It's time for another edition of Street Food Profiles. This week we stop by Pizza Politana for some Neapolitan-style pizza at the Ferry Plaza market.
Name: Pizza Politana
Vendors: Naomi Crawford and Joel Baecker
Location and hours: At many different Bay Area farmers' markets and festivals.
Twitter: @PizzaPolitana
How many years have you been street fooding? Six years.
Market pizza. [Flickr: arndog]
Why pizza? We got inspired in Naples and thought it would be cool to make pizza on the street for common folk.
Tell us more about the oven. We worked with a fabricator to custom build our first ovens. Since then, we've worked with Mugnaini to build our third and fourth ovens.
Coal or wood-fired oven? How hot in there? They are all wood-fired, aged oak. We try to maintain 800 degrees.
What's on the menu? Pizza with seasonal toppings. Our spring seasonal pie is topped with creamy spring onions, shaved capay farms asparagus, Zoe's bacon and Star Route green garlic. In the summer, shaved summer squash, county line harvest basil pesto and fresh Bellwether Farm ricotta. For fall, creme fraiche, mission figs, wild arugular, parmesan and smithfield ham, and in the winter we have wild nettles, housemade pancetta, red onion and mozzarella.
What's your favorite topping or topping combination to make? My personal favorite pizza is our margherita topped with a Tomatero Farm egg and Zoe's bacon! We offer this at all our farmer's markets, but not private events.
Why a mobile business? It's more interesting and less stagnant.
Who are your typical customers? It depends on the market! Ferry Plaza has a lot of downtown workers, Marin has a lot of moms, and Oakland has a lot of young families.
Describe a typical day. It depends on the day! Some days, we prepare for markets while cleaning up from previous days' markets/events.
What were you doing before this? We both worked in restaurants.
Your favorite eats in the Bay Area? Spruce, Namu, Cotogna, Hana Sushi in Rohnert Park (Seriously!).
Comfort food? We have two kids, so we eat a lot of pasta.
Advice for an aspiring vendor? Bring to the street whatever you are passionate about. Don't look for trends.