Slow Baja - Travel Talk With Slow Baja Chef Mattia Makes The Best Pizza In Baja!

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Today’s Travel Talk with Slow Baja meets Chef Mattia, pizza maker extraordinaire in San Juanico B.C.S. Italian-born Chef Matti crafts wood-fired pizzas in his custom-made pizza oven on a Russian UAZ-452 “Bukhanka” van. We recorded our conversation during our Slow Baja Summer podcasting trip in July. He was making his weekly appearance at “Big Juan’s” Las Malandras restaurant. Chef Mattia hails from Treviso, Italy, and has been making pizzas since he was a teenager. An avid surfer, he opened his first pizza restaurant in Sayulita. When he moved to San Juanico, he purchased his vintage U.A.Z. 4x4 van and outfitted it with a pizza oven of his design. Mattia committed to bringing the pizza to the party, and with his van, he could get to nearly anywhere you want to party. He’s figured it out, and I will be frank; Chef Mattia makes the best pizza I’ve had in Baja!  Slow Baja approved! Follow Pizza Catering on Instagram Check out the Pizza Catering Website Follow Las Malandras on Instagram Check out Scorpion Bay Bungalows

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip. Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. It's a 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmarkmaps.com. You're welcome, guys. It's really good.

I see you later or tomorrow. Yes, sir. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Hey, Matia? Yeah. Matia or Matias? Matia. Let's catch you in between pizzas.

Perfect. Hey, thanks for making a minute for Slow Baja. It's a travel talk. I'm in San Juanico, and we are, what's name of this? restaurant, Matia? Las Malandras. I only know it is Juan Grandes. Yeah, I know.

It's called Las Malandres. Las Malandres. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're here, and you do a pizza pop up here once a week? Yeah, once a week, every Sunday. All right. Well, tell me about your truck.

Well, I have, this is a, it's called Buhanka in Russia. And it's a Russian kind of version of the VW combi bus. they've been making this old school style design combi since 1967 and they haven't changed the design up to date, up to date. And they're still selling it and saw some people in the big city in Mexico

they started importing and I got one. Actually, I got the first one sold in Mexico. They were four-wheel drive, perfect size, perfect, like old style looking. Just an old-fashioned. Yeah. Perfect for Baja. Yeah, simple.

I do build wood fire ovens, portable metal wood fire ovens. And I had the idea of sticking, well, actually, my wife told me, hey, why don't you put it? Why don't you stick one in the back of the bus and do pizzas? And I say, well, let's try. And it worked. You had a restaurant in Salyta before this. Yeah, in mainland in Sallita. And where are you from originally?

I'm from Venice, Italy. Venice, Italy. So you know a little something about pizzas. Yeah, that's been my job all my life. So for about maybe 18 years now. Yeah, since I was 16, I started working in the pizza. And did you always make pizza with the wood-fired oven? Yeah, always mainly, any kind of wood-fire oven, maybe, like, you know, turning, salt-spinning ones, every sort of wood-fire oven. Yeah.

So I've eaten way too much pizza tonight, and it was magnificent. Thanks. Walk me through the process. You're making the dough here yourself. Yeah, I make the dough in my house, and then I let it raise. What it raised, I just get the sauce ready and prepare some garlic sauce too and get my van ready, because normally I have surfboards in it. So I get the surfboards out, the sand.

I brushed the sand away everywhere. And then I start sticking the pizza tools in it, tables, boards, and, yeah, the wood for the oven, my clothes. And then I, about maybe three, four hours before service. Let's say three hours before service, I live home and come here at the restaurant, park, and set my little portable pizza place. And so you've got three plastic folding tables. Exactly.

your full pizza set up here, a couple big hunks of granite. Yeah, hunks of granite, which they, they, it was a big plank of granite and I split it in three parts so I can move them, you know, and then I join them together on the table and I can make pizzas on them. Yeah, like that was my part of all pizza place project. You know, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser down to Baja, and when we go, we go with Baja bound insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use, Baja Baja Bound insurance, serving Mexico travel. since 1994. Hey, do you have a 4x4?

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W-N-O-R-A dot com or on Slow Baja. And walk me through what makes a great pizza. Well, experience and experience in eating and making it. And a good dough raising time. And, well, some people say magic hands, a touch of magic hands. I don't know if that's true, but maybe. I think it's experience and a good raising dog, you know, and good wood, a good oven. So, yeah, so I tried to take care of all, of everything.

So you've got all the ingredients, so to speak, plus the ingredients. Plus the ingredients. I can make everything else. So tell me about the oven. You built this or was built for you? I also make brick ovens too. And actually the one in my restaurant in Sejolita, I made it. And so I stick to the same sizes, design and concept.

