Tag Archives: David Chang

World Domination, One Pie at a Time

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL

If you’re a fan of SNAP Custom Pizza, good thing. They’re about to be everywhere.

By Mike Madaio

DSC_0105Rob Wasserman was among the first in what’s become a legion of prominent restaurateurs and chefs nationwide hurrying to open a gourmet-grade, fast-casual restaurant. Or, in Wasserman’s case, a bunch of them.

The owner of the Rittenhouse Square mainstay, Rouge, teamed up in 2014 with Pete Howey and Aaron Nocks, the owners of Peace A Pizza and New Hope Premium Fountain, to launch SNAP Custom Pizza in Ardmore. A second location opened in Exton late last year. And a third followed a couple months back, where Wasserman’s Center City burger joint, 500 Degrees, was formerly located.

And they’re just the beginning of what’s become a very ambitious expansion plan that encompasses 15 openings over the next 18 to 24 months.

“Each store is a limited build-out, unlike the multimillion-dollar budget you need to remodel a fine dining restaurant,” Wasserman explained over a couple of pies at the Exton SNAP. “Here, the turnaround time is 60 days, and we don’t need a big cash infusion.”

SNAP bakes its pies—600 degrees for about two minutes—in a conveyor convection oven—think Quizno’s—which doesn’t require an exhaust system. The so-called artisanal pizza places that have been cropping up like mushrooms in April need one, along with a wood-fire oven that’s usually custom-built. Both equal a lot of time and money.

Spurred by the popularity of Chipotle  and Shake Shack, chefs once relegated to high-minded concept dining—David Chang,  José Andrés —are reimagining the fast-food staples and presenting them among customizable menus and modern spaces.

“I can’t take any credit. It was all Pete and Aaron,” Wasserman says of SNAP’s inception. “They’ve been doing Peace A Pizza forever and started to see the writing on the wall. The era’s over where you walk into a restaurant and see slices sitting under the glass waiting to be reheated. With what you can now do with the ovens and the fresh, local ingredients, it’s a game-changer.”

Feel free to go bananas. Or maybe you prefer sausage. Either way, you’re the bawse at SNAP.

The SNAP experience mirrors that of Chipotle. Customers build their own pizzas from a buffet of ingredients as they proceed through the line. Several pre-selected combinations are also available if you don’t feel like thinking about it. The appeal, Wasserman says, is the freshness as much as the freedom of choice.

“We’re not pulling a frozen pie out of the oven,” he says. “Everything is made from scratch, using high-quality ingredients.”

That said, SNAP pizza isn’t necessarily an upgrade. The expense and effort invested in all those wood-fire ovens isn’t for nothing. The intense heat they generate creates that fresh-baked flavor and the crispy-on-the-outside, doughy-on-the-inside texture. SNAP’s conveyor convection ovens fall about 200 degrees short, and the crusts, in turn, come out as crisp and as flavorful as a saltine.

But there’s strength in numbers. If there are two or three SNAPs within a 10-minute drive, chances are you’re landing there for a fair amount of your cravings, whether you like the crust or not. It’s convenient, which can never be overstated in our have-it-now culture, and the ability to customize is a powerful lure.

The stiff crust seems to be a nonfactor thus far anyway. We grew up, after all, with soggy crust as the norm. As we talked, our conversation was twice interrupted by satisfied customers. “I paid them,” Wasserman quipped. There’s also the 4.5-star Yelp rating, out of more than 100 reviews, which is no easy feat.

“People love the fact that they’re not looking at a reheat,” he says. Which may speak more to our blind love for pizza than our standards.

Photos courtesy SNAP Custom Pizza

Instacrave

LOCALLY SOURCED

Two of the most innovative chefs around have set their sights on doughnuts. And they’re baking them right under our noses.
By Scott Edwards • Photography by Josh DeHonney

In their seminal 2013 cookbook, Maximum Flavor—Recipes that Will Change the Way You Cook (which drew praise from the likes of David Chang, Michael Voltaggio and Sean Brock), Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot achieved new benchmarks for most of our staples: fries, burgers, wings, steak, doughnuts. But leaving well enough, or even pure perfection, alone isn’t who they are. After years of deflating paradigms, the couple’s only just begun to truly understand itself. They’re obsessive. “And there’s something really exciting about following an obsession,” Talbot says.
So when Kamozawa and Talbot wandered into the Stockton Market, in the riverside New Jersey town, last August and decided, on the spot, to rent a stall and start selling their own frozen custard and doughnuts, they were always going to start from scratch. Because that’s what they do. They made two doughnuts, an entirely new one and then the Maximum Flavor one, challenging themselves. The Maximum Flavor doughnut was way better. A third followed, made with the parts of both recipes that worked the best. So began the aptly named Curiosity Doughnuts.
Talbot, who picks up speed as the conversation progresses, is a firm believer that the humble doughnut is capable of revelation. Since they opened in October, he and Kamozawa have developed several iterations (naturally), but the simple yeasted doughnut is the origin of this particular obsession. The outside, or crust, if you will, is just crisp enough for a soul-quenching crunch. The inside’s unusually soft and moist, almost custard-like when it’s warm. (And it really should be eaten warm.) It’s sweet, but not cake sweet. Revelatory, yes. But perfect? “Well, today it was perfect,” Talbot says, conceding more than celebrating. “But doughnuts are interesting. Things change. You’ve got great doughnut days and good doughnut days. I think, right now, these are darn good doughnuts, but we’re tinkerers at heart.”

Stockton Market, 19 Bridge Street, Stockton, NJ; stocktonfarmmarket.com.