Sirius XM Podcasts.
Can you tell me the origin story of Colorado Style Pizza?
The origin story of Colorado Style Pizza.
All right.
This is going to be hard with the microphone this close because I have to lay back and get in a really comfortable position to start thinking about that.
I'll give you the real story, not the happy story, okay?
Okay.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
Across America, there are various well-known regional styles of pizza, right?
You have New York's large foldable slices.
New Haven's a pizza or a beets, a bit thinner and heavily charred.
Detroit style is a thick square pizza that's got crispy caramelized cheese around the edges.
There's ultra thin St.
Louis style, and of course, Chicago deep dish.
If you live in a place with its own style of pizza, it's the kind of thing you take your friends to eat when they come to visit.
Right.
It's a source of local pride.
Paul Caroli is a reporter and executive producer of the daily local news podcast CityCast Denver.
Paul grew up in Ohio and he moved to Denver as an adult.
He became obsessed with something called Colorado style pizza.
It's not as well known as others I mentioned.
In fact, it might not even be a regional style at all.
For years, Paul has been on a quest to find out how this type of pizza came to be and why most people outside Colorado haven't heard of it.
Here's Paul.
When I was growing up, pizza was my number one favorite thing.
I loved the square cut tavern style pizzas my family would get from the local spots around central Ohio.
They'd have pepperoni cups packed tight from crust to crust.
There was this place called Donato's.
Oh, my God.
You can get their pizza at that burger chain Red Robin now, which is weird and I need to try it.
But back then, I'm telling you, lights out.
Then when I went to college in D.C., I realized that pizza was a little different everywhere.
I fell in love with the jumbo slice and I fell in love with the woman who's now my wife.
We'd go on dates that always seemed to end up on U Street late night with slices so big you'd need two paper plates to hold them.
So in 2017, a few years after we graduated and moved to Colorado to be closer to her family, I convinced her to start a project where we'd explore the local pizza of Denver in our own podcast.
This is a clip from the very first episode.
Megan, do you remember the intro I wrote?
Do you want to see if you can recall?
I've been saying it all day.
I don't want to do it, as promised.
From downtown Deep Dish to Pepperoni and Park Hill.
This episode is the denver pizza podcast, the only show.
Hungry enough to review every pie in mile high, i'm paul and i'm megan.
I really appreciate.
You just want to say that at the top.
So we're sitting here.
We just got done with sexy pizza.
This is, i feel like you've been saving that for like 10 minutes.
We had so much fun making that podcast.
And while it was ostensibly about analyzing pizza, it was also a way for us to explore Denver and get to know the local pizza scene.
So every couple of weeks we'd invite a friend, or someone we thought might become a friend, out to try a new parlor or slice counter, then sit in our car to review the customer experience.
The pizza overall and the fan favorite category, the crust.
We were only about six episodes in when I noticed something unfamiliar and kind of shocking to me.
Here are my friends Kate and Jeremy, who moved here from the East Coast, explaining.
So I don't know if this is a Denver custom, but I don't think that I ever saw it out in the world before I came to Denver.
They provide honey on the table for dressing your crust at the end.
And that, I think, made the crust of this pizza maybe my favorite part of the pizza experience.
So you almost get dessert with your pizza.
Exactly.
This is not the hot honey that's so trendy to drizzle all over everything now.
What we were seeing next to the red pepper flakes and the Parmesan shaker was squeeze bottles full of good old fashioned straight from the beehive honey which people put on the crust.
The more pizzerias we went to, the more I found myself fixated on the honey.
It seemed like a distinct local pizza tradition that you couldn't find anywhere else.
This was really exciting for me, something special and unique about my new hometown.
When my wife Megan was growing up in Colorado.
She only remembers eating pizza with honey at this place called Bojo's, which has been around forever and has seven locations around the state today.
It's the place Coloradans most associate with honey on pizza.
So of course, we had to go review it.
As usual, we were recording in our car after we ate and I remember as we talked, I could see the big yellow Bojo's sign through our windshield with big black lettering and the slogan Colorado-style pizza.
That was the first time I had seen a pizzeria using that term.
Bojo's calls theirs a mountain pie, because the crust is enormous, as big and puffy as a mountain bike tire, and it's sort of twisted or braided to give it a spiral pattern.
All of it ready for a healthy drizzle from the bottle of honey on the table.
Which I guess if you don't think too hard about it, feels like Colorado-style pizza.
Honey, delicious, and crust as big as the Rockies.
It's certainly a unique pizza experience, but I had been obsessing about this honey thing for months and we had too many questions to just let it go.
We got a new project on the pizza podcast.
