. If you think my pizzas are too expensive, Fuck You! Please enjoy your family farm–killing, exploited illegal immigrant–built, fake cheese–laden, nutritionally void, race-to-the-bottom pizza. You deserve it.

So there you go.  He seemed to really love Austin and talked about maybe coming here semi-permanently to kick the collective ass of the local mobile pizza scene, but I figure such talk is as cheap as it is common during SXSW.  That said, if it does come to fruition, I’ll be first in line.

Cost: $22.50
Total this year: $548

You can't hide from the internet, Rachel. There's too much awesomeness.

Rachel Weidinger is one of my favorite people.  Ensconced at the fascinating intersection of art, nonprofits, food, tech and weirdness in San Francisco, we met when I frolicked in the nonprofit tech scene a few years ago.  She took Erin and I to Burning Man and let us crash with her and her friends at the Burners Without Borders camp.  And one random time she gave me a jar-let of meyer lemon jam, which I sadly finished off just a couple of weeks ago.

I look forward to SXSW partly for the music, but mainly to reconnect to old friends like Rachel.  She got in yesterday, and Erin and I wasted no time taking her to Homeslice.  While waiting for a table we went next door to a party that benefited Falling Whistles, a cool sounding group that helps child soldiers and prisoners in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Then we went back to Homeslice and ordered our food.  Rachel seemed fascinated by our story.  We talked about love and pizza.

I forgot to bring this up last night, but one of my favorite stories about Burning Man (which I experienced courtesy Rachel) regards the psychic pizza delivery service.  One day I got caught in a crazy sandstorm.  So I’m fighting the wind/sand/dust while wearing apocalyptic masks and such, and things finally relent.  I’m walking back to camp, and I see this person Ive never met before carrying this amazing looking pizza.  I asked him where he got it, and he said “here, I made it for you”.

What?

Him: “Yeah, I made it for you.  Psychic pizza delivery service.  You were thinking how good a wood-fired pizza would be right now, right?”

Me: “Uhhhh….yeah….but….”

Him:  “Here you go!  I made it for you because I knew you wanted it”.  He cheerfully have it to me and walked away.  This started an apparently life-long string of gaining free pizza through bizarre circumstances.

We had a lovely bottle of wine, a lovely pizza (roasted red peppers, fried eggplant, basil, fresh mozzarella, artichoke hearts, half green olives and half kalamata olives) and some lovely milk and cookies.  She seemed to enjoy them all.

Rachel gave us some insight on Austin as a SXSW attendee, with parties that sound more fun than they actually are, higher than usual geek density on airplanes to/from Austin and presentations.  Hers is on “Handheld Awesomeness Detectors: Worldchanging Mobile Apps” (Ushahidi, Seafood Watch, etc) today at 5pm.  Go, she’s a funny, goofy speaker.  If you see her around town, bring her a pizza from the psychic pizza delivery service and just walk away, I’m curious what she’ll say.

Cost: $29
Total this year: $525.50

Jesse and Stefanie

After an egregiously long time since our last get together, Erin and I had pizza with Jesse and Stefanie.  They have this peculiar habit of ordering a separate pizza for themselves, insisting that we get two for the four of us.  Jesse is a purest, and likes cheese pizza.  Just cheese.  While I respect his taste, it still confounds me.

Since SXSW loomed a few days away and Jesse has some inside knowledge of the internet and music worlds, I asked Stefanie and Jesse what their plan was for the week, hoping to glean a few tips.  Their response: “batten down the hatches”.  They’re not too big on crowds and madness.

Erin felt adventurous and wanted to get a margherita pizza.  I liked her trailblazing spirit, but worried that the lack of sauce might make successful reheating difficult.  Stefanie suggested that we take a slice and just reheat it in a pan on the stove.  No oil, no oven.  That sounded reasonable enough and I felt like I could use a change of pace, so I agreed, provided that we gussy it up somehow.  So we ordered anchovies for my half and green olives for Erin’s half.

The pizzas came, and ours tasted delicious.  The margherita always tastes saltier to me than the sauced pizzas.  I wonder if the sauce masks the salty taste or they sprinkle garlic salt or something on top.  Either way, I love salty, so I loved the pizza.

