First impression: Definitely a place for people serious about wine! Sleek, contemporary interior. Breezy, comfortable outdoor seating.

Waitstaff: Pleasant and accommodating. (Note: We were fortunate enough to meet a staff member who was extremely knowledgeable about wine. She was able to suggest alternative selections based on the wines we had enjoyed in the past. Her choice for the table was exceptional.)

Wine list: Extensive!

Cuisine: Mediterranean with some interesting twists.

Group choices: (We zeroed in on the desserts.) Melon wrapped in prosciutto (refreshingly light); chocolate-raspberry tart (rich, but not as decadent as it sounds); nutella panini (very unusual and not as sweet as one would expect).

Most unusual menu item: Fried egg and grilled cheese BLT.

Overall impression: Must go back. Awed by the quality of the wine, but couldn’t do justice to the chef’s efforts. We were simply too full! More research required.

More info: Press’s Website or 704.370.3006

~ Sue Bartlett

Location: 118 W. Fifth St.

First impression: Could have been in Dublin! Had the look and feel of an Irish pub. A place to have a rollicking good time. Big tables, sturdy enough for a rugby team.

Waitstaff: Very friendly. Eager to explain the small-plate concept.

Wine list: 25 bottles for $25! Some unusual vintners, but usual varietals. Has craft beers.

Cuisine: British Isles and northern European. Hearty fare. Rich sauces. Small-plate-sized entree items. Food with a man in mind.

Group choices: Fried artichoke hearts (battered and deep fried); sauteed wild mushrooms in a Marsala, cream and rosemary sauce (excellent); old-school meatballs in a tomato basil sauce (satisfied the meat lovers among us); flatbread with duck confit, Brie, apricot preserves, rosemary and a splash of Balsamic vinegar (unusual combination that was tasty but not as “ducky” as we were expecting).

Most unusual menu item: Fried sage leaves with sea salt and garlic sauce.

Overall impression: Fear of starvation totally erased from our minds! Would be a great place to spend a chilly, fall evening with enough friends to sample everything.

More info: Dandelion Market Charlotte or 704.333.7989

~ Sue Bartlett

Next, there was an Andalusian tavern owner whose guests also had a thirst for the lovely, sweet sherry, but who had to fight off the flies for the right to drink it. In fear of losing his paying customers to the freeloading flies, the host devised a way to protect the sherry. He covered each glass with a slice of bread. Problem solved – no more fruit flies.

The grateful guests adored the absence of the flies, loved the deliciously sweet sherry, but needed a little something to nibble on. All they had was the plain, dry bread. So, the innovative host plopped a few pieces of cured ham on top of the bread. And the guests returned night after night. Soon, other establishments, seeing the first guy’s success, began doing likewise. The original idea was tweaked and embellished, the “Joy of Cooking” cookbook says, and each tavern developed its own specialty. Soon, it became fashionable to move from tavern to tavern, drinking sherry and sampling the various tapas (Spanish for “topper”). And, ¡olé! A whole new way to dine was born and Plato was proved to be correct – necessity is the mother of invention.

Fast-forward to present-day Uptown Charlotte, where many restaurants are still being inventive. Although there isn’t a lot of sherry consumed here on an average night – and, with windows and air conditioning, fruit flies aren’t a huge issue – some necessities still require a tapas-like solution.

Necessity No. 1: What to eat. Say you and five friends are meeting for dinner. Two of you have a taste for something Asian and exotic. One of you wants something meaty. Two others are totally vegetarian. The last of you simply doesn’t know what she wants but she’s watching her figure anyway. This situation could result in either a knock-down, drag-out fistfight or in a stalemate that ends with a bowl of cereal and a beer back at the house.

Necessity No. 2: The “I wish I had what he’s having” syndrome. Be honest – you know what I’m talking about. You’ve studied the menu, considered the choices, consulted the waiter and, when all is said and done, the dish the guy to the left ordered always looks better.

Necessity No. 3: So many restaurants, so little time. Charlotte is blessed by a wealth of very fine restaurants, all of which have beautiful menus and exceptional wine lists. Life is short and waistlines grow. You need a way to experience all of it without looking like the Michelin Man.
Invention: The evolved tapa, better known as the small plate!

