By Charlie Pogacar
Dan Richer, owner and operator of Razza Pizza Artigianale, needs little introduction. His pizza was named Best in North America by 50 Top Pizza in 2019, and New York Times’ critic Pete Wells once gave the restaurant a coveted three-star review, putting Razza in elite company.
In 2021, Richer published The Joy of Pizza, a seminal book to many amateur and professional pizza makers. The book is a window into Richer’s belief that the industry is better when pizza makers share their secrets publicly—a stark contrast to the world in which Richer began making pizza back in 2003.
“When I was learning 20 years ago, you couldn’t walk into somebody’s restaurant and ask them what the hydration of their dough was or what oven they were using or about their sourdough starter routine,” Richer said. “I love sharing the knowledge because it was so hard for me [starting out], and I don’t think that’s the way it should be.”
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One of the latest tricks Richer is ready to share with the world is best explained by a new menu item at Razza: The Spicy Vegan Vodka pie, featuring two plant-based products that have earned the pizzaiolo’s deep respect. In fact, after years of searching for dairy-free ingredients worthy of his menu, Richer believes he has finally found them. And if what he has to say in the following Q&A sounds suspiciously like a product pitch, Richer wants you to know about some ground rules he operates under.
“I’m not going to put something on our menu if I don’t fully believe in it,” Richer told PMQ Pizza. “Everything in our restaurant is super specific. It could be the sea salt on our pizza, or it doesn’t even have to be related to pizza. It could be the hand soap in our bathroom that is extremely specific. I just simply don’t put products into our restaurant without being truly in love with them.”
We sat down with Richer to discuss his new vegan pie and how it came to be. We also asked him plenty of other questions about his recent experiences in Italy, Las Vegas and the things he’s learned since he started making pizza in 2003.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation.
PMQ: How was Italy?
Dan Richer: Italy was incredible. It was a whirlwind trip. I had just got back from Vegas and then had to turn right around and go.
PMQ: Which region were you in?
Dan Richer: So I was serving as a tour guide in the Piedmont, which is my favorite area of Italy to go to. There aren’t as many tourists, it’s in the foothills of the Alps, and I love the mountains. So it’s just stunningly beautiful everywhere you look. The wine is incredible, and the food is my favorite in Italy.
It’s also interesting to see, when you’re in Italy, literally driving from one town that is a 20-minute drive to another town and the food is completely different. The pasta shapes will be different, the traditions are different.
PMQ: Do they do a lot of pizza in the Piedmont?
Dan Richer: Nope! None. I mean, everybody does pizza, right? But it’s not like it’s their thing. You’ll see pizza here and there, but I’m not eating pizza in the Piedmont. For me, it’s all about the pasta. Give me all of the pasta when I’m in that area.
PMQ: And working backwards, how was your Pizza Expo experience?
Dan Richer: It was quick. At Pizza Expo I always need that one full day just to walk the floor. I beeline it from booth-to-booth to see what’s new, what’s exciting. I want to take a look at things that I’m shopping for, whether it’s tasting different tomatoes or mozzarella, talking to all the different flour mills, all of the tomato canners and olive oil producers.
I’ve learned so much over the years at Pizza Expo. My first one, I think, was in 2004? Somewhere around there. I would not be the baker I am today had I not spent time at Expo.
I haven’t been every year since 2004, I skipped a bunch in the middle. But I always find my way back. And every year, I say I’m not going to go next year, and I always end up going back because I love it. It’s not just the products, it’s the people—these relationships I’ve been building for such a long time. Getting to see everybody in the same spot for the two or three days is easily the best part.
Also, I always keep this list of notes on my phone of the hyper-nerdy questions [that come up throughout the year] that only true experts can answer. Obviously, we have cell phones now and I can reach out to them, but I still get a lot of knowledge out there [in Las Vegas], fortunately.
PMQ: You have been trying out some dairy-free cheeses for your vegan pizza, right? Can you tell us about that?