As we waited for the check and for our leftovers to be boxed up, our waitress sheepishly returned to our table saying that she’d accidentally dropped our pizzas on the floor.  I was about to remind her of the always-useful five second rule, but she implied that the pizzas were no more.  All of use said it was no biggie, Jesse and Stefanie weren’t supposed to be eating pizza anyway.  But before we could dismiss the apologies, the waitress offered us a free dessert.  I stopped talking and looked around the table with a cocked eyebrow.  No one said much, so I said “Sure!”.  I hadn’t tried their tiramisu, and if they were offering, why not?

Erin semi-jokingly thought I was being a jerk for taking advantage of Homeslice.  I didn’t pay for the pizza in the first place, so how could I expect else?  It was one of those moments where I couldn’t think of a quick comeback because I knew she was right.  I didn’t really care that the leftovers wouldn’t be forthcoming, so why should I further take even more money from ‘Slicey’s pocket?

When the tiramisu came (along with an unordered piece of cheesecake), I apologized and said that I shouldn’t have ordered the dessert.  The waitress would hear none of it.  She said that we’d earned our free pizza by standing with our hand on the sub forever, and should be treated like any other customer.  Have I mentioned lately that Homeslice rules?  Homeslice rules.

Cost: $23.50
Total this year: $496.50

Ben and Graeme

I went to a  high school full of smart kids, but the smartest guy there was Graeme Wood.  He was a couple years ahead of me and editor of the school paper.  Most of my interaction with him was limited to him repeatedly telling me to get my stories in on time.  We were never particularly close friends, but ten years later, I was reading The Atlantic online and saw that he had written the story I was reading.  We became facebook/twitter friends, and when he recently came to Austin for a couple days, we met up for pizza.  Ironically, this happened weeks ago, and just like in high school I’m scrambling to get this late post up without further tardiness.

Graeme went to Deep Springs College, a two-year school with free admission located on a remote farm where the class of a dozen or so students (males only) work the land and their minds.  Some graduates go to Harvard and Oxford, others become commercial fisherman and such.

He ended up becoming a journalist, living and traveling all over.  Cambodia, Central African Republic, Somalia, a whole bunch of quasi-nations, Bangladesh, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.  People think I’m well-traveled, but I have nothing on Graeme.

He brought along his friend Ben, who also used to write for The Atlantic and now lives in Austin.  When we met at Homeslice, we were told the wait would be an hour and forty five minutes.  We decided to tough it out, and I told Clare that I doubted the wait would be that long.

We talked obliquely about travel and food.  Graeme discussed two theories he’d heard about eating in foreign places: eat at establishments with the fewest walls (aka street food) and eat the least appetizing dish to have the most authentic experience.  I asked how anchovies figured into this latter theory, and he countered by saying anchovies are on another level than say….rat…which might be delicious despite societal prejudice against its potential tastiness.

For one who has traveled so widely and has such an adventurous palate, he was pretty adamantly against olives of any sort.  Ben and I quickly backed off.  We did have a hard time choosing toppings.  I have found that the more educated my pizza guests are, the harder time we/they have agreeing on an acceptable topping compromise.  We eventually worked one out, and verily, it was bomb. Ben and Graeme thought it was good, and much better than the jumbo slices they choked down in DC.

As we left, I asked Graeme what he was up to these days, and before he could respond, Ben chimed in with “well, he’s got a film at Sundance”.  You know, as one does.  He wrote a short piece for Good Magazine about harvesting the organs of death row inmates that got animated and became an “official selection” at the Sundance Film Festival:

Graeme’s life seems fascinating.  I wished we had more time, because I feel like I barely scratched the surface of Life As Graeme.  If he shows up in your town, buy him a pizza or maybe a rat, you won’t be disappointed.

Cost: $26.50
Total this year: $473

Welcome to Austin!  SXSW is a crazy bag of silliness, and many visitors are eager to see what Austin has to offer.  Allow me to humbly offer some tips to make your stay a pleasant and gracious one:

Do’s

• Tip well.  Wanna support the local music industry in the live music capital of the world?  Tip.  The downside of an awesome live music scene is that supply far outstrips demand.  So that awesome band rocking your face off one night is slinging you pizzas the next or pedicabbing your ass around town because gigs pay so little.  Lots of folks hold down service industry jobs to get by before they make it big, help keep the dream alive.
• Tell us about that awesome show we don’t know about.  Got a tip about an awesome no-name band or under the radar party?  Fill us in.  We’ll reciprocate by telling you where to get the best breakfast tacos and how to sneak into Stubb’s.
• Look at our eyes, not our nametags or your iPhone.  Hey, I’m up here!  If you’re checking your texts or gauging our importance by our name tag while we’re talking to you , we’re less inclined to want to tell you about those tacos.
• Chat.  We’re friendly.