Small plates are a collection of hot or cold appetizers that make up a snack or a full-fledged meal. And, if the number of new restaurants in Uptown that serve tapas is any indication, their popularity is growing. What began as cured meat on a slice of bread has been, in truly American fashion, adapted to fit an ever-increasing range of cuisines. Some inventive chefs are even taking their most popular entrees, adjusting the size of the portions and serving them as small plates. The appetizer, or starter, is no longer the warmup act for the main performance. It has become a star in its own right.

Although you can find small-plate restaurants practically anywhere, they seem to thrive best in areas where the residents consider walking half the joy of living there – just like Uptown Charlotte. Strolling from place to place and enjoying the sights and sounds as day turns to evening creates an atmosphere all its own. And a walk between courses has the added advantage of working off a few calories before the next glass of wine and small plate.

An obvious question arises whenever the word “small” is used in relation to food. Will I go home hungry? Can a person with a normal appetite actually be satisfied by a tapas-style meal? There are theoretical answers to these questions, but who needs theories. We want facts. And so, with the aide of a few friends, I did some research. On two separate occasions, we ate our way through five small-plate restaurants, each with very different styles. And, like all good researchers, we kept notes:

Evening One/Stop One: The Wooden Vine

Location: 231 N. Tryon St.

First impression: Lives up to its name. Beautiful, handcrafted wood. Owner-designed, with arty interior. Warm and intimate. Street-side seating.

Waitstaff: Friendly. Knowledgeable. Suggested pairings for dishes.

Wine list: Intriguingly unusual, multinational collection.

Cuisine: Mediterranean.

Group choices: Bruschetta (excellent); five-item cheese and charcuterie board (hard to pick just five items!); pesto and goat cheese tartlet (creamy and delicious, with a puff pastry crust and components perfectly in proportion to one another).

Most unusual menu item: Dill Havarti veggie pizza.

Overall impression: The perfect beginning! Dishes were light, but satisfying. Appetite piqued for next stop.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

~ Sue Bartlett

Every chef, to one extent or another, is on a mission – mostly to feed people tasty food, to make them happy. But in recent times a number of chefs have realized they can have a greater impact and do something fulfilling for themselves as well as for those around them, and maybe even for the planet.

Johnson & Wales University, as well as other culinary schools, is an incubator for training the next generation of socially responsible chefs. But, in order to become one, it helps to have met one. Two faculty members at JWU, Robert Brener and Paul Malcolm (though all the instructors at JWU are on board with them) have taken on the challenge of modeling how to make a difference in the world for their students by heading up two major green initiatives at the school. One is the development of a community garden to provide some of the food cooked at the school, and the other is an important supporting project for the garden – a composting program that converts kitchen scraps into a high-potency natural fertilizer.
Uptown Magazine sat down with the chefs to find out more about what’s behind all the extra work they’ve taken on. Here’s what they had to say:

Uptown: You both have pretty full schedules – teaching, culinary coaching and team competitions, and families. Why did you take on such big projects as composting and community gardening? What’s the fire in your belly that’s compelling you to take this on?

Robert Brener: My passion, and I think it’s true for Paul, as well, comes from the desire to make a difference.  We hope to create a better world for our young children ¬ Paul’s kids, Griffin, Rory, and Jillian, and my son, Nathan.  Teaching in the College of Culinary Arts allows us to make an impact on an eager audience comprised of future leaders.  To me, that’s pretty compelling in itself!

Uptown: What was the biggest challenge in getting these projects off the ground? How did you get your colleagues and the university to support you on this?

Paul Malcolm: For the composting, we recycled 5-gallon buckets from the baking and pastry labs for two years and ran a successful composting program. During those two years we proved that we could also make it work in our culinary labs.  We remove 140 pounds of green matter from eight culinary labs every week.  What makes it work is that we run it through the combined efforts of our entire community of students and faculty.  During that time there certainly were those who posed serious questions of practicality and wondered about acceptance by the student body, as well as the faculty.  What we learned, though, was that both groups – students and faculty – not only were intrigued, but wanted to do everything they could to make it a lasting, sustainable project for our campus.
Brener: The challenges were many. Trying to create a beautiful garden has enough obstacles in the best of circumstances, but we’re growing our garden on top of a concrete slab, next to the train tracks, in a gravel parking lot.  We have no water source on site yet, and we started with no funding. But we have established a sustainable water system by creating planters that preserve water for the plants, we’ve held fundraisers, and applied for and just received a state grant.  Our greatest hurdle, however, is misconception.  Many do not understand the word “sustainable.”  Really, what we are simply trying to do is raise a heightened awareness of the world, our world.  After all, we rely on the earth for everything, not just for good food.

