Jump to navigation Jump to search “California pizza” redirects here. New York and Italian piza crust with toppings from the California cuisine cooking style.
Luigi Too, a traditional New York-style pizzeria in Mountain View, California. By 1980, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse and its head chef, Jeremiah Tower, had already invented California cuisine, a combination of French and Italian techniques and presentation with fresh local ingredient-focused flavors. After traveling to Italy, Waters decided to make an open kitchen featuring a Tomasso’s-style pizza oven the focus of the new cafe she was opening above her main dining room. Although prepared classically, her chefs added exotic fine ingredients to their single-serving pizzas and calzones, such as goat cheese and duck sausage. Wolfgang Puck, in 1980 and 1981, was preparing to open the restaurant that would make him famous, Spago, in West Hollywood, California.
Initially conceived as a pizzeria, Spago’s was modeled after the upstairs cafe at Chez Panisse. Among their most famous invention was “Jewish pizza”, a pizza dough first cooked then topped with smoked salmon, crème fraîche, capers, and dill. He brought them many of Spago’s recipes, which he had carefully saved. The new restaurant borrowed the concept of open kitchens centered around wood-burning pizza ovens from Spago, but instead of exotic gourmet ingredients, it used innovative but simpler comfort food toppings. Both Wolfgang Puck and California Pizza Kitchen were instrumental in turning California-style pizza from a gourmet food trend to a mass consumer food product. Both introduced frozen pizzas, but after an early success Puck’s supermarket lines were overtaken by CPK’s, which are backed by Kraft foods. Celebrity chefs transform Las Vegas dining scene”.
Guru of Gourmet:Pizza innovator still has tricks up his sleeve”. Tommaso’s Restaurant – A Brief History”. Pizza Taking On an International Flair”. 101 Reasons We’re America’s Culinary Mecca”. American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza.
Pie Fight:California Pizza Kitchen’s frozen fare bucks Puck”. All models were 18 years of age or older at the time of depiction. This site is rated with RTA label. Parents, you can easily block access to this site. Please read this page for more informations.