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MAKING A $100 RESOLUTION

How do you get your pizza shop featured on the local news? Try charging $100 for a pie. It worked for DTown Pizzeria in West Hollywood, California. Nestled inside a popular Vietnamese eatery called Phorage, DTown Pizzeria specializes in savory Detroit-style pies, such as the Oaxacan Guey, featuring chorizo sausage, Oaxacan string cheese, pickled onions and jalapeños, and the sauce-free Haole (AKA Not Hawaiian), topped with bacon jam, charred pineapple and pickled jalapeños. But the star of the menu is the Resolution, which won the Best Pan/Detroit-Style Pizza category at the International Pizza Competition in Las Vegas. What makes the Resolution worth $100? In addition to classic Wisconsin brick cheese, it’s piled with highpriced A5 Japanese Wagyu beef, plus pickled onions, scallions and a generous drizzle of homemade black truffle oil. The pizza is then baked to crispy perfection in traditional Detroit-style blue steel pans. KTLA reporter Robert Puente gave it a taste in late October and raved about it, noting that it “satisfied every single taste bud.”

Biggest Is Best

Just how many pizza slicers built for giants have you seen around the globe? Probably not many, but the one in front of The Greathouse of Pizza (GHOP), located in Casey, Illinois, can outslice them all and will likely end up in the Guinness World Records. Owner Trent Groothuis filed an application in 2020 to get his 8’-long wheel pizza cutter certified by Guinness. “We actually heard back, and we do have the world’s largest slicer, but we need to get it professionally measured and send in a lot of paperwork to make it official,” Groothuis says. With a blade circumference of 31½” and a handle length of 61½”, the slicer sits in front of GHOP’s brick-andmortar store, beckoning hungry locals and curious travelers alike to try out the family-owned pizzeria’s Chicago-style fare. GHOP also boasts nearly 20,000 followers on Facebook, a remarkably high number for a single-location independent pizza restaurant.

Mike’s Hot Honey started out of a pizzeria in Brooklyn 11 years ago when its signature sweet-heat combo launched a best-selling menu item. From pizza and chicken to dessert and cocktails, Mike’s Hot Honey elevates any dish from ordinary to extraordinary. Request a sample today to see what all the buzz is about.

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DOMINO’S GIVES AWAY COMPETITORS’ GIFT CARDS

Domino’s might be the last company you’d expect to promote its competitors, but the chain did exactly that when franchisees in five U.S. cities stuffed $50 gift cards from other local restaurants in their delivery boxes in November. In the campaign, Domino’s touted its support for independent restaurateurs who struggle with third-party delivery fees. To encourage its customers to order from these restaurants without using a third-party app, Domino’s purchased and gave away 2,600 gift cards. One of the beneficiaries: Grammy’s Goodies in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, which serves pizza and other Italian food. “Our franchisees benefit from being part of a brand that has operations and technology built for delivery,” said Russell Weiner, Domino’s chief operating officer. “However, many small restaurants don’t have a system for delivery. Meanwhile, third-party delivery apps are charging local eateries high fees to deliver, which are taking away much of their earnings.” A Domino’s video about the campaign concluded with a forceful message: “High delivery app fees hurt customers and local restaurant owners. Help your local restaurants thrive by ordering directly from them.”

ALEX, I’LL TAKE TUTTA BELLA COCKTAILS FOR $12

The answer is: Tutta Bella. Neapolitan Pizzeria introduced this new specialty cocktail to raise funds for the Movember Foundation. Now, if you’ve ever watched Jeopardy!, you know you’ve got to phrase your response in the form of a question: “What is The Trebek?” As part of an ongoing tradition, Seattlebased Tutta Bella, which has multiple locations in Washington State, created a limited-time cocktail in November and donated $1 of each sale to the Movember Foundation, a nonprofit focused on men’s health issues. The Trebek paid homage to late, great Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek. It was made with Old Forester Kentucky Straight Bourbon, Clear Creek Pear Brandy, honey-ginger syrup, lemon juice and ginger beer. The drink was offered for $12 at all Tutta Bella locations until November 30. Previous cocktails have honored mustache-sporting icons like Groucho Marx and Freddy Mercury. Founded in Seattle in 2004, Tutta Bella was the Northwest’s first Neapolitan pizzeria to be certified by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. One of its Seattle locations also received a visit from President Biden in February 2020—on Presidents Day, no less.

For Elves Only

Will Ferrell’s title character in Elf may have discovered “the world’s best cup of coffee,” but he never tried the world’s greatest food—pizza. If only he could have made a trip to Tony Boloney’s, with five locations in New Jersey, where owner Mike Hauke created a Christmas-themed pie with Buddy the Elf in mind. In a December cross-promotion with Slice, the online ordering platform for independent pizzerias, Hauke built the North Pole Pizza on a crust of chocolateinfused spaghetti and mozzarella, then added a sauce made with melted chocolate, maple syrup, and peanut butter and jelly. For the toppings, Hauke piled it high with treats like crushed candy canes, mini-marshmallows, M&Ms, chocolate chips, candy sprinkles and Lucky Charms. The pizza could only be ordered for a limited time through Slice, although it was also made available for shipping around the country by Goldbelly.

How To Make Pizza History

It’s not easy to make history in a culinary tradition that’s already thousands of years old. But Alessio Lacco, co-owner of the Atlanta Pizza Truck in Atlanta, did just that when his mobile operation became the first to receive certification from the AVPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) in December. Lacco and his wife, Sofia Arango, sell their authentic Neapolitan pies out of a blue 1982 Ape Car, a three-wheeler mounted with a wood-burning oven. Before moving to the U.S., Lacco trained under master pizzaiolo Gaetano Esposito in Naples and studied with the AVPN to learn the rules of Neapolitan pizza. “I knew that, on the other side of the ocean, I would need an endorsement like the one offered by the AVPN brand—and so it was,” Lacco recalls. He opened his first AVPN-certified shop in Dallas in 2013 and launched the Atlanta Pizza Truck in late 2020. “Americans are rightly concerned with quality and compliance with the rules,” he notes. “If you come to their house to offer an iconic product like Neapolitan pizza, they want it to follow all the [requirements].”