I had a strange dream once that I was trapped in a produce truck.

I don’t remember exactly how I got there, but I remember the truck was filled with strawberries and fennel. That’s it. Strawberries and fennel.

I had to bargain with the guy to get out. He kept asking me what I did, and I kept saying, “I’m a cook. I’m a cook at the French Laundry. I’m a chef de partie at the French Laundry.”

He finally said, “Okay, I’m going to let you out, but you have to commit. You have to promise me that you will do a dish at the French Laundry with strawberries and fennel.”

So I promised him.

Back then at The French Laundry, after service we’d all get together with our pens and notepads, often into the early morning, to create the menu for the next day, place orders, and work through everything that needed to happen.

There were seasonal staples that stayed, but there was always room to push the envelope. My time there was a period of tremendous creativity and change, and that was probably my favorite part.

As I mentioned in a previous post, you’d say one ingredient to a colleague or to Chef Keller, and boom, you had this wonderful dish that you probably would have never thought about on your own. That kind of collaboration was truly the essence of that time. It was magical.

One night, when we got to the foie gras dish—seared foie gras—Chef said, “What about the foie?”

And in sometimes my typical fashion back in the day, I just blurted it out:

“What about strawberries and fennel?”

Everybody kind of looked around at me like, where the hell did that come from?

So, of course, I had to tell them about the dream.

After a chuckle, the next night the dish was on the menu: Hudson Valley seared foie gras with caramelized fennel & Jacobsen Farm strawberries.

I’ve always approached creativity in food in much the same way I think about music.

There are only twelve notes. Yet somehow, musicians have been writing songs for hundreds of years.

Cooking isn’t so different. There are only so many ingredients. What matters is what you do with them.

As a guitar player, I’ve learned that it’s not just the note. It’s how you touch the string. The bend, the vibrato, the articulation, the space around it. A musician friend of mine once put it perfectly: “Give every note its own zip code.”

I think the same thing applies to cooking.

Give every ingredient its own zip code.

It doesn’t necessarily mean every ingredient needs to be the star. Some things are guest-facing, some things aren’t. But everything that’s on the plate should be there for a reason. It should have a purpose. It should create depth.

The combination itself wasn’t necessarily new. But the way you see it, the way you touch it, the way you put it together—that’s where the possibilities are.

And sometimes the idea just comes from somewhere completely unexpected.

In this case, apparently, it came from being trapped in a produce truck with strawberries and fennel.

Proof Note

Today, I see this combination a little differently:

Wood-roasted pork chops, fennel hash, sweet & sour strawberries, charred corn, lime butter.

Same strawberries and fennel. Just a different time, place and purpose.

A few days ago, I reposted a video of Anthony Mangieri talking about process and singular focus. A friend of mine, whose opinion I respect because he understands what it means to devote yourself to a craft, sent me a question that stayed with me.

It wasn’t the kind of question I could answer between shaping dough and service. It deserved more than a quick reply.

He asked:

“Outside of singular focus and passion, do you think there’s anything truly special about the product he’s making? Not that it isn’t great, but after all the time and focus you put into your pizza and process, do you think there’s really that much difference between each of your finished products?”

Over the next few mornings, during the walks where I tend to do my best thinking, I kept coming back to it.

For most of my career, my training emphasized more.

More technique. More knowledge. More refinement. More responsibility.

That’s how progress was measured for a very long time. That’s how I measured myself.

Looking back, I realized Anthony and I were following different paths.

Mine followed the standard progression of the profession: the next position, the next responsibility, the next level.

His was about going deeper into the same work.

There were nights at Vignette when everything was clicking. I believed my pizza was as good as anybody’s.

But in response to my friend’s question, I don’t think what makes Anthony’s work special is simply the pizza itself.

He stayed on that path for more than thirty years through different locations, a pandemic, and two different coasts.

That’s remarkably difficult.

That realization resonated with me because, if I’m being honest, there were times at Vignette when I stepped away from my own path. I listened to voices that weren’t mine and tried to make everyone else happy instead of staying true to myself.

Lesson learned.

Those thoughts were still with me a few days later when I sat down at Pizza Studio Tamaki.