Don’t’s

• Buy a faux-trashed cowboy hat and wear it attempting to blend in.  This is the equivalent of wearing a black beret in Paris or a conical straw hat around Vietnam.
• Disparage Texas or “flyover country” while standing next to us.  We’re not all Republicans, and we’re not all assholes.  Obama got more votes in Texas than in Illinois.  And regardless of political differences, Texans get along together.  Go to a Willie Nelson show and try to figure out who voted for who.
• Say Austin is “just like (insert-coastal-city-here) but cheaper”.  No, it’s not.  That’s why we live here.

In return for adhering to the above basic rules, lemme fill you in on some of the best things to hear and eat during your stay here.

Food:

• Tacos at Taqueria Star (the orange taco truck at S Congress and Riverside).  Open til 3am or later, Carlos and his family have the best salsa in town.  Both the green and red salsas are creamy, smooth and delicious.  The migas tacos are incredible and only cost $1.50.  Get them on corn and split the heaping of migas into both tortillas to turn one to two.
• Kerbey Lane or Magnolia at 2:15am.  No better place in the world for people watching or pancakes.  The Neptunian landscape at Magnolia fills you up with cheesy, gooey, lemony potatoes for like $4, and Kerbey Lane’s gingerbread pancakes and ginger sesame salad dressing rule the world.
• Fried pickles.  At greasy spoons and bars throughout town.  I don’t understand why this delicious combination of salt, friedness and ranch dressing hasn’t taken over the entire world, but they’re mostly an Austin thing.  Try ’em.
• Sugar Mama’s instead of Hey Cupcake.  While wandering down south congress (which is only called SoCo by asshole real estate developers, btw), the temptation to patronize the cutesy little cupcake trailer will be overwhelming.  Don’t do it!  The cupcakes are dry, bland and expensive.  A few blocks away, Sugar Mama’s makes amazing desserts.  The smores bar rules, and the Marilyn Monroe is the most amazing cupcake you’ll ever try.
• The Snack Bar has an awesome patio, great sangria, and nice snacks.  It’s right in the middle of south congress, and is a great place to grab a drink while listening to their bands and watching the scenesters.
• Gordough’s. Gourmet donuts, mind bending iterations.  Open ’til 2am, right across the street from The Highball.
• Pizza? Perhaps I can suggest a place…I go there sometimes…it’s alright. 😉

Music:

• The Movits! – A Swedish swing-hip hop group.  You won’t be able to understand them or avoid dancing.  Playing at Homeslice’s Music By The Slice.

• Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears – The next superstar to emerge out of Austin, he’s as funky as James Brown with less funky hair.

• Quantic – I’m not really good with remembering names of various kinds of electronic music.  So I’m not sure if he’s up-tempo, dub-step, trip-hop or ambient, but his music straddles the line of being chillable and danceable at the same time.
• The Lonesome Heroes – Their website says “psychedelic country music”, mine says they’re just great.  Grab a lonestar and give ’em a shot.

Lonesome Heroes “Don’t Play to Lose” Music Video from Daniel Stolzman on Vimeo.

• The Saltworth Sundries – Another local band that’s hard to shoehorn into a genre, but I’d say punk-rockabilly with a banjo and trombone.  They jump around a lot, and since no one’s heard of them, you can jump around with them.  They’re playing at The Snack Bar next Saturday.
• See music you usually don’t see.  Don’t fly to Austin to hear the bands that play in your neighborhood all the time.
• In general, my advice is to avoid the big name events unless its your favorite band ever, and pick one area (south congress, red river, etc) and just walk around until something pleases your ear.  When it starts to suck, go next door.  You can run yourself ragged trying to catch that half-set of that band you’ve already seen before, but you’ll be exhausted.

Also, drink lots of free beer, it’s good for the soul.  Check out this meta guide to SXSW food guides for more searching, or just follow your nose to the nearest food truck.  Anything glaring I left out?

Brendan of Big City Mountaineers about to go nuts

A few months ago Russell told me that his friend Brendan was biking across the country to raise money for Big City Mountaineers, a cool organization in Denver dedicated to “enhancing the lives of under-resourced teens through transformative outdoor experiences”.  Brendan finally made it to town Friday and I took him to Homeslice to hear his story.  Russell came along and he saw his friend Bo there, so Bo joined us as well.