Dan Richer: I’m very fortunate that companies just randomly send me ingredients to play with. Honestly, it’s kind of my favorite part of the job: experimenting and trying things out. And because our pizza culture is in constant motion and there’s always new products out there – there are always new varieties of vegetables I’ve never heard of, for example, or different cheeses or different flours. There are so many different products out there, and I love to learn and gain knowledge through trial and error.
So Violife is one of those products where they were like, we’ll send you some of our vegan cheeses and see if you like them. No pressure, fortunately. And I fell in love with two of their products that are worthy of being on our menu for a variety of reasons. One, they’re delicious. The heavy cream is like my favorite thing that I’ve discovered this year so far. You would never know it’s plant-based, you would never know it’s completely allergen-friendly, and that’s a big deal! People need alternatives to certain things, and these products are finally getting good.
I would say [some dairy-free products] still have a long way to go, especially when it comes to plant-based melting cheeses. In general, in my opinion, those are still at the infancy [stage] of what they’re going to become and I’m really excited to watch it change and grow as these products really develop. But the [Violife] heavy cream and the Parmesan cheese are really good—they don’t need to be tweaked. I don’t think they can get better.
PMQ: How long have you been exploring having vegan options on your menu?
Dan Richer: So, we’ve always offered to just like… take the cheese off. So we could always make any of our pies vegan, it’s just that we’re doing it without cheese. And I would say for about five years or so it’s really been on my radar trying to find a better product that’s vegan and dairy-free.
Obviously, we get a lot of [diners with] dairy allergies, and we get a lot of gluten-free allergies, and it kills me every time that we don’t have a substitute because I have not found a gluten-free flour or a product that can get me the results I want. If I found a gluten-free flour that’s as good as the Violife Heavy Cream, I would put it on the menu, but it’s just not there.
PMQ: OK, so you had not been putting a vegan cheese on your menu until you found this?
Dan Richer: Every now and then we would have a vegan pizza on the menu, but, no, we were not doing a vegan cheese until I found this.
PMQ: Do you think I’d be able to tell the Vegan Vodka pie is made with dairy-free products?
Dan Richer: No [freaking] way. Sorry for the language, but no, no way. And I would not say something that is not true. I just don’t do that.
PMQ: The pizza has been on the menu for about a month at this point. Do you feel like it’s opening up a new clientele base for Razza?
Dan Richer: We’re a unique restaurant. We’re really lucky that people fly in from all over the world for our pizza. We’re really fortunate that we don’t have any empty tables, so it’s kind of hard to quantify if somebody’s coming into the restaurant for just this one pizza.
But for the average pizzeria out there, I think you absolutely need to focus on being allergen-friendly in some way.
PMQ: Kind of a dumb question, but why do you think that’s so important?
Dan Richer: Because the prevalence of allergies among our population has increased dramatically, and it’s not slowing down.
Also, it’s really unfortunate that [people with allergies] get a bad rap. It sucks that chefs are like, ‘Oh, the guy with allergies, great.’ It’s not [the diner’s] fault! Some people can’t eat this stuff, and some people make the choice to eat plant-based products. It’s not a bad choice—it’s scientifically proven that, most of the time, veganism is healthier. So even if it’s just about having a balanced diet, who are you to say what they should be eating?
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PMQ: Okay, switching gears here. In the 20-plus years you’ve been doing this, what have been the most impactful changes in the pizza industry?
Dan Richer: It’s a great question. It’s changed so much. My favorite change has been that we have opened up the industry to new people coming into it. We’re open with knowledge and sharing knowledge.
When I was learning 20 years ago, you couldn’t walk into somebody’s restaurant and ask them what the hydration of their dough is or what oven they’re using or about their sourdough starter routine. First of all, nobody was doing that years ago—except maybe Anthony Mangieri. Nobody was doing that, and it made it very difficult to learn how to properly make pizza.
