Tucson-style pizza has not yet been defined.
You might think of Empireβs elote pizza, which combined the Sonoran roots of grilled street corn with a classic New York-style slice, just the right amount of dense and chewy. Family Joint Pizzeria one-upped the elote pie with a bubbly Neapolitan crust topped with homestyle carnitas and extra-tangy green tomatillo sauce.
But these arenβt the only craft pizzas in Tucson β what about Anello, the Tucson disciple of renowned Pizzeria Bianco? Or Reneeβs, whose pizzas shine through their unconventional toppings rather than how closely she can replicate a crust made famous somewhere else? Are their authority and innovation enough to justify a new genre?
Gabriel Moreno, of Jaimeβs Pizza Kitchen, is making a new argument for what Tucson-style could mean. Having grown up in the back office of his grandfather Jaimeβs bar and grill on Fourth Avenue, heβs a student of Tucsonβs restaurant scene.
When he describes what atmosphere heβs going for in his new restaurant, he references other Tucson restaurants, like the open but old-school vibe at Mama Louisaβs.
βBut there isnβt an oversaturation of pizza in Tucson,β Gabriel said. βItβs similar to saying thereβs an oversaturation of Hispanic cuisine ... Anello is not like Fiamme is not like Reneeβs is not like this beautiful new spot Penelope ... Thereβs kind of an undersaturation of craft pies ... I wanted to throw my hat in the ring with these big guys. To not only hold up but stand apart from them.β
βIβm really trying to find what a Tucson-style pizza is,β Gabriel said. βI havenβt found it in a particular taste or texture, but itβs making the best you can with what youβve got.β
Jaimeβs Pizza Kitchen is opening a brick-and-mortar in the former location of Little Love Burger, 312 E. Congress St., in August, but the pizza was created in a different place altogether: the commissary at Tucson Food Hub, a ghost kitchen in midtown.
Jaimeβs Pizza Kitchen will offer conventional pies, like his take on a supreme pizza, alongside more avant-garde pizzas like the sweet swine, with sweet pork belly, balsamic and goat cheese. Heβs not only slinging pies, though β part of the deal with the lease takeover is cooking the bar fare at the neighboring Good Oak Bar, which shares their kitchen.
βI havenβt overly developed the menu, but Iβll probably do a throwback to my Italian Peasant days and what I learned from those chefs. Maybe a small pasta program, some rotating soups and servicing the Good Oak bar menu. Thatβs where Iβd like to flex the culinary muscle and take that bar menu β theyβve done a great job of having it not be a (typical) bar menu β but Iβd like to take that scratch approach to what weβre doing,β Gabriel said.
He referenced the fried pickles currently on the Good Oak menu. When heβs running the kitchen, theyβd brine the pickles themselves.
Jaimeβs is able to open mere weeks after securing the lease, in part because he already owns all the industrial equipment he needs, from his Hobart 60 Quart stand mixer to the Bakers Pride oven he uses to bake his pies. Unlike many businesses that were delayed months and years due to supply chain issues, Jaimeβs isnβt on any waitlists or waiting for any contractors to finalize his project.
Todayβs convenience, however, was thanks to months of trial and error trying to get his dough right for his circumstances.
βMy pizza oven β I got taken back to the Stone Age, which is a great thing because it forced me to redesign my dough,β Gabriel said. βAt Grimaldiβs the oven could get up to 900,β he said. At the now-closed Pizza Luna, where Gabriel used to work, the Pizza Master electric oven emulated a coal fire and could reach 700 degrees.
But when he was opening at Tucson Food Hub, he was limited by the space and his own resources. βHere we were thinking about what we could afford β a Bakers Pride Y-602,β Gabriel said.
βIf you talk to New York pizzerias that arenβt coal- or wood-fired, itβs going to be a Blodgett or a Bakers Pride. Itβs like being a Ford or a Chevy guy,β he said.
Differences between most other pizza genres can be oversimplified to temperature. The lower heat of a metal oven, like the one Jaimeβs uses, usually creates the denser, crispier dough we associate with New York-style pizza. Classic Neapolitan pizza, with its pillowy crust and thin, spotted underbelly, is formed in the crucible of a brick oven, cooked by hotter, more humid wood fire. The most dry, ferocious heat, though, comes from coal, which makes the acclaimed, charred New Haven-style pizzas. Γber-Neapolitan.
Gabriel wanted his pizzas to have the aesthetic and textural qualities that distinguish higher-heat pies from the rest, but his oven maxed out at 650 degrees. So he created a new kind of dough.
βHow hot can I get this oven consistently? How can I make this dough work with me when my oven can only get up to 650? Thatβs what makes us a bit of a hybrid β weβre definitely not Neapolitan but not New York-style either. People will assume itβs wood-fired because we got the leopard spots on the bottom, have this structured dough,β he said.
