Opening in the Pandemic, Tony's Pizza School, and Creating a menu with Philip from Dough

Meet Phillip, the owner and head pizza maker at dough. He learned his pizza making skills from @capopizza over at Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza. In this episode we talk about how he created his menu of hip hop inspired pizza and talk about his delicious, infamously spicy Szechuan pizza 🌶. We talk about him competing the in the real California pizza contest and placing as one of the finalists!

IG@sfdough

Full Transcript Here

Eidref: It could be a daunting task if you don't know how to create a menu. It could be as easy as let's just start off with a cheese pizza. I like to start the show with this question. There's no right or wrong answer. What's good though?

Philip: What's good though? That's a very simple but very complex question.

Eidref: All right, got an answer? Is that your answer right there?

Philip: That’s my answer.

Eidref: I love it.

Philip: You want the short version or the long version?

Eidref: Whatever one you have time to give me.

Philip: I just basic simple short, what's good dough consists of dough. Very important. The sauce and really good cheese.

Eidref: Cool. Cool. Cool. So, what fueled your passion for pizza?

Philip: It sounds kind of corny. Basically, it goes back to watching Ninja Turtles. And there's always pizza. There is always pizza. So as a little kid, it's like I saw like, I want to be a ninja turtle can't be a turtle. Right? But yeah, you know, the aspect of, you know, martial arts and pizza, you know, so, I love pizza when I was little so eating pizza almost daily. Even when I got older, you know? I'll have pizza every day. I love pizza. I think I eat more pizza or pasta than Chinese people. If my parents weren't cooking right now, I would get pizza.

Eidref: Right. That's so true. Yeah, the only time I really only ate Filipino food is when my parents cook. Otherwise it's pizza all day for me.

Philip: Yeah, I guess you can, really.

Eidref: Yeah, for sure. So, you grew up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So when did you kind of get into the decision thinking; okay, I might open my own pizza restaurant? Like what's your origin there?

Philip: I think it started back. Well my family is a restaurant business you know, and also my wife's family is also restaurant business. And so, we both grew up in a restaurant. So it's like finding different ways different, you know, business ideas