The Tale of the Traveling Pizza Oven

We responded to an ad on Craigslist about a week and a half ago that was looking for some catering help.

Mike making his famous pizza

This is how we met Mike, the traveling brick oven pizza guy.

We helped him set up for an event on the University of Washington campus.  We rolled his brick oven, which is situated on a trailer, onto the lawn, unloaded the coolers, and popped open the tent.

Then 4 hours later we went back and took it all down.

We tested a slice of his pizza, which is delicious.  Light and simple, it seems to me what real Italian pizza probably tastes like.  I say this with the knowledge that he has gone to Italy several times to study how the kings of pizza make pizza.

The traveling brick oven pizza

We met a girl named Heather who was also helping Mike.  We ended up going out with her after we were finished for a couple of pitchers of the notoriously delicious local beer by the name Mac & Jack’s.  It’s cool to meet new people.

Mike even offered us MORE work!  He said he had a spot at the university farmer’s market every Saturday and that he could use one of us to help.  I nominated Brad to help because of his enthusiasm for pizza making.

So Saturday morning Brad rolled out of bed at 6 and hopped on the bus to the U district to help Mike until 3:30.

I rolled on over there at about 2 to check things out and to try and score some free pizza. 

As I walked up Mike was pulling a pizza out of the oven that Brad told me was going to be ours for dinner.

It looked and smelled delicious.  Cheese and olives.  Not just any olives and cheese, but good organic cheese and really good olives.  I don’t even like olives, but these ones were quite tasty. 

Our delicious olive and cheese pizza

Brad finished up his work, thanked Mike, got paid and we were off.  We strolled around what the locals call “the ave” which is the main street in the University District. 

We found a grassy spot on campus to sit and enjoy the fruits of our (well Brad’s) labor. 

The pizza was amazing.

So thanks to Mike the traveling brick oven pizza guy, we have a few more tanks of gas, our bellies were filled, and we met a few really cool Seattleites.

Comments

That pizza was delicious.  Expensive though.

Not for us suckas.