It was very gated off, to the point where people would take off the labels of their cans of tomatoes so nobody would see them, or they’d hide the bags of flour so that nobody knew which flour they were using. And that’s not a good thing, in my opinion.
Honestly, I think a lot of it was because the knowledge base wasn’t so great. Pizzeria operators back in the day didn’t really know the reasons why. They were just following a recipe that worked, one that they’d been using forever. Nowadays, people like me want to know the reason why. Like, why are you telling me I have to use San Marzano tomatoes? I want to know why. And I’m going to then do a deep dive on A) figuring out if I, myself, also have to do it, and B) why people are saying I have to. I want to figure it out.
I love sharing the knowledge because it was so hard for me to gain it when I started out. It shouldn’t be that hard. And if you want to be in this industry, you should have fair access to it, and we should, as a part of the community, be engaging and helpful to those starting out.
PMQ: What separates good pizza from bad pizza and good pizza from great pizza?
Dan Richer: Care. That’s it. Really, it’s just care.
It’s genuinely caring about the product, your guests, your team, the people you surround yourself with. It’s the amount of care that you take in every step of the process, every day of the week, every week of the year, year after year.
There are about 30 steps to making pizza from the moment you choose what flour to mix with water, and there has to be a level of care and commitment to being excellent every step of the way.
And we’re talking about small steps, like whether you cross-stack your doughs to cool them down if you’re refrigerating them overnight. That’s a step [with major implications]. Temperature control in the room, temperature control of the dough, how much friction is generated, how much heat is generated by friction, taking that into account with the formula.
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All of these things really matter if you’re looking to create a consistently excellent product every single day. It really comes down to whether you have enough gasoline in your tank to keep going when it gets really difficult, because it does get difficult. And do you have enough gas in your tank to keep going with the level of excellence that you once did?
PMQ: One thing I know you’re passionate about is training your staff and developing their careers. Why is it so important to you to be able to have faith in your staff and to be able to step away from the shop to do things like go to Las Vegas and Italy and believe the shop can keep the lights on while you’re away?
Dan Richer: I don’t want to do this alone. It’s too hard. It’s too hard, and it’s lonely working alone.
We have the power to bring so much joy to our guests, but also to each other. We’re constantly surrounded by people in this business, and we can either be a positive impact or we can just be hands-off and be selling widgets, right?
We’re not selling widgets. We’re actually creating an environment of care and kindness, and we have the ability to bring happiness to people’s lives—both our guests and the people on our team. And if we can create an environment where that happens, that just feels good. Does that make sense?
PMQ: It does. It also makes me think of the book you published, The Joy of Pizza. What made you want to create that?
Dan Richer: I think at that point it was 18 years that I’d been in the business, and I wanted to share what I’d learned in the first 18 years of my career.
One of the things I’ve always struggled with about pizza is that I put all of this time and energy and care into it—all of the gasoline in my tank goes into this thing that is gone five minutes after it’s finished. It’s done. It’s consumed, and you’re left with these beautiful memories, and that’s great, but I needed some sense of permanence.
For me, personally, I spent all of these years missing family events and spending every single Saturday for decades at the restaurant rather than with my family and friends. So I think that’s why I needed that sense of permanence, something to show for all of those years.
At the same time, and more importantly, I didn’t want anyone to experience the same level of frustration that I did reading some of these pizza books and bread-making books that use crazy terminology that you’re just supposed to know. And there are a lot of excellent pizza books that put recipes in there from the restaurant but don’t really explain the why behind it. And at your pizza restaurant you might have a different oven, you’re using different flour. All of these things mean it won’t work the same way for you.
I don’t think it’s impossible to make restaurant-quality pizza at home, whether it’s with a high temperature oven like an Ooni, or even your standard home oven. The average home baker can make restaurant-quality pizza. It’s just a matter of practice and starting with the right set of knowledge, the right set of ingredients and the tools and techniques for how to put them all together.
PMQ: This was awesome, Dan, I really appreciate your time.
Dan Richer: Anytime! Talk soon.
