the short of it.

Portobello re-opened last night. Word is that the place was teeming with multi-celled organisms looking to chow down. By all accounts it was a success.

I did spend most of the first three hours of service in pretty much a complete panic, though according to the chef and sous chef, I at least appeared to be handling myself on the line pretty well considering it was my first day.

The head chef schedules the orders when they arrive. He keeps track of what table is getting their 1st, 2nd, 3rd course, etc. There are a few key cues that I had to learn. When he says, "order in" a pizza (or 3), it's to let me know to prep my station for those pizzas. "Pick up" is the go cue—cook it. If someone asks for an "all day," it means, "tell me how many orders I have in total—both order in and pick up."

In all, I made about 40 pizzas during the opening. Tonight I only made about 20 though we also had a packed house this evening—people actually waited over two hours to get a table. And the few comments that I received were very complimentary. I was told that the folks over at Food Fight may mention the pies in their blog. Isa Chandra Moskowitz dropped by the kitchen for a moment (though I didn't realize it at the time, she's the author or co-author of a number of cookbooks, including one of my favorites Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World), and had very nice things to say.

So far so good.

preview

of what's in store:



this char will hopefully be making the rounds:


this pizza will not be on the menu:

char.

Two of the ten pizzas I made this evening:

Mushroom, garlic, basil, olive oil, tomato:

field sausage (vegan), pine nuts, basil, fennel, olive oil

Oddly, the most positive response came from the simplest one: tomato, garlic, crushed pine nuts, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Not pictured included a lemon & fennel pie, and pies featuring shaved broccoli stem.

I'd still like to get a crisper exterior on the edge crust. That's my biggest issue right now in terms of results.

If anyone has topping recommendations, I'm open to suggestions.

BOH

Well, I forgot my camera again last night. But tonight I snapped a couple shots of the kitchen-in-progress, the pizza oven, and my latest batch of dough (100% Bob's Red Mill unbleached white).

Dig the new digs.

So I'm leaving my job at VTech to become the pizzamaker at Portobello. We still have a bunch of kinks to work out pizza-wise, but I promise you, we will be serving some of the best pizza in Portland in the near future.

I'll try and keep this here updated with pizza developments as they occur. Last night was the first time I used the oven—a two-deck Bakers Pride, natural gas-fired deal. The temperature hits 650 on the dial, so it's kind of a step up from my home oven.

We've got the opposite problem though. Heat is from the bottom in the Bakers Pride (as opposed to from the top element on the broil setting at home), which is good in that it's more efficient as warm air rises and all. However in the current set up, the pizzas are cooking too fast on the bottom, and are barely cooked at the top of the cornicione when the bottom is practically a block of char.

As possible solutions we're looking at shrinking the height of the decks to make the floor and ceiling temperatures more even or adding a reflective material to the top of the decks to bounce the heat back down (and keep it from escaping as quickly via heat transfer). If anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears.

So we're experimenting with some dough mixtures. Last night was 100% white whole wheat, and a 75% unbleached white-25% white whole wheat blend. Tonight is a 50/50 whole wheat-unbleached white mix and a 100% unbleached white. All Bob's Red Mill. I forgot to drop the dough balls in the fridge this morning. Hopefully they haven't over risen.

Photos are TK. I totally spaced on bringing my camera yesterday. I'll try and make up for it this evening.

Scott. Pilgrim.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Trailer

I am kind of giddy with excitement.

spring break 2010