All The World's A Stage
By Brandon Farrell | Stones Pizza

Ah, New York! It's funny how I saw the place with different eyes this time around. Last year was new and exciting, and somewhat scary. I had no idea where to find a kitchen, where I could prep or where to find the ingredients I needed. This time it was all strangely familiar. Within a few hours of landing, I had organized the use of the kitchen at Joe O's restaurant, where they remembered me from last year and were more than happy to help me out again. I already knew where to find all the ingredients I was going to need.

When I realized that this was one of the things that had taken me so much of my time in New York last year, that, along with finding just the right stores to get the quality ingredients I needed, gave me a whole lot more free time than I was expecting. I was actually going to see a bit of New York this time! This is actually quite a good comparison to competition in general. The first time is the hardest…the fear of the unknown. Once you do it the first time, the next time is far easier and you are more relaxed, and then you will generally make a better product.

This seems obvious right? So how many of you out there in pizza land have entered a State Final or Finals at Dairy Farmer's Best of the Best competition. Which is held every year? If you haven't, why not? I can tell you firsthand that just entering the competition can generate publicity for your pizzeria, and you never know where it may lead you…like New York for example.

The name of the game is publicity and there is no better publicity than winning a world competition… which brings me back to New York. This year I really had trouble choosing which pizza to compete with…the only guidelines for the America's Plate is "your best pizza", which leaves it pretty open. Last year my "Devine Lamb" pizza eclipsed all my others in both popularity with my customers, as well as being my own favourite, so it was an obvious choice. I thought about entering it again because with different judges comes different tastes, but I realized I would only end up with one pizza on my menu that had been entered in the America's Plate competition. Although last year's winning pizza was covered in gold leaf, I wanted to enter a pizza I could actually sell, otherwise, what's the point? I ended up settling on the "Sweet Tina" pizza. It was a tossup between that and my goat's cheese pizza that is pretty special too, but the "Sweet Tina" is a little more unusual, so it got the start, and even though it was pretty colourful on it's own, I decided to jazz up the visuals with some snipped chives and edible flowers…and stand out it did.

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