Uptown: These are pilot projects run at a culinary school. What do you think the implications are for those working in restaurants and food service businesses? How feasible are they and, in a larger sense, what are you modeling in terms of the ethical responsibilities of working chefs and even householders?
Brener: I worked in Munich, Germany, where sustainable waste management has been in the kitchen for decades, and I also lived and worked in Ireland, where most foods were local.  I recall having to let our duck sit overnight before butchery to allow the meat to relax, and our amuse of lemon-essence goat cheese being delivered that day from three miles down the road.  That’s fresh, local and sustainable. That’s the kind of vision that chefs can bring to a community and it’s exciting to be a link in that chain. So now, it’s important to enroll the next generation of culinary professionals into carrying it deeper into their communities.

Malcolm: I grew up in Colorado, working in restaurants since I was 12.  Eating locally grown foods became a reality for me when the many kitchens that I worked in were frequented by local foragers on a regular basis.  The flavors and variety were so much better than the commercial products provided by our vendors.  Later, I moved to Vermont to attend New England Culinary Institute and the lifestyle of the Vermonters was incredibly appealing.  If we didn’t know where it came from, we usually didn’t eat it.  Since moving to Charlotte, I’ve assisted with several farm to fork dinners, some of them held right in the fields where the produce was grown.  So next, Bobby and I plan to incorporate the gardens into all of the culinary labs and are currently working with the other colleges at Johnson & Wales to use the garden as a community learning environment, utilizing the ideas created by Chef Alice Waters in her Edible School Yard program in Berkeley, California.

Uptown: If others want to follow in your footsteps, how can they get the help and information they need to get the ball rolling?

Brener: Anyone interested in getting involved should contact either me or Paul, or contact Mecklenburg County Solid Waste Management.

Uptown: Is this just the tip of the iceberg? What future initiatives do you see coming in terms of stewardship and green activities from the culinary community? What still needs to be done to make a difference, both locally and globally?

Brener: Uptown is, for us, just the beginning of the project. We hope to develop internships and apprenticeships on local farms in addition to establishing a presence at local community gardens and farmers markets.  Education and awareness are our most important goals, so we intend to conduct workshops and provide green management assistance to community gardens who might be interested.  I’m also the adviser to our student organization known as The Co-op.  It is a co-op style group that has been the driving force behind the project.  They have just completed a very successful inaugural year culminating in their green symposium entitled, “Gastro Green: Sustainability in the Food Service Industry.”  We hope to continue programs like this and to reach out to Charlotte uptown in the city’s efforts to establish itself as a green energy center.  There are many misconceptions about our project.   If there is one statement that conveys our message, it’s that little things can make a difference, for sure, but a life change is also necessary to make a real difference.

To help or get more information about these projects at Johnson and Wales contact 
Robert Brenner or Paul Malcolm

~ Peter Reinhart

Grateful Growers Farm, which owns and operates Harvest Moon, is famous for humanely raising its own pigs and for having some of the best pork in the universe, so I was surprised when Cassie Parsons, one of the farm’s founders and head chef of The Harvest Moon Grille, steered me away from a pork dish and toward a steak and mushroom quesadilla.
“It’s the best item on the menu today,” she encouraged.

The menu of the moment doesn’t always match the menu on the website due to constant changes and what looks best at the farmers markets that particular week or day.
It’s hard enough to find someone who actually looks at you when you order your food, let alone takes the time to shake your hand and describe where your food came from, so I was already falling in love with this cart. When she’s not working the grill inside the cart, Parsons is out front with a warm smile, greeting every customer that comes to the window. So, while a young chef named Adam manned the grill, Cassie explained where and how my food had been grown. She told me that culinary students who work for her visit local farmers markets, help pick out the food, and participate in deciding what they’re going to make that week.

“One of the best parts of the cart is the connection it creates for students, who are able to experience the simple joy of finding good products and sharing them with the community through our cart,” Parsons said.

A sticker on the bumper of the truck that pulls the cart reads, “No farm, no food.”  It was just a simple bumper sticker, but loaded with implications. Like any other business, the cart has to make money by selling a product; this cart offers more than a simple meal. Everything has been grown or sourced with care, and then cooked with the same respect. According to Parsons, the animals are never pumped with drugs or made to eat things unnatural to them. Vegetables and other produce used in the Grille’s menu are kept far away from chemicals or pesticides while being grown. The food you get from the cart essentially comes straight from the earth to your plate, or, as Parsons puts it, “No middle man necessary.”