Simply put, Brendan is awesome.  He used to work in community journalism, and turned down a well-paying job with his previous boss to accept a low-paying gig with Big City Mountaineers.  He volunteered to take an unpaid leave biking across the country to raise money for BCM to fund future efforts to take kids from the ‘hoods to the woods.

Being around disadvantaged kids has given him a very healthy outlook on life.  The trivial annoyances of life don’t bug him.  We both share an intense love and agreement with the sentiments expressed by Louis C.K. in this video:

Biking 80 or so miles a day makes Brendan insatiably hungry.  He needs to put away 6000 calories a day just to break even.  So I was a little disappointed that he didn’t tear through the pizza with aplomb.  In his defense, he had eaten a meal only two or so hours before. He let me order the toppings even though I tried to defer to him.  Russell and Bo ordered other stuff to not rain on Brendan’s parade.  I ordered a mess of veggies, since I didn’t know how much nutrition the road provided.  He seemed to enjoy the pizza, but only hate about half of it.  The rest he took home, and I assume it will fuel the next leg of his journey.

Erin and I once biked from Seattle to the middle of the Oregon coast.  It was a great trip, but we were both taken aback at our never-ending hunger.  One of the greatest meals of my life was lunch one day along some dunes on the Oregonian coast.  Most of our lunches consisted of bread and dips (hummus, pesto, etc).  One fine day we splurged and got a garlic chicken pizza and devoured it on the dunes before taking a sun-drenched nap.  The last 20 miles of the day seemed like a breeze.

Brendan has it made.  His definition of wealth is being rich enough to pay someone else to make your coffee, a level he has achieved.  He’s biking across the country to help kids experience a new world that will help them conquer their treacherous neighborhoods.  Follow his blog and donate heavily.  If you are rich enough to buy coffee made by someone else, you are rich enough to help Big City Mountaineers change lives.

Cost: $29.50
Total this year: $446.50

The last time we went to Homeslice (last post), we brought home the leftovers and I accidentally ate one of the non-anchovy slices thinking it was mine.  So while Erin thought she had one slice left, she actually had none, as she refuses to touch the fishy ones.  This has happened before, and is not a real Erin-pleaser.  Whereas last year she couldn’t make too much of a stink about it since I earned us free pizza through my efforts alone and some was better than none, this year is a different story.

Erin was still smarting from me eating her leftover slice three days before when we walked into Homeslice.  This time she got broccoli on her half to make it more distinctive from the anchovy half.  Sure enough, as we worked through the leftovers, I only ate the anchovy-laden pieces and avoided her slices.  Also, no fried eggplant!  First time that’s happened with us in a while.  Erin was in the mood for a change of pace.  As we worked our way through the leftovers, I managed to avoid poaching her slices, thus improving our relationship.

Erin and broke an uncharacteristically long Homeslice drought (one whole week!) and dropped by to get back on the right track.

We sat down, and I asked various waitstaff about my ideas for my Live Off Groupon Contest video ideas.  As we were going back and forth, we saw Anneliese and Colin at another table.  We came over to say hi, and it looked like they were eating eggplant subs!  Sadly, the subs turned to be the meatball variety, but we still reminisced about their helping us win the HOES contest.  Anneliese wrote a slew of recommendation letters for me in recent months, so I sent over a slice of cheesecake their way to thank her.  It felt so fun and sneaky to flag a waitress and say “get that table a dessert and put it on my tab”.

Homeslice has new pizza boxes.  I guess it’s to celebrate the opening of More Homeslice next door.  It’s another detail that makes Homeslice shine.  They could’ve kept on with the plain white boxes, but the cute designs show more personality.  It’s all in the details, people!

After we ate our properly delicious pizza and returned home, I used the pizza box to make my Groupon contest entry.  I think my resume shows that I can handle the rigors of the contest just fine, but I admit that other videos are more fancy.  My profile of Groupon business Sushi-A-Go-Go is much better/funnier:

Cost: $30.50
Total this year: $372.00

Pizza Loving Philanthropists Chris Lamprecht and Kerry Fisher

As you may remember, when Haiti got its ass kicked I felt compelled to help out.  So I created the Pizza For Haiti Challenge, which offered a free pizza date at Homeslice to the person who donated the most to Partners In Health, the amazing organization started by Paul Farmer featured in the stunning book Mountains Beyond Mountains.

