Food truck visit will have you carrying a torch for Pyromaniacs Pizza
A Thai Peanut Chili Chicken Pizza, featuring grilled chicken breast, mozzarella cheese, red onions, shredded carrots and a spicy Thai peanut-chili sauce is photographed at the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck on Monday in Alpine.
Pizza cooks inside the wood oven inside the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck on Monday in Alpine.
Seth Degraffenried prepares to pull a pizza out of the wood oven inside the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck.
The Bonfire Brownie, featuring a chocolate brownie topped with fudge sauce, toasted walnuts and toasted marshmallows, from the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck.
Andrew Rasmussen and Spencer Wood throw pizza dough inside the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck on Monday.
The Bonfire Brownie, featuring a chocolate brownie topped with fudge sauce, toasted walnuts and toasted marshmallows, from the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck.
People sit around a propane fire pit outside the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck on Monday in Alpine.
Pizza cooks inside the wood oven inside the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck. Visit heraldextra.com/ticket to read the Herald's review.
Andrew Rasmussen and Spencer Wood throw pizza dough inside the Pyromaniacs Pizza food truck.
If cooking with open flames were an art form, Pyromaniacs Pizza would be da Vinci.
It takes a skilled eye and a steady hand to toss around small, gourmet pizzas in a 400-degree, wood-fired oven, but owner Clayton Johnson has done that dance before. Customers see flickering flames inside a large clay cooker that kiss each entrant with a breath of heated confection.
Don’t shy away from a slightly seared pizza crust. When it comes from a clay oven it’s called “seasoning.” The in-house pizza sauce already is loaded with rich herbs and consists of crushed tomato bits, but that added splash of a scorched crust holds your taste buds hostage, if only for a brief moment.
A collection of these taste bud takeovers made my experience at this food truck pizzeria memorable and just wonderful.
I’m a sucker for fresh basil so I began with the Margherita pizza, a concoction with sliced swatches of fresh mozzarella, large basil leaves and Pyro’s crushed tomato sauce. I suggest when you get this dish, you break apart the basil into smaller pieces so you can get some in every bite.
The Firehouse pizza came next. First of all, I can’t say enough about the signature sauce, and this menu item tosses on sausage, jalapeños and red bell peppers with each ingredient complementing each other nicely.
I later found out about a secret off-menu pizza option that takes the Firehouse to another level. Pyromaniacs offer a Five-Pepper pizza for those in the “know.” Mango habañero sauce, jalapeño peppers, red bell peppers and pepperoni all covered by ghost pepper cheese — what more could you ask for?
How about dessert?
You may see a brownie on the menu, but it’s not what you think, not when it comes from a wood-fired oven. A hand-held pie tin holds a mushrooming brownie treat that is covered with mini marshmallows, and pairing that creation with open flames — well, you do the math.
Roasted marshmallows and chocolate are some of the simple flavors of childhood, but Pyromaniacs topped the nostalgia and added walnuts. A nice touch. Better eat this one while it’s hot so you can take advantage of the goo factor when you’re dealing with molten marshmallows. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a little section with burnt marshmallows — again, from a clay oven it’s “seasoning.”
Now, I’ve saved the best for last. A pizza flavor with which you might be acquainted but at the same time completely unfamiliar. The sweet aroma of barbecue sauce and pineapple ransoms your appetite only when you take your first bite.
The mere sight of sizzling chopped bacon, plenty of white chicken chunks, diced pineapple and tangy barbecue sauce gets your imagination going. But after eating the first slice of this pizza, reality sets in — you now have one less slice!
Remain calm. With the $9 gourmet pizzas at Pyromaniacs, it’s easy to pick up another one and it comes to you within about 10 minutes. And that is the very nature of the joy of the food truck scene — it’s immediate and satisfaction is imminent.
PYROMANIACS PIZZA
Info: (801) 896-PYRO, pyromaniacspizza.com