My steak and mushroom quesadilla was handed to me in a small white box. The powerful aroma jabbed me in the face as I opened the box, with a woodsy scent from the mushrooms perfuming the seasoned steak. The melted cheese enrobed what Parsons described as, “top round that has been brined for three days, then braised slowly.” Along with the mushrooms and caramelized onions, the ingredients blended together between two golden-brown tortilla shells – an olfactory bomb that tasted as good as it smelled.
Is this food trying to make a statement?

“Just because we work in the middle of the city doesn’t mean farm-fresh food should be out of reach,” Parsons said.

Over coffee it became evident that Cassie Parsons is the type of person who gives you a genuine smile and looks into your eyes when she talks. She is confident, but not boastful, and is comfortable in her own skin. She speaks with passion and conviction and clearly loves her job. But this wasn’t always the case. She moved to Charlotte 14 years ago and worked as a chef at a high-end steak restaurant, but, she soon realized she wasn’t satisfied with the quality of food it was serving. It didn’t take long for her to see how rising food costs caused compromises in quality at most restaurants. She decided she didn’t want to be a part of this cycle anymore so she started her own organic garden to grow produce she could sell to local chefs. While many of her friends thought it was a beautiful idea, the chefs didn’t bite. Organic products weren’t yet mainstream, and the extra cost couldn’t be justified.

She decided she had to keep fighting, especially because of her concern about the relentless loss of farmland. According to Parsons, in the past 19 years more than half of North Carolina’s farmland, 9 million acres, has been paved over. The idea of the Grateful Growers Farm had been gestating in the back of Parson’s mind for a number of years.
“All I wanted to do was make really great food, eat well, and provide for my friends.”

She grabbed hold of that simple concept and ran with it. After a lot of hard work she eventually got a grant from an organization that seemed thrilled by her innovativeness. Parsons had cleared the first obstacle, and with her partner, Natalie Veres, was able to start Grateful Growers. And thus, the 10-acre farm they now enjoy, in Lincoln County, was born in December 2004.
In addition to the hogs they’re famous for, they also raise close to 500 ducks a year, as well as a handful of chickens and turkeys for personal use. They also grow about 40 pounds of shiitake mushrooms annually. In addition to Peres and Parsons, the staff on the farm includes one part-time employee helping with farm work, a part-time bookkeeper, a part-time sales associate, and several volunteers who staff the tables at farmers markets.

After a few years of selling their farm-raised pork, chicken and other products to chefs and farmers market patrons, they decided, during the summer of 2009, to create The Harvest Moon Grille. From Monday through Thursday, just a walk away from anywhere in uptown, they cook and serve organic food, sourced from more than a dozen farms and local businesses. Parsons is delighted with the response, especially because The Harvest Moon Grille runs well with only one full-time and four part-time employees. She told me, “This little cart has created a true connection between the growers, the guests who get to enjoy their products, and the employees.”

In so doing, The Harvest Moon Grille has unintentionally become a symbol of possibility in Charlotte’s streets, stirring up the tastebuds, and perhaps the imaginations, of everyday consumers, offering farm-fresh meals in a city environment. As our cities grow ever taller, businesses such as The Harvest Moon Grille remind us that we all started with the soil. “No farm, no food.” Indeed.

~ Emily Jones

Harvest Moon Grille
11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
Tuesday and Thursday in Uptown Charlotte at Trade and Tryon Streets next to the Bank of America building.
Monday and Wednesday, in uptown Charlotte at the Gateway Village (901 W. Trade St.) across from the Doubletree Hotel
Check its website regularly for menu updates:

Nothing went as planned.  Nothing was as expected.  Nothing could have been better. I suddenly wanted these people to like me more than I ever did my peers in high school, which is the kingdom of the unknown where the land is ruled by wanting to be liked and the currency is nervousness.  I had had the captain of the basketball team wrapped around my finger, but these guys turned me to mush.  I felt like a bird without feathers, naked and vulnerable.  To top things off, I knew nothing.  I didn’t even really care for most pizza.  Yet, I was to become a pizzaiola at Pie Town, Charlotte’s first “artisan” pizzeria, and I was terrified.