I only expected to raise about $50 total, but Chris Lamprecht gave $50 right after I tweeted about the event.  Later, Kerry Fisher hit back with $100.  As the contest drew to a close, Chris came back with another $50 donation.  So they both tied with $100 total, and I took both of them to Homeslice to split the winnings.

I asked them why they donated so much through me, and they said they wanted to donate anyway and the pizza bribe gave them a good excuse.  It wasn’t like they wouldn’t have donated anyway, but this helped seal the deal.  I also asked why either one of them didn’t donate one extra dollar to put them over the other Price-Is-Right style, but neither had the desire to crush a competitor based on a negligible amount.

Kerry works in fundraising at UT, so she’s always on the lookout for interesting philanthropic endeavors.  She’s really interesting.  On a whim, Kerry signed up to host a triathlete from New Zealand who was competing in the Austin triathlon.  They had fun together, and she off-handedly told him that if he or his friends ever passed through town again they would have a place to stay.  “Well actually…” he said, thus beginning a period of periodic squatting by various New Zealand triathletes in her home for weeks on end.  It was a great deal.  They pulled her weeds and such, and she took them to the HEB and told them why they shouldn’t be so excited about competing in Des Moines.  She lived in New Zealand for a year after college, and found the country and its citizens lovely.  Which is good, because it sounds like half the country has crashed on her couch.

Upon hearing that Kerry worked at UT, Chris told a story about creating a computer program as a student there called “Class Grabber”.  He figured out a way to ping the registrar’s site many times a second so subscribers could claim an opening in a desired class the second it became available.  He eventually expanded to neighboring schools as well, but the arms race eventually became too much.  It was great to hear him tell the story though, I love tales of young punks outsmarting stodgy institutions.

I bought a pitcher of beer and ate an eggplant sub so Kerry and Chris could enjoy the pizza they earned.  We had a really nice time, I always enjoy watching conversations graduate from stilted to comfortable as beer and pizza get consumed.

Thanks to Jodi, Brian and Jeff for their donations as well.  Even though y’all didn’t win, Haiti won.  Partners in Health is an amazing organization, and the $325 is a little more than the average monthly earnings of five Haitians, so I feel confident that the money can make a difference.

Cost: $26.50
Total this year: $341.50

Pizza is better than moving

It had been too long since Erin and I had taken Jessie and Ryan to pizza, and as luck would have it, Adam was in town as well.  We all met up for pizza one night.

Splitting pizza five ways at Homeslice is hard.  Pizzas come with eight slices, which does not easily divide amongst eight hungry folks.  Choosing toppings is also hard.  Some of us wanted olives and others didn’t and we gently asked if we could get olives on 2/3 of the pizza (along with half pepperoni) and our waitress understandably said no.  We worked it out eventually, it just took some negotiating.  Erin offered to get an Eggplant Sub to make the numbers work better, which turned out to be a win-win situation.

Adam and Jessie are both lawyers, and they talked about the concept of “billable hours”.  It’s weird, being paid by the year doesn’t faze me, but telling me that I have to work 2000 hours seems pretty frightening to me.  Law is a weird little world.

Ryan helped Adam move his stuff from a storage unit in Houston to one in Austin.  Storage units also baffle me.  I totally get their utility, but I hope I never have to rent one.  Paying rent for my stuff seems like a sad way to live upon this planet.  If I have too much stuff for my home, shouldn’t I get rid of it?  In Adam’s case, he’s only temporarily keeping his stuff there until it makes more sense for him to move it to where he lives, but how many storage units start out as temporarily and end up being de facto permanent?  Then again, maybe it’s cheaper than getting a bigger place with more storage.

When Erin and I had a basement, we never went down there and our stuff just weighed on us.  We always felt like we should go through it, fix what needed repairing and give away what we didn’t need, but we never cared enough to actually follow through.  Now Erin and I live in a small apartment with a tiny amount of storage space.  It was hard to pare down our stuff, but it feels nice not having lots of crap that we never use.

On a similar note, I am very reluctant to throw out old pizza.  I can get a fresh pizza any time I want, but I can’t bring myself to throw out leftover pizza unless it’s over two weeks old.  So I eat old pizza instead of visiting ‘Slicey.  Well, I shouldn’t say “instead of”.  But I go less often than I could, if that’s any consolation to the Homeslice owners.

Cost: $27.50
Total this year: $315