Dear Feastlings,
I’m a simple guy, one who cut his restaurant teeth 38 years ago at a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria called Lorenzo’s, which resided upstairs in what was formerly called University Square among the ragtag bunch of small independent shops and restaurants there. It’s now called Main Gate Square, it’s peppered with chains, and I have no idea what occupies the space where a scrawny sixteen-year-old learned how to sling a pizza when he wasn’t delivering to the dorms, or mopping the floor, or hauling garbage out via a smelly service elevator. When I went down to Sonoita and stopped in to hello to our good friends at Dos Cabezas WineWorks a few weeks ago, I saw the food trailer that Todd and Kelly had set up on their crushpad with a wood-fired oven abutting it, and the scrawny sixteen-year-old that evidently still resides in here somewhere paused, his eyes lit with wonder.
Envy surged in me, I’m not proud to say.
Todd’s taught himself to make a very fine pie- I had one with speck, onion jam and charred onions that was a force to be reckoned with, and upon tasting it, all I could do, especially having been saddled with a restaurant that can generate a fraction of what it’s meant to right now, was fantasize about the joys of working in a tiny little pizza truck. It must have been obvious, because Todd, large of heart, said to me, “you should come down and do a pop-up.” My heart went pitter-pat. So this Sunday, December 6, my buddy Rene and I will head down to Sonoita to rediscover the simple joy of throwing dough into the air and feeling it spread itself into a pizza, and of burning the hair off one’s arm in the heat of a wood-fired oven, and wiping pizza grease from our greedy chins at the end of the day when we make one for ourselves. Todd, I can’t thank you enough. If you’d like to take part, I’d suggest a phone call to Dos Cabezas, as they’re keeping their tasting room and patio pandemic-safe and spacing people out to the best of their ability
https://www.exploretock.com/doscabezas
and as long as you’re thinking of heading down there, why not make a day of it? There are plenty of other wineries to check out, either once you’ve gotten a pizza in your belly or to work up an appetite before you get to Dos Cabezas.
http://www.sonoitaelginchamber.org/assets/sonoita_elgin_tasting_tour_map.pdf
And while I’ll personally miss you if you don’t make it down there this Sunday, the pizza wagon is there all the time:
https://www.pronghorn.pizza/
That said, I hope you can make it when I’m there, because I’m bringing some fun stuff. Here’s this Sunday’s menu.
Your friend,
Doug