Saturday, June 23, 2007 Make your own pizza By Jig Arquiza
I REMEMBER when I was a seventh-grader at La Salle Greenhills. It was Schoolyear 1983-1984, Fridays were half-days then, and when school ended for the week, my classmates and I would usually troop to the Greenhills Commercial Center to hang out.
Our first stop would always be for lunch at a quaint but cozy, little-known pizza restaurant. Its pizza and lasagna were quite popular among Greenhills habitués, but otherwise unknown to people who did not frequent the area. It was almost always full of La Sallistas, and if memory serves me correctly, was called Greenwich Pizza and Pasta.
Fast forward to the year 2007, I’m now a feature writer for Sun.Star Cebu, and I suddenly find myself somehow reliving the experiences from twenty-three years before. I’m at a Greenwich restaurant, albeit in Cebu City, along Mango Avenue, and I’m with some members of the media, to take part in a shortened version of Greenwich’s popular “Pizza-Making Camp”.
SuperBalita editor Dodong Morallos, cartoonist Rio Villegas and copy specialist Lindley Saladaga were among the Sun.Star contingent.
Unfortunately for me, the ever-mysterious Ober Khok was nowhere to be found, as I had wanted to compare notes with the enigmatic columnist.
I’m an amateur cook, and I have made my own pizzas in the past, but my process involved nothing more than just putting the ingredients on top of the pie then baking it, with no system whatsoever. It’s a totally different thing at Greenwich. To paraphrase Michelle Flaherty, the band geek in American Pie, “At pizza camp, we were taught to make pizza the Greenwich way.”
First off, the trainer stressed that cleanliness was very important, hence the presence of the “double hand-wash” dictum.
Crewmembers were required to wash their hands twice (at the same time whistling “Happy Birthday To You”) ever so often, as they would be preparing food for other people to eat. As “trainees”, we were also expected to follow this guideline, as some Greenwich higher-ups were observing our “training period”.
Even though we were special guests, we were not supposed to be given any special treatment, and were supposed to adhere to company standards.
As soon as we were taught how to construct a pizza, from the basic single cheese pizza to the more complicated Greenwich Special, we were set loose in their kitchen. First to go on was their top-secret pizza sauce, then the special cheese. The meat bits went on next, followed by small pieces of pineapple.
Pepperoni slices are then placed on top in a sort of ‘x’ pattern, with bacon and mushroom slices after. Onion rings and green pepper strips follow; with a final sprinkling of finely ground garlic powder.
Once constructed, we placed our pizzas in a conveyor belt, where it enters a Blodgett commercial pizza oven. Around three minutes later, almost like magic, our cooked pizzas emerge on the other side, as professionally done as can be.
According to Boggs Racaza, Area Manager for Operations, the Greenwich Pizza-Making Camp is a year-round activity held by the company, not only for children but also for anyone who’s never made a pizza on their own and is interested in making one.
She relates, “We even have HRM students coming in to register, for some actual experience in a professional environment.”
Though the small and cozy Greenwich I knew no longer exists, replaced by spacious, brightly-lit, well-equipped restaurants with full crews in almost every major city and town in the Philippines, the smells are still there, whatever branch you may be at. More importantly, the tastes that many La Sallistas grew to love are preserved, if not made even more delicious. And when I took that bite of Greenwich pizza that I made with my own hands, all the memories of playing hooky, and chasing after Assumptionistas, and the carefree life I led then, came rushing back. And of that famous pizza in Greenhills, well, it was as if we never said goodbye.