The problems began before I arrived.  What does a pizzaiola wear?  This was the least of my problems, as I also didn’t know how to make dough or bake a pizza.  As much as I would like to say that I prepared extensively by learning everything I could, I didn’t. I was going in blind.  I ate pizza for lunch that day, hoping to get in the mindset.  This later proved to be a detriment, as the pizza was soon flowing and I was already nearing my saturation point.

This adventure had begun when I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the kitchen of Pie Town.  Peter Reinhart, renowned baker and pizza expert, had traveled the world in search of the perfect pizza. As a result, Reinhart teamed with primary owner Pierre Bader on Pie Town. Reinhart is the executive pizzaiolo and consulting partner.
Pie Town’s professional pizzaiolos would teach me their ways so that I, too, could become a pizzaiola, or at least take one step down the path to perfection.  They enticed me with the promise of learning their secrets.  Normally, I would tell you that I play hard to get, but let’s be honest, I said yes before all the details were even finalized.  The staff’s T-shirts ask, “Could this be the best pizza in the world?”  I was ready to find out.

I arrived at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon.  My only knowledge of restaurant kitchens came from “Kitchen Confidential,” by Anthony Bourdain.  He paints a descriptive picture of a kitchen as a brutal environment, filled with ex-cons and chaos – not a place for a young suburban co-ed.  After a round of formal introductions, the cooks went about their work of barbecuing chicken and slicing prosciutto, listening to my battery of questions but remaining a little distant.  As this was a new experience for everyone – my first time in a kitchen and their first time showing the ropes to an outsider – no one knew how to act.

We began by making dough.  Not just any dough of course, but a dough that is capable of creating “a crust that has balanced but complex flavors and a texture that contains both a crisp and smoky snap and a creamy texture inside the puffy edge,” as the menu touts.  I was quickly enrolled in Pizza 101.  We went over the precise ratio of water, flour and mixing.  My first lecture was a brief history of pizza and the differences among varieties.

I don’t know whether I proved myself by being an active listener or if they simply got tired of having a follower, but I was soon given an apron and cap and became part of the in crowd. I was a professional – or at least I looked like one.  It was the easiest initiation I had ever been a part of: no embarrassment, no pain. I helped slice pig jowl, a big hunk of creamy fat with some meat hidden inside, and immediately showed my amateur status by holding the meat with elongated fingers.  In a tone mixed with urgency, distress (he probably didn’t want any blood squirting into his bacon) and respect for a near-stranger, Austin Krum, the head of the Pie Town kitchen, explained that it would behoove me to hold the pig jowl with curled fingers curled and rounded knuckles.  “You wouldn’t want to lose a fingertip!”  I got the point and we made some delicious guanciale, cured bacon, from that jowl (not the belly, the source of regular bacon).

We then moved onto the true nuggets of pizza gold, the dough balls.  As my compatriots in white churned out ball after ball, I struggled to have any control over my pieces.  As dough quickly swam through their hands, it somehow got stuck in mine.  Each pizzaiolo offered his special tip.  Unfortunately, their three strategies did not meld into one perfect hybrid, but I did at least earn passing marks.  With so many hands, this task was quickly over, with all of the dough converted into pizza dough balls.  All that was left was to wait with baited breath for the diners to join us and order a pizza pie.

Most of the duties had been completed by this point, a classic case of hurry up and wait.  Conversation began to flow as we waited for the first customers of the evening.  The manager, bartender, wait staff – everyone – came into the kitchen to chat during this downtime.  Just like at a dinner party, everyone congregated in the kitchen.  Anecdotes were shared as we began to get to know one another. People shared stories about their past lives as culinary students or bulk food distributors. I was even able to add my two cents about my expertise in ice cream (see the September 2009 issue of Uptown for my ice cream initiation).  Food’s greatest strength was at work again – bringing people together.  These strangers suddenly began to become friends.