We're getting serious about this honey crust thing.
It's been a topic of conversation long enough that we're going to do something about it.
We're going to figure it out.
That's a pledge.
Figure what out?
The origin of honey crust.
What's the deal?
Is it a Colorado thing or is it just Bojo saying it is?
Where did this come from, Andy?
What does it mean about Colorado?
Does it have to have a unique pizza style or not?
There wasn't a lot of literature on the restaurant menu, and it makes me feel like they're afraid of the truth.
So in May of 2019, I set out on a quest to answer these questions.
Does Colorado style belong in the pantheon of regional pizzas?
And if so, why haven't more people heard of it?
Little did I know when we were sitting in our Prius in that suburban parking lot that it would take six years, until just this past summer, before I had some answers.
If you have any question about Denver or Colorado, Patty Calhoun is the person to go to.
She co-founded our local all-weekly paper Westward, after moving here in the 70s, and she's been the editor now for more than 50 years.
I moved out here from Chicago, land of real pizza.
And in fact I stayed when I moved out here, stayed with friends from my hometown who'd opened a pizzeria here, but they had great pizza.
I have to say Bojo's a little doughy for me.
Bojo's started gaining popularity in the mid-70s, which was a really important time for Colorado.
Our state saw massive population growth from people chasing that Rocky Mountain high, and Bojo's was perfectly situated to capitalize on the boom.
Not only were there very few pizzerias, but they had a perfect location in Idaho Springs, on the main highway between Denver and the mountains.
If you're driving home from a day on the slopes or camping by some mountain lake, you will see a big, bright yellow sign for Bojo's Colorado-style pizza.
And when you talk to people who love Bojos today, invariably they'll wax nostalgic about the place, with all the antique skiing gear on the walls and old chair lifts for seating.
And of course, the squeeze bottles full of honey and the distinctive thick crust.
Was it a style that, like, did other places make that kind of big crust?
Do you remember anyone else taking that on?
I have to say, I never really found anyone else making it quite like that.
Bojo's expanded through the 80s and 90s, opening locations from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, up and down the eastern edge of the Rockies, the region we call the Front Range.
Then in the 2000s, they started closing some of those restaurants and contracting.
I do think part of it is there are more pizza places in town, and there's not as much demand.
If you're on Colorado Boulevard you have a lot of options where you can go for pizza.
That might be newer.
And you don't have the flavor of eating it in Idaho Springs.
You don't have the whole mountain experience that is part of Bojo's charm.
Coloradans today know about Bojo's and the honey for the crust.
But I was curious to hear if anyone outside Colorado did.
So I called up pizza expert Scott Wiener of Scott's Pizza Tours, who you've heard on The Sporkful before.
And not only had he heard of it, he'd been to Idaho Springs.
So this was back in 2002 or 2003.
I was playing in a rock and roll band.
And we were traveling around the country, and we had a show somewhere in Colorado.
And part of touring for me was that we could go to places and eat pizza.
And we looked up, well, what's the pizza to get when we're in Colorado?
And all signs led to this place called Bojo's with this mountain-style thick-crusted pizza.
And so that was my first exposure with Honey Plus Pizza, where it was honey as a way to get rid of, kind of maybe a crust that may have needed some help.
So Scott's eaten pizza in Colorado, but that doesn't mean he recognizes Colorado-style pizza.
From his perspective.
There are pizza makers all over the country that are popping up and claiming to make unique styles, trying to brand themselves as part of some special pizza tradition.
I have some criteria for style.
And when it's a regional style, like if you say Colorado style, then it's not.
You're not just referring to like bojos, you're referring to the whole state.
So for me, that would mean you have to have a few things.
One of them is you have to have multiplicity.
So it's got to be multiple pizzerias that aren't owned by the same person doing the same thing.
And the thing those pizzerias are all doing has to stand out from other styles.
That's the next criteria.
Differentiation.
Scott doesn't think honey on the crust alone gets us there.
For it to be really different, you'd need honey plus the big crust.
And it would have to be something they're doing at places all over the state.
So if I opened a pizza place in Wyoming that served slices with a side of gravy, that wouldn't automatically be a whole new capital S style of pizza, at least according to Scott.
The next thing is it has to have longevity.
So it's got to be around for at least a decade or two, which Bojo's had that.
They've been around since 73.
Then you've also got to have like a tie to the region.
So there's got to be a reason for that region to kind of have part of itself dedicated to that, to that food.
So, for instance, Detroit-style pizza is baked in heavy steel pans that were originally designed for use in auto factories.
Chicago-style is made with lower-protein winter wheat.