For years, I’ve been fascinated by the way Neapolitan pizza has evolved in Tokyo—the intention, the flour, the fermentation, the ingredients, the restraint, and the process. I wanted to experience how that tradition had traveled from Naples to Tokyo and now to New York City.

I didn’t walk into Pizza Studio Tamaki looking to rank it against anyone else.

I wasn’t looking for validation that one style was better than another.

I simply walked in excited to experience what they had spent years creating.

The pizza was distinct. It was delicious.

More importantly, it held my attention and made me lean in.

I wasn’t trying to figure it out.

I was asking questions. Lots of questions.

Why did this affect me the way it does?

To me, that’s one of the greatest compliments you can give another craftsperson.

Pizza is personal.

Some people love a thin, crisp pie. Others are drawn to chew, softness, char, restraint, or abundance.

None of those preferences are wrong.

Sometimes we say we don’t like a pizza, but what we really mean is that we don’t like a particular style.

That’s an important distinction.

Let the work speak before we do.

Hospitality, after all, is about how you make people feel.

I’ve had unforgettable meals where the technical execution wasn’t perfect, but the experience was generous and thoughtful.

I’ve also had technically flawless meals that disappeared from my memory as quickly as the plates were cleared.

The same is true for pizza.

A pizza bakes in ninety seconds and disappears in a few minutes.

Such a remarkable journey for something we experience so briefly.

Maybe that’s where the maker’s years of focus finally become tangible.

They pass from the hands of the person who spent decades refining the work to the person taking the first bite.

Sometimes that moment makes us lean back and think, I could eat this every day.

Sometimes it simply leaves us curious.

Even when it isn’t our favorite style, the experience can still be memorable and teach us something.

That’s what I took away from Anthony’s work and from my meal at Pizza Studio Tamaki.

My friend’s question wasn’t really about pizza.

It was about whether decades of singular focus leave a mark on the finished work.

I think they do.

Not because one pizza is objectively better than another, but because sustained attention leaves a fingerprint.

You can taste it.

You can feel it.

And if you’re paying attention, it sends you home with better questions than the ones you arrived with.

Always sharing Proof,
-Mark

Naturally leavened dough, local eggs, buffalo mozzarella, chard, mortadella, Pecorino Romano, & CCP

CCP: The Original Calabrian Chili Pesto

Every kitchen has a few recipes that quietly become part of its identity.

This was one of ours.

We called it CCP—Calabrian Chili Pesto.

It was a recipe I created years ago and refined over time between Farmshop and Vignette.

What I do know is where it found its home.

The Red Eye!

The Red Eye was one of my favorite pizzas we ever served at Vignette.

The Red Eye was inspired by the many red-eye flights I took while working for Chef Thomas Keller. It was simply the meal I always wished they'd served on those flights.

Naturally leavened dough topped with local eggs, buffalo mozzarella, charred mortadella, and Pecorino Romano. We finished it with CCP, and before long, guests were asking for extra on the side.

That's when everything came together.

CCP wasn't another topping. It was the final touch—the little bit of heat that cut through the richness of the eggs and charred mortadella, tying every bite together.

It also became an essential part of the Angry Crab Spaghetti with nduja and local crab, another dish that wouldn't have been the same without it.

The original recipe uses a pressure cooker because that was the method I was obsessed with at the time. It isn't essential. A heavy pot with a lid will get you to the same place.

However you make it, let it chill completely before using. Like most condiments, it's even better the next day.

I hope it finds a place in your kitchen the way it did in ours.

Read more

One afternoon in the kitchen at Bouchon Las Vegas, I was making my usual rounds through the walk-in when something caught my eye.

It was watermelon trim that had apparently been cryovaced.

It sure didn't look like watermelon anymore.

It looked and felt like wax. Like somebody had melted it into the bag, then put it back in the walk-in to solidify.

The color had deepened. The texture had changed.

Immediately, I thought of pepper-crusted tuna.

I went back to the cutting board, cut a perfect block of watermelon, coated it with freshly cracked black pepper, vacuum-sealed it, and returned it to the walk-in.

The transformation was remarkable.

Almost everyone asked the same question.

"Is that tuna?"

That was my favorite part.