Like a medieval ball, I had been chained to Austin for the evening.  He had been at Pie Town since day one and had an amazing ability to move everyone forward; he was a team captain, not a dictator.  Chris Reinhart, Peter’s nephew, was the first to offer me a sample slice, so I liked him immediately.  I quickly realized this was no special treatment as I soon had whole pizzas coming my way, but he made a good first impression.  Gino was the new guy, despite being the oldest, at about 45.  He had been in the pizza business since he was 18, but wanted something new and extraordinary, so, he headed to Pie Town.  Gino took me under his wing as we manned the pizzas for the rest of night.  I knew it would be a fun night when Gino joked, “Now, that is G-I-N…” to ensure I spelled his name correctly in his Uptown debut.  These men were true pizza freaks, eating pizza nearly every day of the week, even on their days off.
At first I practiced with dough left over from the day before, waste dough. I was not yet trusted with the good stuff.  I felt like I was trying to entice a jellyfish to reshape itself.  Flour on my hands was key, in the right proportion. This wasn’t a case of more is better.  The dough was in a smooth half-dome about the circumference of a CD and a couple of inches thick.  I started in the middle, pressing down the dough with the pads of my fingertips, working my way to the edges.  The crust was to be as thin as four or five pieces of paper, but strong enough to hold all the goodies.  Meanwhile, what a layman (myself mere hours before) would refer to as the crust edge, the often-rejected bit, could be thicker.  In the world of artisan pizzas, the crust edge is the cornicione, and is the star of the show.

Just when I thought I was getting a handle on the finger pressing, it was time to move onto the next step.  Again, the three competing styles of each pizzaiolo showed their faces.  Austin told me to use my middle knuckles while I interpreted Gino’s method of choice as using the flat sides of his fingernails.  Gino told me, “Gravity is your friend,” while softly stretching the dough as long as the table still supported some of it.  At the same time, Austin encouraged me to free the dough of any outside support. Chris had his own tricks. I fused all of the styles to craft a new creature that at least appeared pizza-like in the end.  Toppings and sauce were the easy part.  A dollop of sauce in the middle was spiraled out with the bottom of a ladle.  Adding cheese, if you want to be efficient, is a two-handed endeavor.

The oven demands your respect.  It is the centerpiece of the kitchen, taking up most of the room and easily making its presence known by its constant heat.  The gas-fired brick oven kept a constant temperature of about 800 degrees.  With only a couple of feet between the oven and the production space, the back of my neck was treading the line between hot and uncomfortable.  My eyes burned as I kept a constant watch on the pizzas, but I could not tear them away from the cheese that boiled like rolling ocean waves.  Mere seconds were the difference between done and overdone.

A long-handled wooden board, a pizza peel, was used to transfer the pizzas from the assembly area to the oven and from the oven to the plate.  It took a delicate shimmy of the wrist to smoothly slide the pizza into the oven.  At this I proved to be a natural.  It may seem like a minor detail of the process, but without the proper transfer a pizza could be lost.  The outer edges of the oven are drastically warmer than the center, so the pizzas had to be rotated every 30 seconds to cook evenly.  This is done with a different peel – one that has a smaller metal disk at its head.

At last, mission accomplished: I made a pizza of customer quality!  From dough to finishing salt, I had a hand in every step of the process.  More important, I was proud to be a part of the operation.

Guests at Pie Town are welcomed back into the kitchen to see the process and ask questions.  They had no idea it was my first day, that I was just a visitor like them. By the end of the night, “Reinhart” (Chris and I were now on an informal footing) was taking pictures of me spinning dough in the air.  The rigidity of measurements and protocols had been replaced by laughter and fun.

As we were saying our goodbyes, I mentioned that this wasn’t at all the experience I had been expecting; it had far exceeded my expectations.  First off, I wasn’t planning on staying for nearly seven hours.  Secondly, I wasn’t expecting their kindness or patience.  And finally, I wasn’t expecting the calm and quiet of people working hard at what they do best.  Austin, the pizza guru, responded, “You exceeded our expectations too.”

As I reflected on these words, I realized that maybe they weren’t looking forward to my arrival, and now I certainly understand why I might first be perceived as a burden; they wouldn’t want someone coming into their space for a night, adding responsibility and work to an already full plate. But they told me that I did what I was supposed to, without even knowing it, and that I was even helpful.  I saw how this microcosm is representative of life. Is it human instinct to have low expectations of the unknown, of outsiders? Probably.  At the same time, it suggests that we are also willing to be proven wrong.  We may put up a guard initially and test newcomers, but relationships can be built quickly in the heat of fire.  Although I technically became a pizzaiola by making a customer-quality pizza, I think the true test was in being accepted by the community.  For one day I was able to become someone new, from restaurant guest to restaurant chef, from outsider to insider. I was a pizzaiola.

~ Jenn Burns