Though he didnβt open Jaimeβs Pizza Kitchen at Tucson Food Hub until he had a dough he liked, he knew it wasnβt his final recipe. In the first months the pizza kitchen was open, Gabriel was experimenting every day.
βIβd sit there looking at a gumline. I wasnβt getting the honeycombing I wanted to. You donβt have a spiral mixer to give attention (to the dough). You have a 60 Quart Hobart. Maybe we need to play with something else,β Gabriel said of his process.
Heβd give away pizza to friends and family. βYour payment for free pizza is brutal honesty,β he said.
Because of his unique fermentation process, the dough took three days to develop. Gabriel would have to wait to see the results of his latest experiment, and keep the process straight from what he was doing today. The difficulty of the process compounded in the summer, when Tucson Food Hub would change the air conditioning dramatically whether tenants were present.
βWhen hydration is a huge factor in your dough, humidity plays its part,β Gabriel said. βIn the ghost facility, interestingly enough, theyβll throttle the A/C depending on when people are in there. Itβs been a huge issue for us to find consistency. If theyβre playing with the air conditioning in Montana summer, no one cares. If youβre playing with it in Tucson, it has its effect.β
After three months, he found it.
βWhat got us to where we needed to go, our trade secret, is our dough isnβt entirely replicable,β he said.
βI took all these new techniques, but it went back to my absolute roots with The Italian Peasant. I completely disregarded everything I knew. I found what I was looking for when I went backwards,β Gabriel said.
Gabriel helped open The Italian Peasant in Tubac in 2010. Itβs where he was introduced to a Bakers Pride pizza oven and baking pizzas at 525 degrees.
βI learned there was so much more to pizza than salt, flour, yeast, tomato and cheese,β he said. βThe simplicity of the cheese, complexity of the dough β when you add the salt itβll give you this totally different texture. From that point on I wanted to learn everything I could.β
He learned a lot from the owner, a transplant from Long Island, and the other cooks in the kitchen, who were educated at the Culinary Institute of America and Le Cordon Bleu. But the most influential person he met at The Italian Peasant turned out to be Travis Holloway, the 17-year-old dishwasher who decided Gabriel would be his ride or die. Theyβd go on to work together at Pizza Luna until it closed.
βHe wasnβt my number two in rank at Luna, but he was my most trusted,β Gabriel said.
βWhen I opened Jaimeβs after Pizza Luna closed, (I said) βYouβre the first one coming with me when I can afford you,β and he said, βPay me when you can afford me,ββ he said. βOf course I was able to pay him quickly, but his willingness to help got us into a 7-days-a-week operation. Weβve had challenges with the facility itself. Thereβs no quit in that boy; failure is not an option with him. As much as heβll say I inspired him, heβs behind the tenacity at Jaimeβs.β
When he opened Jaimeβs with Travis, Gabriel intended to work out of the ghost kitchen for at least two years as a proof of concept. He had long eyed the Little Love Burger property on Congress, but when it last went on the market, he wasnβt ready.
Fate intervened in the form of Tim Walsh, who runs the liquor program at LoveBlock Partners, the restaurant group that owned Little Love Burger as well as the downtown restaurant and ice creamery Hub.
Tim reviews local pizzas in his spare time. When he came across Jaimeβs, he loved it and introduced Gabriel to the LoveBlock Partners, who were looking for someone to take over their lease.
The offer was too good to pass up.
βWe fell into each otherβs laps. From the first meeting with everybody, we got hungry. The wolf in the cartoons β licking his chops and grinning. It seemed like our opportunity to do something special,β Gabriel said.
After helping generations of restaurateurs open their pizza concepts, finally Gabriel has the chance to make his own mark on Tucsonβs pizza scene.
βThis is really exciting for us β Iβve always been in the back end, behind owners and chefs,β Gabriel said.
Their ascension to their own brick-and-mortar represents a homecoming for Gabriel, who admits customers sometimes mistake him for Jaime, assuming he named his restaurant after himself. He didnβt. Instead, the name, right down to the retro font in the logo, comes from his grandfatherβs bar and grill. His grandfather is Jaime.
βIβve had a lot of fun being called Jaime,β Gabriel said.
When Gabriel and his wife, Vivian, decorate their new restaurant, they will channel the decades of history from Jaimeβs Bar and Grill. They might forgo the β80s neon color scheme. Instead, theyβll represent the color Jaime Moreno brought into the lives of Tucsonans with lush greenery and photos of the Tucsonans his family has been bringing together for generations.
Jaime's Pizza Kitchen
Location: 312 E. Congress St.
Hours: TBD. Follow them on InstagramΒ for updates.
For more information, check out their website.