What they thought they were looking at and what they were actually eating were two different things. It made them smile and gave me the opportunity to tell the story.

At a traditional French bistro serving more than 350 guests a night, canapés were often not part of our daily offering. But every now and then, I'd push my luck when I was feeling inspired.

A short time later, Chef Thomas Keller was in Las Vegas.

I sent it out to him because I knew he'd understand what he was seeing. One of the things I've always admired about Chef is his ability to see beyond the obvious. I'd hand him a branch, and he'd show me a forest.

The next day he was back in New York.

Not long afterward, I got a call from one of the chefs at Per Se.

"What did you show Chef? He's in the walk-in cryovac-ing bananas, strawberries, cucumbers... just about everything he can get his hands on."

Years later, the discovery was noted in Chef Thomas Keller's *Under Pressure* (2008).

Looking back, this story isn't really about compressed watermelon.

It's about curiosity.

It's about awareness.

It's about paying attention.

The ideas that shape us rarely arrive all at once.

They reveal themselves one observation at a time.

That's patchwork.

We decided to make the trip to the Beacon Farmers Market after hearing great things about it. Another reason for going was that a local pizza maker, who sources his mozzarella from Trotta’s House of Pasta in Thornwood, New York—a family business I’ve known for over 40 years— and actually worked there many moons ago! was scheduled to be there. We figured we’d check out one of the Hudson Valley’s best farmers markets, grab a slice or a panuzzo and make a day of it.

As it turned out, some last-minute logistics kept him from making the market. No big deal—we were there for the market anyway.

On the drive, my good friend Paulie shared a photo of a beautiful focaccia he’d just baked. I looked at it and texted back, “Petra?” His reply came almost immediately: “Of course.” I laughed. I’d introduced him to Petra flour years ago, so I probably should have known the answer. That was all the inspiration I needed. On the way home, we stopped to pick up Petra 3 and Petra 9. I couldn’t wait to get home and start mixing.

We came home with a few pints of beautiful Sun gold tomatoes, along with a pretty full market basket. We’d used some of the tomatoes the night before, and there were still plenty left. As I started mixing the dough, my partner looked at the tomatoes and said, “Those would be great on the focaccia.”

She was right!!

Enjoy the recipe.

Summer Sun Gold Tomato & Fennel Seed Focaccia

Ingredients

• Petra 3 Flour — 450 g

• Petra 9 Flour — 50 g

• Water — 450 g total

  • 300 g (autolyse)

  • 100 g (bassinage)

  • 50 g (yeast + honey)

• Active Dry Yeast — 6 g

  • 5 g for overnight fermentation

• Honey — 5 g

• Salt — 11 g

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil — 35 g

Topping

• Summer Sun Gold tomatoes, halved

• Toasted fennel seed

• Flaky sea salt

• Extra virgin olive oil

Method

1. Autolyse

• Mix the flours with 300 g water until no dry flour remains.

• Cover and rest 20–30 minutes.

2. Bassinage

• Gradually add 100 g water, allowing each addition to absorb before adding more.

3. Yeast

• Dissolve 6 g active dry yeast (5 g for overnight fermentation) and 5 g honey in the remaining 50 g water.

• Add to the dough and mix until incorporated.

4. Salt

• Add 11 g salt and mix until fully incorporated.

5. Olive Oil

• Add 35 g olive oil and continue mixing until the dough is smooth, elastic, and glossy.

6. Bulk Fermentation

• Rest 30 minutes.

7. Fold #1

• Perform one set of stretch and folds.

• Rest 30 minutes.

8. Fold #2

• Perform a second set of stretch and folds.

• Continue bulk fermentation until the dough has gained strength and begun to rise.

Proof

Same-Day Dough

• Line a 10 × 14-inch Detroit-style pan with parchment.

• Lightly oil the parchment.

• Transfer the dough to the pan and gently stretch it toward the corners.

• Cover and proof until light, airy, and bubbly.

Overnight Dough

• Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled container large enough for expansion.

• Cover and refrigerate overnight.

• Do not proof in the pan.

• The next day, line the pan with parchment and lightly oil it.

• Transfer the dough to the pan, gently stretch it toward the corners, and allow it to complete its final proof.

9. Top

• Generously dimple the dough with well-oiled fingertips.