And New York-style is made with higher-protein spring wheat, because those are the types of wheat grown and milled in those areas.
And I feel like, with this whole Colorado-style thing, besides the thick pizza being like, I hear a reason that's like oh, you know it's more food and you know this is, it's like you know, tougher part of the country.
I don't know.
People make up all these weird things about mountain climbing.
I don't think people climb mountains on their way to work.
But anyway, I don't see that as being a thing that's specific to Colorado.
Although Bojo does use local Colorado bees, so that's cool.
But I don't know.
It seems like Bojo's is pretty much the only one doing that in Colorado, unless there's been a couple other copycats.
So, multiplicity, longevity, differentiation, and a tie to the region.
Scott said you have to have three out of four to qualify as a regional style.
And when I talked to him back in 2019, he was skeptical of so-called Colorado-style pizza.
The only one he said we had for sure was longevity.
The question that kept bugging me was, why?
Why don't we have more multiplicity?
Bojo's has been making this pizza for 50 years.
Everyone in Colorado knows it.
Why hasn't it spread?
And have you spoken to Bojo's?
Not yet.
We're looking forward to it.
I think that's going to be our next call.
Yeah, that's like the big one.
Great.
Yeah, that would be great to talk to you.
I'm sure they'll tell you the whole thing.
When I first reached out to Bojo's, I was, of course, hoping to speak to the owner and founder, Chip Baer.
But when I called, Chip was unavailable.
So I drove up to Idaho Springs and sat down in a bustling dining room across from the restaurant's marketing director.
She also happens to be Chip's daughter, Cody Baer.
And she was joined by her sister Allie, who also works for the family business.
I wanted to hear their father's story.
Papa Bear bought it in April 1st, 1973 from a couple by the name of Bo and Joanne.
It was a little mom and pop shops at about 14 people.
So the original owners, Bo and Joanne Falk, gave Bojo's its name.
But it was one tiny location before Chip Bear came along.
He later moved it over to where we are right now and expanded it.
So now we seat over 700 people at a time.
During ski season, when tons of people are going to and from the mountains, all 700 of those seats might be filled with happy customers drizzling or dipping their crust in honey.
So, I mean, that's obviously one of our signature things is the honey on the crust.
It started with, let's say, my dad's ex-girlfriend.
She was from Texas, and I think she just put it on her biscuits.
And we started doing the thick, hand-willed crust around the edge of our pizza as an ingredient containment system to kind of keep all of our toppings in there so we could have a big, hearty pizza.
Mm-hmm.
And then after that, you know, we put the honey on it and it just happened.
I mean, it's perfect that way.
So we've just kind of been doing it ever since.
And that's one thing that we're known for.
So he's your dad's ex-girlfriend.
And this was a long time ago.
Who was she?
Just a girlfriend, I guess.
It was a great idea.
They didn't know the ex-girlfriend's name.
But this was apparently the official origin story of honey on pizza in Colorado.
Next, I wanted to get to Scott Wiener's regional pizza style rubric.
He says that for a pizza to be determined a regional style, it has to fulfill most of these.
Okay.
Pressure's on.
I know.
Oh, I'd hate for this to be the end of the tradition right here at this table.
It would be really sad.
I already knew that Colorado-style pizza had one of Scott's criteria longevity, so we needed two more.
I asked them about multiplicity.
Do you know of any people that claim to make Colorado style that are?
We're a trademark, so they cannot.
Really?
Yes.
Bojo's owns a trademark for Colorado style pizza?
Yep.
Oh.
I got to be honest, this was a major record scratch moment.
I had read so many articles about Bojo's to prep for that interview, but not once had this idea of a trademark come up before.
And Bojo's was apparently enforcing it too.
Cody and Allie told me they had their lawyer send a cease and desist letter once to a place in a nearby ski town when they started using the phrase Colorado style pizza.
That feels like such a shame to me.
Like, if I were you all, I would want to be imitated.
I would want this to be spread.
It's not like anyone's going to ever take this from Bojo's.
You will always have been the first.
That's true.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I never thought about that.
I haven't either.
Maybe he didn't want anyone to have Colorado style pizza.
That I'm not really sure about.
After I drove home, I looked up the trademark in the U.S.
Patent Office, and it's real.
Bojo's literally owns the phrase Colorado-style pizza.
Now, trademark has no bearing on the pizza itself.
Anyone can make pizza with honey and a big crust.
It just applies to the words, the branding.
But still, maybe that was why this style of pizza hadn't spread.
One thing's for sure this trademark was not a possibility that Scott Wiener had accounted for in his regional pizza rubric.
And I didn't know what to do with that.
