If you’re a person who enjoys having a slice of cold pizza for breakfast, Satchel’s Pizza isn’t for you. No doggie bag necessary.
Satchel’s Pizza, established by Steve “Satchel” Raye in 2003, begins its day building beautiful pizza pies for hungry hipster customers at 7 a.m. when the dough is made, said day manager Jim McRae.
This unique pizza place greets customers upon arrival with clinking chimes blowing in the breeze, eclectic and vibrant colors of geometrical stained glass window panes, and the fragrant smell of sweet dough and pizza sauce. Even the walls are covered by local artists’ best pieces of the month.
Despite all the competition, the real art is scattered all over the menu: the pizza. Every order, each individual slice, is made to perfection and by no miracle, either. Satchel’s Pizza understands the value of consistency in culinary art.
“It’s about training the kitchen staff to do things perfectly. The first hardest thing to do is the crust. The second hardest is the sauce. We figure out how to bake, prep and press, and we figure out consistency,” McRae said.
The produce choices are tenfold, but for my little slice of heaven, appropriately brought out to my table to “You Are My Sunshine” playing softly in the background, I chose to order the Mama, which comes with four toppings of the customer’s choice.
For me, it was artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and mushrooms. With fresh and almost always local produce bought from Rainbow Produce just down the road from the restaurant, Satchel’s Pizza strives to give back to the community, said McRae, which is exactly what happens when my plate of art is sat on the table.
The single slice of an 18-inch pie comes layered in tenderly warmed vegetables with mozzarella cheese that holds together as it’s pulled apart like wistful lovers.
Cut into a symmetrical triangle — isosceles for the mathletes out there — the piece is colored with that of clear intent to make it as pleasing to the eye as possible. The spinach is spread on top of the cheese like a cool bed with green satin sheets, followed by mushrooms, the light lime artichokes and the pop of red provided by the sun-dried tomatoes.
Steam comes off the edge of the pizza with each bite. Luckily, the space between the pointy tip that is eagerly bitten first and the line of the crust seems miles from my nose.
The crust hits my tongue with a zap of salt, followed by the sweetness of the wheat dough that is crunchy at first but opens up to a fluffy inside.
Mark Rodriguez, a member of the kitchen staff, said this pizza, like thousands of others before it, has been put through a three-day process, which includes 10 to 20 minutes of dough-making followed by two days of proofing, or letting the dough rise. The dough is then stretched, sauced and cheesed, and cooked for six minutes. On the toppings go and back in the oven for seven more minutes, he said.
“I definitely think about looks,” Rodriguez said. “You don’t just want to plop the toppings on there all sloppy.”
Once my slice had been buttered, it was sent out to me for the real test. Although people eat pizza every day via a delivery brand or, I daresay, maybe DiGiorno, Satchel’s Pizza is an experience. One slice is like a garden grown on the sweetest smelling, golden-brown soil.
Once the pizza is under your nose and no longer seen by your eyes, you discover the texture of the combination of vegetables and crust.
The vegetables are well-cooked but not overcooked, an admirable feat, considering the pizza serves as their only heating pan. As a whole, the elements of the piece of the pie work together to impress any picky palate and, as any good restaurant sporting Italian food should, bring together a community of pizza lovers.
“We try to be a sustainable sort of restaurant, use recyclable materials — buy all local as much as possible to give back to the community without driving prices,” McRae said. “It’s a family feel more than anything, a different atmosphere in the sense that it’s a local place and not a chain — I think that’s important.”
But to the food lovers we all are, the important thing is the value of a great slice of pizza that is treated like a real work of art. And my slice of Satchel’s pizza was a masterpiece.
Carina Seagrave is a journalism student at UF. You can contact her via opinions@alligator.org.