So then I moved it into a portable metal one with the idea of using them in places or having people using them in places where they don't really use them every night. So because if you use it every night, then the bricks and all that, you can keep it hot, easy. When you light it once a week

to warm up a brick wood fire oven, it takes a long, long time. When instead warming up a metal one, it's way faster. So you can use it once a month, once a year, and it works as a professional brick oven, but it lights up in 40 minutes, 20 minutes. When the brick ones, if you light it once a month,

or once a year, once a week, that day it will take you hours and hours and hours of burning good because and lots of wood yeah the heat needs to go through all the bricks to actually cook well the pizzas I mean I'm talking about cooking good doing it good you know so temperature wise temperature wise it gets up to like 400 between 3 50 and 450 Celsius I don't know it's hot it's hot it's super hot it's super hot you can't really Super hot and you're cooking a, what is that, a 12-inch pizza, 14-inch pizza? I can do any size.

But the pizzas you were making tonight, you would put three pizzas in the oven. Yeah, 12, 14 inches. And you're cooking them in three minutes, it looks like. Well, I can, you know, I can pump up a little bit and go down to a minute, 50 seconds a minute or two minutes, depends, you know. I can relax a bit and, you know, so I don't have to burn so much wood, you know. Or if it's start to get crowded. I can just you can start to you can start to turn them out at a minute minute a piece. Yeah for sure. And

Where can people find out about you? I have a little Instagram profile. Yes, which is called pizza catering. Pizza catering easy to find because I'm the only one with that name. Okay and there's a little logo with a little cart carrying a little oven. I made up the logo and what else do you do here in in San Juanico? I live here, I surf, and I have two little bangalows for rent, which are called, also I have a little profile on Instagram, it's called Scorpion Bay Bungalos. This is how we know each other. Yeah.

And yeah, and that's it. My wife does some horse riding with the tourists. She loves the ranch life. And she's also a chef and also cooks for private dinners and stuff. And yeah, we try to live the dream, you know. How can you describe Baja versus when you lived in Salilita and when he lived in Puerto Ferd? Wow, it's like, it's a huge difference. We were kind of over the crowd.

I was kind of over also the humidity and the heat, the humidity hit in that tropical kind of weather, especially working in front of the oven in the restaurant. And we were also kind of over the crowd. It was kind of getting hard to serve, like super crowded. And yeah, so when we first saw Baja, we said, oh, wow, man, this is like another story, you know, big white spaces, free camping. And we always traveled in all our life. So I think Baja was exactly what we were looking for. And we were surprised when we didn't know about it before.

How are you received as an Italian? What, sorry? As an Italian, how are you received here by the Lerner? local people? Oh, it was pretty well. I mean, I never really, we never really had troubles anywhere we went. Maybe we arrived already like with a pretty fluent Spanish and I always like to kind of conflate a little bit with the language. So I try to pick the local words and all that. So of course I did a lot of school with my workers in Sajolita. So I think that is a good like, It's a big, I would say, like advantage to speak the local language pretty good.

And yeah, just smile and say hello to everybody and don't be grumpy. Don't be grumpy in the water or don't be grumpy on the street. And that's a good part. Is there any crossover between surfing and being a chef? Well, you know, I think there's no job goes along. with surfing. That's pretty wise observation. If you want to be good at surfing,

you need to be good at surfing and spend lots of time in the water, which is hard to have a good job. I mean, you could work in the night, you could work in the day, but it's, you know, if you're surfing, it's tough when you do everything else.

You know, you know, even having a girlfriend, it's hard when you surf. And, uh, what do you, What can you tell me about the waves here in San Juanico?

Well, you know, it's pretty amazing when it turns on, when it's on, it's really good. And, yeah, I mean, for sure we need some more sand. We keep hearing stories about the good days when it was pretty sandy and drivable all the way around the points. And I think, I mean, it's still really good. And when we would get the sand back, it's going to be really good again. more good but I mean for me it's pretty amazing this is this is what this is exactly what I was looking for when I left Italy a long time ago and we're surfing then yeah some I've surfing in Sardinia in the islands and well all

around but of course you know as an Italian or any Mediterranean surfer you dream about a perfect point break so that's what I found and yeah that's That's why I moved here. That's what you found in San Juanico and that's why you're making the pizzas. Exactly. Hey, Matthias, thank you, thank you so much for spending a minute with Slow Baja. One more time if people want to find you, you're on Instagram at... As pizza catering or as Scorpion Bay bungalows.

And tell me just for a minute here about your bungalows. What do you have and what can people expect when they want to come and stay here? Yeah, we are in the very high in the top area of town, in the highest area of town, kind of away from the dusty wind and we have two units kind of a small fully fully equipped kitchen refrigerator full bathroom and the kind of this sleep on top on a loft and super cozy you know design and furniture and there's a big space outside for playing for kids and for who have pets and everything is safely fenced in so little kids can left can be left alone playing outside or

who has a dog can leave it outside and it doesn't escape and all that yeah and we you know we are right on the border of the ranch life and the surfing life so you stay with us and just hear the coyotes in the night and just turn around and drive a minute and be in the waves you know so we try to leave it cheap and so people can enjoy, any kind of people can enjoy and be happy. Scorpion Bay Bungalows on Instagram and pizza catering on Instagram. Hey, thanks again. Thank you so much.

Appreciate you taking a minute and the pizza was outstanding and I think you need to figure out a way to get anchovies here because that anchovy pizza. I know. It was the best. It really was so simple and so wonderful and it was actually, it was lovely. I will, I will. All right. Thanks, man.

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