So I decided to put a pin in the trademark issue and focus on lower-hanging fruit.
I wanted to fact-check the story the Bear sisters told me about the honey.
A few days later, they had remembered the ex-girlfriend's name and emailed me her phone number.
So I gave her a call.
Hang on one second.
Her name is Cece, and she was living in Colorado Springs.
Yeah, I was kind of giving a heads up.
Somebody was going to call, but I wasn't certain, so...
I'm sorry, you get all these weird phone calls every day.
Turns out, Cece had stayed on good terms with the Bears all this time and was more than happy to look back on the early days of Bojo's
You know, I was really young.
And so putting honey on that... See, Bojo's has the most amazing sauce ever.
Beyond the crust.
That sauce, and I have the recipe, that sauce is the most amazing sauce ever.
And you put that honey mixed in with that sauce and that bread, and you can't find anything better than that.
As I told Cece, Allie and Cody from Bojo's said she's the one who first put honey on the crust.
Is that true?
You know what?
That kind of shocked me when I heard that.
If Allie and Cody think it is, then I would love to know why.
Because, um...
I kind of always thought it was a chip thing, but maybe it was a Cece thing.
So talking to Cece didn't clarify much.
It was starting to feel like no one could answer my questions.
Or if they could, they didn't want to.
That was six years ago.
I never gave up on the story, but work and life got in the way.
Every now and then I made half-hearted attempts to get the answers I wanted.
I certainly told anyone who'd listen about the trademark, which was still shocking to me.
I tried several times to talk to Chip Baer about the honey story and the trademark but he ignored me.
I got a few new leads.
After talking about this on CityCast Denver, the daily news show I work on, I heard from a family in Iowa.
They swore they grew up eating honey on their crust and insisted it was an Iowa thing.
So I tracked down the restaurant they were talking about.
Turns out it opened a few years after Bojo's and serves what they call a Denver-style pizza.
That seemed like it helped my case for a regional style, but it was just one data point, not true multiplicity.
As time went on, I began to feel like, who cares?
People in Colorado already have the mountains and skiing.
We have thriving tech and aerospace and ranching industries.
Maybe I was the only one who cared whether we have our own style of pizza.
Just a few months ago I saw a local news headline that got me back on the hunt for answers and made clear I didn't have much time to get them.
That's coming up.
Stick around.
Hope you're hungry because it's time for some ads.
Welcome back to The Sporkful.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Last week on the show, I talked with actor Tony Shalhoub.
You've seen him in Monk, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and in the classic 90s food film, Big Night.
I was so excited to talk with Tony about Big Night because it includes this iconic scene featuring a dish called a timpano.
I know that scene so well that I put a timpano in my pasta cookbook and referenced Big Night in the headnote.
The film was written by Stanley Tucci, who plays Tony's brother.
For research, Stanley took Tony to meet his family.
Stanley had invited me to his parents' house, and we made it with his mother, who's an expert at this dish.
And it was so labor-intensive, incredible.
I mean watching her put together—because this is something they do as a—it's a special occasion dish.
Right.
This is not like a Tuesday night, weekday meal.
No.
Right.
This is a once a year, I think, he said.
Because—and also, you know, it's heart attack food.
Let's face it.
Right.
We worked with her and watched her do it, and it was just so eye-opening and beautiful the way she did it.
When we brought it out in the movie, we had a kind of memory, a sense memory of what went into it.
We also talk about what Tony has in common with some of his most iconic characters and his new docuseries Breaking Bread, where he travels the world to meet bread bakers, eat all kinds of bread and connect with people and cultures.
That episode's up now.
It's a great conversation.
Check it out.
And one more quick note make sure you stay tuned to the end of this episode for a special bonus segment brought to you by the National Pork Board.
All right, back now to our story about Colorado pizza.
Here again is Paul Caroli.
After I talked to the Bear Sisters and CeCe in 2019, I was still bothered by the murky story about the origin of the honey and the idea that Bojo's had trademarked the phrase Colorado-style pizza.
I couldn't let any of it go.
Then, just a few months ago...
I see a headline that gives my quest renewed urgency.
Chip Baer is retiring and promoting his daughter Cody to run the company.
He's 77 and wants to move to Hawaii.
I could never get Chip to talk to me when he was in Colorado.
Once he leaves for Hawaii, it seems unlikely it'll ever happen.
So I email Chip and I start digging around to see if anything has changed in the six years since I really looked into this.
What's the state of Colorado-style pizza today?
Is it any more widespread?
A Google search only gives me results about bojos, but I knew someone I could call.
My name is Stoney Jessup.