• Arrange the halved Summer Sun Gold tomatoes evenly over the surface.

• Lightly press the tomatoes into the dough to seat them without deflating the dough.

• Sprinkle with toasted fennel seed.

• Finish with flaky sea salt and a generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

10. Bake

• Bake at 430°F until deeply golden with crisp edges and a fully baked center.

11. Cool

• Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes.

• Carefully lift the focaccia from the pan using the parchment.

• Remove the parchment and place the focaccia directly on the wire rack.

• Cool for an additional 10–15 minutes before slicing.

Notes

Flour Used: This recipe was developed with 450 g Petra 3 and 50 g Petra 9.

Substitution: If Petra flour is unavailable, use 450 g bread flour and 50 g whole wheat flour for a similar result.

Enjoy!

A guest painted this watercolor during our time at Vignette Pizzeria.

For years I couldn’t look at it without remembering everything I thought I’d lost.

Today I see something else.

I opened a pizzeria with more determination than experience. I hadn’t spent ten years working in pizza shops.

I was a cook with a great motor. Whether I also had a bad attitude probably depended on who you asked.

I was driven by a quote on the walls of The French Laundry kitchen:

“What would you be able to achieve if you knew failure wasn’t an option?”

That question has stayed with me ever since.

The first time I dined at Una Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco, Anthony Mangieri’s relentless pursuit of pizza perfection changed everything for me.

In that moment, I knew this was what I wanted to do.

So I did.

I chased naturally leavened dough without refrigeration, reading everything I could, experimenting endlessly. I became fascinated by fermentation, flour, fire, and the ritual of repetition.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that one of the hardest things in pizza isn’t learning how to make it.

It’s finding your pizza.

In a world where everything moves so fast, fermentation teaches the opposite. It asks you to slow down, to pay attention, and to trust time instead of chasing trends.

We’re constantly looking around to decide what we should make.

But what if there was nothing to look at?

Where would you look then?

Vignette was never a financial success.

In many ways, it emptied my savings.

But looking back now, I don’t measure it that way anymore. That little pizzeria quietly gave me everything that came after. It opened doors I never expected, brought me back to New York, shaped the way I cook today, and eventually led me to where I am now, even as a private chef still making pizza because of what began there.

I didn’t realize it then, but Vignette never really ended.

I just put it to sleep.

This year my father passed away.

He never really understood everything I did as a chef, or even why I chose the path I did.

But he understood my pizza.

And somehow, through my pizza, he understood me.

In his late 80s, he got on a plane and made the trip to watch me in my element.

That meant more to me than I probably realized at the time.

One of my favorite memories is a voicemail he left me. I told him to call me when he decided what he wanted for dinner.

At 6 a.m. he left a message that said,

“Bring white pizza. Bring white pizza. Bring white pizza.”

I still have that message.

Lately I’ve found myself returning to that dough.

Not because I’m opening another restaurant.

Not because I’m trying to recreate the past.

Because some things deserve another conversation.

For a long time, I thought this had to be a side hustle. I thought there had to be a purpose behind it—to build something, grow an audience, or turn it into a business.

I’ve realized that’s not why I’m writing.

The purpose is gratitude.

Gratitude for where I was. Gratitude for where I am. Gratitude for the people, the lessons, and the failures that somehow carried me here.

So I’ll share the stories. The recipes. The techniques. The farmers’ markets. The books. The people. And, of course, the pizza.

If any of this finds a place at your table, I’m grateful.

By Chef Mark Hopper

TKRG alum • Vignette Pizzeria • Founder, Proof Culinary Consulting

Pizza-Obsessed • Avid Storyteller & Mentor

From wood-fired ovens to Michelin-starred kitchens, the mindset evolved over time—not from the highlights, but from the stumbles. Hired, fired, walked in, walked out. Life lessons ready or not. The stories here are messy and real.

This isn’t about curated perfection. Pizza isn’t perfect. Life isn’t perfect. And that’s the point. This space is for brutal honesty—about food, about craft, and about what it really takes to keep showing up.

It’s not about how to cook—it’s about how to approach it. Sharing fire-driven recipes, creative concepts and more.

Get on the list. First bake drops September 2025!