After a number of recommendations from friends and readers of this site I finally made the trek to the Pizza Farm. Run by Robbi Bannen and Ted Fisher, it’s known by word-of-mouth to locals and one of the best hidden pizza ovens in the rural midwest. They open up their farm up for visitors to buy pizza on Tuesdays.
Max, Courtney, Lesely and I took the trek together and it’s about two hours from Minneapolis.
People were showing up when we arrived around 5 P.M. to both order pizza for take out as well as set up tables and chairs to dine on the farm with friends and relatives. I talked with Ted Fisher briefly while he was making pizzas and he explained that they try to grow and raise everything in the pizza on the premises. Everything from the wheat in the dough to the animals that produced the cheese to the fresh peppers are all within a short reach of the outdoor wood-fired brick oven they built themselves.
They had a surprising amount of pizza options written on a chalk board such as “stinging nettles with shallots cooked in cream, parmesan, mozzarella” and “italian sausage (happy pigs), kalamata olives, red onion, fresh mozzarella.” All the pizzas are large, about sixteen inches in diameter, and are priced in the lower twenties, tax included. We ordered their Margherita with basil, garlic, roasted tomato and mozzarella.
The process was fast: Ted takes your order and goes into the kitchen to lay out the dough and put on the ingredients. Through a window you can see other family members helping out. The uncooked pizza then parades through people waiting to the other side to the oven where Robbi takes over. It’s only in the oven a few minutes and it’s pulled out a couple times to rotate. She puts it directly in a box (it’s common for regulars to re-use their pizza box) and you pay in cash on the spot.
We were lucky enough to score one of the few picnic tables. We brought our own wine, cups, napkins, plates and it’s expected that everything you take in you take out with you.
Our pizza was nothing short of beautiful. All the ingredients tasted incredibly fresh. The crust fluffed up perfectly and the edges were almost artfully uneven and were a little crispy on the edges. The cheese was tasty and satisfying. We all were impressed with the pizza to the point where afterwards we couldn’t resist to get another, even if it meant we’d take most of it home with us.
Our next pizza had artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, roasted tomato, garlic and fresh mozzarella. Just as great as the first pizza. As expected, we couldn’t finish it and took most of it to go.
As we were leaving, more people started arriving. The crowd was quite mixed from older families laughing and drinking oversized bottles of white wine to a large group of college students to parents with young kids to a man in an old Camaro delivering a bottle of Argentinean wine and picking up his pizza to go and few people speaking only in Swedish.
Being able to meet the animals and the people raising the ingredients that you eventually eat was a great experience and the pizza itself was one of the freshest pizzas I’ve ever tasted. On the way out I picked up some focaccia to enjoy later in the week.
It’s well worth the trip.
Check out Courtney’s fantastic video of the pizza farm done in a “Sesame Street documentary” style as well as my photoset on Flickr. I’ll be back soon.
Comments 10
Yay! I’m glad you enjoyed it. The lad and I going back in a couple of weeks.
Posted 30 Apr 2008 at 14:40 ¶The SE MN ALC is all drooling over your pictures right now
Posted 01 May 2008 at 10:45 ¶That looks amazingly wonderful! I really want to go. Plus, I dig road trips (even if they involve Wisconsin).
Posted 02 May 2008 at 10:19 ¶Okay seriously, I am salivating!
I think I am going to arrange a wine outing for my wine club there, AWESOME idea!
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Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:34 ¶Is Tuesday the only day to get pizza there?
Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:41 ¶Unfortunately, due to the amount of work they put into it and their baking schedule throughout the week, it’s only on Tuesdays.
I can’t wait to go back.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:46 ¶Did you have any trouble talking to them (or let’s say interviewing)? Did they know that you were doing this blog/article?
Just curious—I have heard that they do not like being written about or receive any press.
Just want to know if it is a friendly environment if I start asking questions when I bring my girls group there tonight!!
Posted 27 May 2008 at 11:17 ¶Debbie-
I didn’t have any problems talking with them. They were both very friendly. I also wanted to keep this post informal and avoided interviewing. I did tell them that I write about pizza on my site and that I was from Minneapolis. I told them that’s how I found out about pizza on the farm: people that read my site recommended it to me. They also saw me take about a hundred photos. I had a couple brief conversations with them but that was about it. They never indicated anything to me about not wanting to be written about or published.
I don’t think they (or I, for that matter) were aware of the amount of buzz this post may have generated though. I’ve gotten a ton of traffic and it was also on Slice as well as Chow.
My apologies if they didn’t want any more buzz about pizza on the farm.
Posted 27 May 2008 at 12:10 ¶When I called for directions earlier, and asked if this was the “pizza on the farm”, Robbi came down on me that they were not to be referred to as that because there is a farm in CA that is actually called The Pizza Farm (you can google that and see). Apparently they have received warnings from them.
Posted 27 May 2008 at 14:35 ¶I too am a free-lance writer and thought about doing a small paragraph about them along with other farms that do wood-fired pizzas.
Not to steer anyone away from going, I sure will make the trek out there. I have heard so much about the pizza.
They had a big write up last year in the Milw J-S: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=656056
Posted 02 Jun 2008 at 09:26 ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 2
[...] for some pizza [...] We had heard about this originally from S4xton, who went to the farm a few months ago and then returned again recently. This is a working farm [...]
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[...] sleep schedule. But there will be much to look forward to. Like further pizza farm adventures in Stockholm, [...]
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