Today we're discussing Colorado-style pizza that we serve at the Pizza Peddler up in Winter Park Village.
And let's go for it.
When I decided to dig back into this whole thing, I called a bunch of local pizza shops around Denver and the mountain towns to ask about their crust.
I found that there are a handful of other places that serve this style, with the big crust and the honey on the side, including the one Stoney bought about a year ago.
I know him because he owns a bunch of sports bars in Denver and I remember when he first bought the pizza place in Winter Park he told me he didn't like the big rolled crust.
So I was surprised that he'd totally changed his mind and embraced quote-unquote Colorado-style pizza.
I mean, it's very unique, right?
Especially being in a tourist town.
I think that's going to raise an eyebrow to almost nobody's ever heard of it.
You know what I mean?
So if you went there and you didn't know about it, I'd be like, oh my God, what's that?
Well, let's go check this out.
See what it's all about.
I think this is multiplicity happening before our eyes, right?
We're definitely getting closer.
Stoney and those other places I found are all making this big crusted pizza with similar rolling or crimping techniques that originated at Bojo's.
And they're serving it with honey, which helps build the case for differentiation too, but they still can't legally call it Colorado-style pizza.
All right, Stoney, I've got to reveal my last question is like, this is the heart of it.
Because it sounds like you recognize that that phrase, Colorado-style pizza, that has meaning.
That would be a draw for you, since you serve this style of pizza that has been popularized by Bojo's.
I recently learned that Bojo's owns a trademark for the phrase Colorado-style pizza.
Excellent.
I did not know that.
What does that mean to you?
Yeah, great question.
That probably would change.
Well, it would sort of change everything.
I think you could probably, I'm based on thinking about all the Stoney's trademarks that we have.
I'm sure Bojo's is a company that would be happy to work with us to find something that they didn't think infringed on what they're trying to do, whether it was Mountain Pie or whatever.
They own the trademark for Mountain Pie as well.
I actually just checked that this morning.
Yeah.
Oh, excellent.
Well, you're giving me more information than I knew.
With Stoney, I can point to a very real example of how the trademark is limiting the spread of Colorado-style pizza.
Not just the phrase, but maybe even the pizza itself.
A few days after I talked to Stoney...
I get an email that stops me in my tracks.
It's from Chip Baer.
Sorry it's taking me so long to get back to you, he writes.
I just returned to Denver a couple of days ago.
I would love to talk to you sometime.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Thanks for the opportunity?
What's that supposed to mean?
Had he heard I was calling around to his competition?
Did he know?
I've been obsessed with his company for years and have listened to every interview he's ever given?
Had he heard that I had been telling people about this trademark thing and speculating about his intentions?
Was I starting to overthink all of this?
I have no idea what to expect, but I set up a time for one more drive up to Idaho Springs.
One more walk through their big glass doors and there he is with a worn out old ball cap, a graying goatee and a big smile on his face.
Chip leads me up the stairs to one of the old dining rooms that hasn't been full since COVID.
We sit down and take in the smell of generations of stale old pizza.
Well, I have been really excited to talk to you.
This has been a long time coming for me.
This is a big moment for me.
Oh, well, thank you.
I've been.
I've been thinking about this for years and I've tried to talk to you several times in the past.
I've requested interviews.
I wonder what, why, why'd you want to do this now?
Um, I don't know.
He reached out and saw it and I go, okay.
Chip explains to me that he's been doing winters in Hawaii for a few years now and has been in the process of stepping back from the business, so Cody can take over.
I always thought of Chip as a businessman.
As we chat, I realize he also just really loves pizza.
Originally, I was born in New York and one of my earliest memories is going to a pizza place in New York and standing
They had this little raised area and you could look through the windows and watch the guys making pizza.
Yeah.
And back in those days, you didn't go out to eat very often.
So that was pretty special.
And then we moved to Duluth and they didn't have any pizza at all.
We moved to Duluth, Minnesota in like 53 or something like that.
There's no pizza.
And I remember when the first pizza place opened up, my family was so excited.
We got in the car and ran down there.
We were the first customers in there, I think.
It was great.
I love that.
Do you remember anything about it?
Oh, about that pizza?
It was an okay pizza.
It wasn't great.
It was an okay pizza.
I mean, you know, most pizzas are pretty good.
Yeah, it's hard to make a bad one.
Hearing Chip's passion for pizza makes me feel like we're kindred spirits in a way I didn't expect.
I'm a guy who hosted a pizza podcast for years.
He's a guy who still thinks of himself as that scrappy pizza shop owner who struggled to drum up business in the early days.
I'd just run up to Loveland.
