Every Friday night, even into the autumn early darkness and chill, Scott and Dominick set up their tent in the parking lot beside the big wood-fired oven behind the Round House Cafe. They take out their tubs and tins of vegetables and cheeses and garlic paste and sausage and bacon bits, all fresh meticulously cut and stored, and wait for their orders. On a busy night, they will make more than 40 pizzas, on a slower night like tonight, 14 to 20.
It was chilly tonight, and getting dark early, I imagine they will shut pizza night down until the Spring in a few weeks, although Scott is notoriously stubborn and strong-willed and proud about his pizza. He gave me a long lecture on how to make garlic paste tonight, Maria, who was standing alongside me with Red, interrupted: “Scott, you know he will never do that.” Scott smiled, shook his head.
Mark from Salem Farm Supply came up to me and introduced himself. “You don’t remember me,” he said, a bit shy. “I sold you a tractor.” I did remember him, and I remembered the tractor, it was an act of pure madness, it cost $20,000 and I got it to haul round bales around for Elvis, the 3,000 lb Swiss steer I should never have accepted him as a pet. I loved Elvis, but Swiss Steers (it came from the Gully Farm, I later learned) are not pets, and they cost a fortune to feed.
When I came out of my crack-up, I looked at the tractor, looked around and realized I had lost my mind. I had lost control of my life. Elvis left shortly, the tractor followed. Even in the Great Recession, there were farmers who wanted it. I did love riding around in it, it had an Ipod connector, I remember listening to Kanye West in that Kubota, rumbling around the pasture with a huge round bale on the fork.
I nearly toppled over a dozen times, but I felt like hot stuff. I wasn’t hot stuff, I was falling apart. If they shouldn’t sell guns to the mentally ill, they shouldn’t sell tractors to aging writers from Providence.
Mark had no idea he had sold the tractor to a lunatic, and if he did, he was too polite to show it. A nice man, he lives just over the hill from our new farm.
The pizza is, in fact, quite special, Maria and I go every Friday, we sometimes meet friends there. I wouldn’t be shocked to see he and Dominick standing out there in the middle of a snowstorm, feeding the wood into the stove, taking orders on his Iphone from the cafe a few hundred yards away, the first cell phone Scott ever owned, it was covered in oil and cheese.
People and kids show up in a stream, some to say hello, some to watch. After the cafe closed, he and Dominick will spent 45 minutes cleaning up, putting the tables a way, dismantling the tent, taking the tins of food back to the cafe for washing. Then back next Friday.
Scott and Dominick are a powerful pair, they have worked together for some years, they work steadily and communicate intuitively. This is a part of the thing so many of us want, and so many of us fear we are losing: community. A place to gather, meet other people with know, catch up, watch a passionate chef do his work, support a local business. And have a great meal, the pizza – a white pizza with freshly rolled dough, mozzarella, riccota, garlic paste, scallions and a few bacon bits – the pizzas all cost $15.
We’ve spent three or four times that and not had half as good a meal. There is no chain or franchise restaurant that could come close to the quality and the taste and the atmosphere.
We appreciate our evenings at the Round House on Friday, they are as much about community as they are about food. Both are important. If Scott and Dominick are there in the winter, we will be there too.