The Story of Panchos Pizza (with perhaps a few liberties taken for flair)
When Pancho was born, no one could have predicted that he would become the worlds preeminent Pizza Maker. There is no record of any auspicious omens such as a full moon rise appearing EXACTLY like a perfectly crispy pizza, dimpled by craters like celestial cheese-bubbles… There was not even the more subtle omen of unusually round and flat clouds overhead. Nor a rain of anchovies recorded anywhere that day… Or if there were, no one took note of it at the time.
The universe certainly got subtly rounder that day though.
Pancho moved from Puerto Rico at the age of sixteen and began working in restaurants, still unaware of his life calling to the way of the pie. Its possible that he might have, without the intervention of fate, become simply a gifted donut chef, bagel maker, pancake artist, or even just a pastry chef, specializing in the most perfect and circular cakes imaginable. Luckily for us all though, fate was paying special attention, and lead him into one particular pizzeria.
The pizzeria itself wasn’t special, or if it was Pancho has never mentioned it specifically. The reason its important to this story was that at this particular pizzeria, the pizza guy suddenly up and quit in the middle of the shift… ripping off his apron, throwing it onto the pie he was making and tossing the whole thing into the oven before walking out, leaving Pancho alone at the pizza counter.
A moment later a hungry customer came in looking for his pizza and a still shocked Pancho explained the situation, apologizing that the hungry customer would be , since he, Pancho, had never made a pizza in his life.
The customer refused to take no for an answer, INSISTING that Pancho make him a pizza anyways… talking him through the technique of stretching the dough, then topping with sauce and cheese.
Despite Pancho’s insistence that this customer was nothing more than a simple pizza enthusiast with a basic knowledge of the art of making pizza, he was clearly acting as the avatar of some primordial urge of the universe to ensure that the art of pizza making would finally find its champion.
Again, as far as we know there was no thunderclap or earthquake when Pancho made his first pizza, since reality lacks an appropriate flare for the dramatic in situations such as these, but I believe that the world of pizza trembled… even if the only noticeable result was some jiggling dough, splashed sauce, and maybe a few million pizza peels falling from their perches across all the pizzerias of the universe at once. Unfortunately, all of those signs are pretty par for the course in the world of pizza making, and probably went mostly unnoticed.
For the most part, the world continued on as it had before, except that now, Pancho was a Pizza Maker.
He honed, practiced and perfected his craft in pizzerias around New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania for decades. When he was certain he had mastered the art of pizza, he set his eyes to bring his perfected pizza, not to the halls of kings or emperors as one would expect, but to a quaint small town in New Hampshire.
At La Mia Casa, and then at the eponymous Panchos Pizza, Pancho shared his incredible pizza with our town for over a decade before finally deciding to retire at the age of 79 after over 60 years of pizza making. He did his best to train the hastily assembled team of ruffians and vagabonds we found to staff Pancho’s Pizza after the change of ownership, so Panchos Pizza now has a new crew of pizza makers who will strive to preserve his techniques and recipes, enabling us to carry on the legend of Pancho… the worlds best pizza maker, even if we can never sincerely hope to attain his level of skill or talent.
And so… that’s what we do now at Panchos Pizza… we strive to make Pizza, like Pancho does. Hopefully we will continue to be able to honor his legacy by continuing to make some really VERY good pizza.