I'd put flyers out on the people's windshields and run back down.
Get the restaurant open and serve people until they quit coming in.
Lay my sleeping bag down on the floor and turn on TV and watch TV for half an hour.
Mork and Mindy was my favorite.
And go to sleep and get up and do the same thing the next day.
I asked Chip about the origin story for The Honey and he tells me the same story Allie and Cody told me six years ago.
It was an ex-girlfriend.
Maybe CeCe, maybe someone else.
At this point, I've followed enough leads that went nowhere.
I'm convinced The Honey started at Bojo's.
Which person should get the credit may never be resolved.
It was more than 50 years ago.
It makes sense that all the details would be hazy.
They're hazy for Chip when it comes to the other big innovation he brought to Bo and Joanne's old pizza place too.
That huge mountain crust.
The one employee I inherited from them who actually taught me the business was a lady by the name of Brain Cramp.
You've talked about her before.
Is this Patsy May?
Patsy May.
Thank you.
You know more than I do.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about your business.
Anyways, Patsy made, she's the one that taught me how to do the roll on the edge of the pizza.
And that's kind of what started to differentiate us.
And that's the braided, the big braided crust.
Yeah.
Okay.
Where did she get it?
I think she started doing it.
I don't know anything else than that.
I think she just kind of came up with it.
Really?
Yeah.
Because it's like one of your things that you're known for is that big braided crust.
Oh, yeah.
Definitely.
Definitely.
I tried to track down this Patsy May person, but she left Bojo's after a couple of years.
And all Chip remembered was that she'd hooked up with a guy named Tex.
He might've been from Texas.
I couldn't find any record of him.
Now it's time to get to the tough questions.
This is the other thing I want to ask you about.
You trademarked the term Colorado style pizza.
Right.
Why did you do that?
I thought it was a good idea.
I still think it was a good idea.
It's really hard to get to trademark something like Colorado style.
And we had to jump through some hoops to make that happen.
And we thought that that was, you know, because it's different and nobody else is doing that.
So why not do a Colorado style?
I mean, there's Chicago style and there's Pittsburgh style and Detroit and everything else.
And we were doing something that was definitely different.
And the licensing attorney said, yeah, we can do it.
And we were able to.
So I've talked to a few other pizzeria owners who make this style pizza or variations on it, similar ones.
You'll have to tell me who they are because I haven't tried them.
I list a few of these spots for Chip.
Hernando's and Pizza Peddler in Winter Park, Woody's in Golden, The Sink in Boulder, that place in Ames, Iowa.
As I tell Chip, I've gotten reports of people doing the honey on the table thing as far away as Alaska.
I guess that's a form of flattery, right?
Copying is a good form of flattery.
I mean, I could see how a lot of people would say that.
But that makes me think about the trademark again.
You know, like the trademark.
I've talked to so many people about this and like people have different reactions, but there's definitely a lot of people, a lot of Coloradans.
And this was how I first felt when I first heard about it.
I thought, well, no one owns a trademark for Chicago style pizza.
No one owns a trademark for New York style pizza. like Lou Malnati's, you know, of Chicago.
These places are famous and sought after, and people go to Chicago to eat there.
And those were the original Chicago-style pizzas.
And I think that, I don't know, you know, why they didn't trademark them.
We were able to do it because we could prove that we were doing things that other people weren't doing.
And that's probably why they didn't do it in Chicago and New York and things like that, because it just kind of happened organically and people started just doing it.
And by that point in time, there was, like, everybody's doing the same thing.
I pressed my case to Chip that abandoning the trademark so others could also use it could actually be good for his business.
If more places made Colorado-style pizza, the style itself would become more famous, which would make more people come to Bojo's to try the original.
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, like everyone would know that Bojo's was the originator.
Like do you ever worry?
Or maybe do you think that the trademark has possibly hindered the spread of this style of pizza that you created, that you should be getting credit for?
Never thought about it.
Well, what do you think about it now?
I don't know.
I'll have to think about that.
It's an interesting thought.
I've never thought about it.
I'm going to look into it.
I'm going to look into it.
I'm going to talk to some people and...
I'm not totally opposed to it.
I don't know that it would be a good idea for us, but I'm willing to look at it.
A good business idea, you mean?
Yeah, could be.
I think the value for the people of Colorado, for the pizza community, for the renown of this local pizza tradition.
You can see that right.
I can see what you're saying.
What a gift to be able to give to the state.
Yeah.
You have that in your power.
Okay.
That makes me feel important.
I think you are important.
I'm not used to that.
I'm just a little guy that flips a pizza now and again.
