Episode 7: The Gourmet Pizza Revolution
6/23/202624 min
In episode seven of Eating History, hosts Adrienne Cheatham and Stephen Bailey explore the gourmet pizza revolution that transformed pizza from an everyday meal into a culinary canvas. From Beverly Hills restaurants to neighborhood pizzerias, they trace how innovative chefs, changing tastes, and new technologies challenged traditional ideas about what pizza could be.
Topics Covered:
- How Wolfgang Puck and Ed LaDou launched the California pizza movement at Spago
- The rise of California Pizza Kitchen and the national spread of gourmet pizza
- The debate between tradition and innovation
- Chris Bianco in Arizona and the evolving definition of pizza authenticity
- How online communities turned pizza into an authenticity battleground
- The changing role of pizza during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Ghost kitchens, artificial intelligence, and the future of pizza
- The next generation of pizza innovation and experimentation
From wood-fired ovens to viral debates, this episode examines how chefs, diners, and technology continue to reshape pizza while raising an enduring question: how much can a dish change before it becomes something entirely new?
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsStephen Bailey· Host0:00
Picture this. It's January 1982. It's a Saturday night in Beverly Hills. Walk into Spago, Wolfgang Puck's new restaurant on Sunset Plaza Drive, and the first thing you notice are the celebrities. At table 12, Joan Collins is in a red dress holding court. At a table near the window, Jack Nicholson is mysteriously wearing sunglasses indoors. The second thing you notice is the oven right in the middle of the open kitchen, a massive wood-burning brick oven, flames licking the dome, radiating heat you can feel from 20 feet away. And in front of that oven, apron covered in flour, stands a 26-year-old guy from San Francisco who's been on the job for exactly three weeks. His name? Ed LaDou. Three months ago, he was working at a restaurant in San Francisco. Puck took one bite and immediately offered LaDou a job and told him, "Come to LA, make whatever you want." And tonight, he's doing just that. He stretches the dough thin, light, bubbling with air pockets, but instead of tomato sauce, he spreads crème fraîche infused with fresh dill. 60 seconds at 800 degrees. The crust bubbles and chars. The crème fraîche warms but doesn't melt. Then comes the smoked salmon, cold, thinly sliced, laid out in overlapping ribbons, and finally, the caviar spooned onto the pizza in small, deliberate dollops. LaDou cuts it into six pieces, sprinkles fresh chives on top, and sends it out to table 12. That pizza becomes Spago's signature dish. It appears