No, you've created something special that a lot of people really love.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
And I really want to thank you for your time.
It's my pleasure.
After talking with Chip, I felt a wave of relief.
I may never get all the answers, but I could rest easy knowing I'd done everything I could.
I'll probably never find Patsy May, or maybe someday I'll learn she's been happily living in Ames Iowa, for decades.
I did talk to Scott Wiener again a couple of weeks ago and I ran through all my evidence for why this is a regional style.
He told me he does now think that the combination of thick braided or rolled crust and the honey feels differentiated enough to check that box.
But that doesn't mean much if there still aren't many people doing it.
And he doesn't think we've attained multiplicity.
So now we've got two, but it's still not enough, according to Scott.
I followed up with Chip Baer a couple of weeks after our interview.
He said he'd talked to all the people he trusts for business advice, and the result was unanimous.
He shouldn't give up the trademark.
But I think I finally understood what Colorado-style pizza is all about.
See, I didn't tell you the whole story.
The last time I went up to Idaho Springs, I stopped in at Bojo's for lunch.
I thought I should give it another shot after all these years.
So I sat in a crowded dining room full of smiling kids and families reminiscing about old times, and I ordered a small pizza just for myself.
The crust is a little smaller on the personal size, but it was still rolled in the traditional way and pretty substantial.
When the time came, I grabbed the squeeze bottle full of honey, And it was good.
It might not be for everyone, but it is for Colorado.
Well, Paul Caroli, thank you so much for sharing this story with us.
My pleasure.
Before you go, though, I want to pitch you on an idea.
Oh boy.
I'm scared.
So I, I, I've been thinking more about this.
I even talked to an IP lawyer and I believe and he is inclined to agree that if the other non Bojo's pizzerias all got together and agreed on a different name, such as Denver style pizza or Boulder style pizza or whatever they want it to be, they could circumvent the trademark.
Huh?
This would be, it's sort of like a Taylor's version style strategy here.
Taking it back.
Yes.
And he even said that if Bojo's were to try to challenge the Denver style trademark, it could expose them to losing the trademark, because it could be deemed that if Denver style pizza can also exist, that the Colorado style pizza trademark is too broad and they could lose it.
Interesting.
Okay.
This sounds like a good lawyer.
So I'm just saying, if you want to take this back to all your pizza friends in Colorado and suggest it to them, I say go for it.
Okay.
I love this idea.
Thank you for doing that.
I'll email Stoney, see what he thinks.
All right.
All right.
Well, Paul Caroli, reporter and executive producer of the daily local news podcast, CityCast Denver.
Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks again, Paul.
See you, Dan.
And one more quick note on this front.
I ordered a Bojo's pizza from Colorado.
I got it sent to my house with the honey.
I want the full experience.
I got Colorado honey for $28.
I made a video of my experience eating Bojo's pizza.
I'll put it on my Instagram, so make sure you're following me there, at The Sporkful.
Next week on the show, I talk with comedian Roy Wood Jr.
He's written a memoir called The Man of Many Fathers, where he talks about his own complicated relationship with his father.
And food is a key element in many of the stories that Roy shares.
From his mom's strategy to eating hot dogs in the car to one of the last meals he shared with his father.
That's next week.
While you're waiting for that one, check out last week's show where I talked with actor Tony Shalhoub about some of his most iconic roles, from Primo in the movie Big Night to Monk, to Abe Weissman in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.
What does Tony have in common with these memorable characters and what do they have in common with each other?
This episode has a really interesting through line.
I hope you'll check it out.
That one's up now.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
Then there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
This episode was reported by Paul Carolli and produced by me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara.
It was edited by Camille Stanley and Nora Ritchie.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
Our interns are Morgan Johnson and Jasmine Sutherland.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Hannah Knox in Estes Park, Colorado, reminding you to eat more...
Eat better and eat more better.
This segment is brought to you by National Pork Board.
Taste what pork can do.
I'm with my friend, Chef Jimmy Chinnis.
He owns two restaurants I love in Greenlawn, New York.
Swallow Kitchen and Cocktails and Lucello Pizza.
He also loves cooking pork.
That's my piggy cutting board.
Look at that.
Today, we've gotten together to grill up some habanero and honey pork chops.
But before anything hits the grill, we've got to add a key component to this pork.
Okay, the marinade, right?
So tell me about this marinade.
What are we doing with the marinade?
It's going to sit there for about two hours, I'd say.
That's the least amount of time you want to marinate something for.
It can go 24 hours if you wanted to, but...
I think we'll hold it for about two hours.
We'll drain it, salt and pepper, and right to the grill.
And that honey that's in there and that beer is all going to caramelize a little bit.
So tick through the ingredients of this marinade.
So in the marinade, we have a beer.
We have our habanero sauce.
There's a bay leaf.
There's a little honey and some fresh garlic as well.
What is the beer at?
I mean, saying that there's a beer in your marinade sounds fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, like, what's it actually doing?
Well, first of all, it's great.
We reduced it down so it gets rid of that alcoholy flavor and it's going to break it down as the pork sits in the marinade.
It's going to tenderize the pork, and it's going to give great flavor.
I love beer.
So beer helps to tenderize meat?
Absolutely, yeah.
The longer it sits in the marinade it'll actually break down the fibers and the muscles slowly obviously, and it'll make it more tender.
It tends to tenderize humans, too.
Absolutely.
To a point.
Yes, to a point.
Some too many.
Now, honey habanero, obviously...
Sweet and spicy is nothing new.
But I feel like honey and hot peppers are like having a moment.
Agreed.
Yeah, honey's really hot right now with pizza, with everything.
People are putting honey on everything.
I've been using it forever.
But with pork I think it goes really well, because pork tends to have a really natural mild, sweet flavor to it already.
So when you add a little more sweetness, like some local honey that we have, it's just going to bring that sweetness out more with the heat of the habanero.
They counterbalance each other.
I'm having real trouble resisting the urge to start cooking, let alone eating.
That looks really good.
But Jimmy says the pork chops have to marinate for two hours.
While the pork chops soak up the marinade, I chat with Jimmy to find out what makes this such a good cut of meat.
Pork chops are real versatile.
You can kind of do anything with them.
They almost have a sweet quality to them and they take well to any kind of marinade or any kind of, you know, sauce afterwards.
I love the part down towards the bottom, like towards the bone.
That's got a little bit more fat and it gets a little bit crispy.
Yeah.
Near the bone is where the flavor's at.
You get that juicy, juicy flavor by the bone, so I'm with you.
And a pork chop on the grill.
That's summer.
Or tailgating.
Tailgating, too, yeah.
Fall tailgating, yeah.
I think pork chops were meant for grilling.
Yeah, and you get some of those nice grill marks there on the pork chop.
Yeah, you get the grill marks of the caramelization from the sugars in there and it just adds much more flavor.
Now that the pork chops are marinated, it's showtime.
But Jimmy doesn't just throw the pork chops on the grill willy-nilly.
He's pretty specific with their placements.
Jimmy, I noticed you're putting the pork chops on the grill salted side down.
Is that on purpose?
Yep, salted side down.
It's going to lock it in.
And we also put it at an angle so we get pretty grill marks, right?
So you want to put it at a 45 and then, when you turn it, you're going to put it at another 45, and that's how we get those beautiful cross hatches.
Got it.
All right, we're going to cook these about five minutes per side since they're thick.
And a total of 10 minutes.
See you in a little bit, babies.
Once we cook the meat to 145 degrees, we let it rest for three minutes until Oh, the pork chops are porking.
Beautiful grill marks, a little flame coming up around them, a sizzle on their surface.
Oh, yeah.
Beauty.
These pork chops, glistening with juicy goodness and with perfectly cross-hatched grill marks, look incredible.
But how do they taste?
Well, after letting them rest for a few minutes, it's time to find out with a few of our friends.
Jimmy's just slicing up some pork chops.
Come make yourselves comfortable.
Oh, my God.
That pork, I can see that we're starting to slice up the pork chops, and it is cooked perfectly.
What can I say?
The pork chops are perfectly tender, sweet, a little spicy, and so full of flavor.
I had to tell you, Jimmy, you nailed the pork chops.
Thank you, bud.
As incredible as those pork chops were, they only scratched the surface of what pork can do.
You know if you love the crunch of bacon, pepperoni sausage.
It's time to bring more flavorful moments into your everyday life.
The same rich, savory goodness you love from bacon is actually available for a million more meal occasions in a million more ways.
I could fill the rest of this segment just listing delicious cuts of pork, from pork chops to pork tenderloin, pork shoulder, pork butt, pork belly, everything from baked ham... to slow cooked ribs.
You want a flavorful upgrade for taco Tuesday?
Pulled pork carnitas.
Or be the envy of the office lunch with an epic egg roll bowl.
Pork offers all the flavor nuances and taste tones you could ever want.
Sweet, salty, acidic, umami.
It does it all.
Pork is here.
Grill it, bake it, braise it, roast it, sear it.
But whatever you do, please taste it.
Head to tastewhatporkcando.com to discover all the incredible flavors in every bite of pork.
