artdirector@sfreporter.com
You can see all the pizza things Chris Van Dyne is doing on Instagram at @cosmicpiepizza.
No one can say Santa Fe is facing a pizza shortage these days.
With new-ish restaurants Esquina and Door 38 emerging from the folks behind Paloma and The Burger Stand respectively; the newly opened Santa Fe Pizza Gallery; and Tender Fire Kitchen working on taking its pop-up to a new brick and mortar level, the landscape has been plentiful. Still, it seems Santa Feans’ love affair with what we can likely call the most universally adored food isn’t even close to slowing down, and fledgling pop-up Cosmic Pie Pizza (905 W Alameda St., cosmic-pie.square.site) has now achieved regular weekend service status.
The brainchild of newcomer and former Californian Chris Van Dyne, Cosmic Pie opened during the pandemic and has quietly but steadily gained a following. Notably, Van Dyne wasn’t trained in food, nor would he have imagined himself a pizza chef just a few years ago. In the lead-up to Van Dyne’s pizza epiphany, he was working for the Oakland A’s baseball team. He’d grown up in the Bay Area (Danville if you wanna get specific) and long dreamed of working in baseball. A couple years into a desk job in ticketing and event management, however, and he found his passion wasn’t what it used to be. By 2017, he’d learned to work with sourdough—and how to make the kind of pizzas he wanted to eat through a combination of YouTube tutorials and cold-contacting pizza chefs through social media.
“The pizza community online is amazing,” he tells SFR. “If I’d just send out direct messages to pizza makers, they’d write me back and give me tips.”
Van Dyne started selling pizzas at his local farmers market, and for a time things were good. Then came the pandemic, during which he was furloughed from his baseball job. It was just the push he needed, though, and he and his wife Metzalli would move south from Oakland to Santa Cruz in 2020, where he’d work making pizzas for the Humble Sea Brewing Company. Long hours and weird times wore Van Dyne down, though, and with his in-laws calling Albuquerque home, they accelerated their plan to move to New Mexico later in life, which brings us to July of last year and the Van Dynes’ arrival in Santa Fe.
“We’d always had a loose, long-term plan to move out here for the lower cost of living,” he says. “I think, just being at a desk job...I’ve always had this idea of work being about something more than just making money. I want it to have an impact, I wanted to feel like I was adding value doing something I was good at, and I landed on food because I love nourishing people and the kind of interaction I get with the community.”
Van Dyne wasted no time setting up. In short order he connected with Betterday Coffee owner Tom Frost, whose business houses a small but viable kitchen that was formerly used by numerous restaurants, including Milad Persian Bistro. By Halloween of last year, Van Dyne was already cooking up New York style and Detroit style pies on Fridays and Saturdays, and he does it all without meat.
I learned this firsthand last weekend when I sampled Cosmic Pie’s Detroit-style pizza with plant-based pepperoni ($17) and the Moonbeam, a thin crust NYC homage with a garlic cream sauce, mushrooms, parsley and grana padano cheese ($14). For those new to Detroit-style, the growing trend is a deep dish affair with satisfyingly crispy edges that makes use of Wisconsin block cheese rather than mozzarella. The sauce is dished out along the top in lines as an apparent nod to tire tracks/the Motor City, and Van Dyne’s was cooked to a beautiful golden brown with caramelized edges making for an excellent crunch factor and plant-based pepperoni providing a taste I’ve dearly missed since giving up meat. The Moonbeam pizza was a complete triumph of tangy sourdough crust and complementary flavors of mushroom and garlic. Van Dyne says he sautés his mushrooms beforehand, too, and this made a clear difference over similar pies I’ve had elsewhere. Of course, he’s got numerous other signature pizzas, a build-your-own option and plenty of vegetarian and vegan ingredients. Note, sadly, that vegan pepperoni is on hold briefly due to supply chain issues. Still, you’ll find plenty of other meatless options.
“None of my pizzas have meat,” Van Dyne explains. “Showing people that pizza can be highly enjoyable without it is one of my personal goals—to help reduce the amount of factory farming, which I know is probably never going to totally go away, but...one of the things I love about Santa Fe is that the people here are very aware of their food choices being impactful.”
Devout carnivores sometimes pass on Cosmic Pie, Van Dyne says, though that seems short-sighted. To each their own, sure, but for the rest of us, it’s well worth placing an order online. Van Dyne opens up online orders on Thursdays for Friday and/or Saturday pickup at the time of your choosing Perhaps one day we’ll find a brick and mortar Cosmic Pie, but for now the pop-up thing is going well.
“I think there’s this Venn diagram of what you love to do, what you’re good at and what makes you money,” Van Dyne says. “It’s about figuring out your purpose, what you love to do in the world, what you think has an impact and how you add value. At the center is your purpose, and food is that for me.”
Agree. It sure makes things more interesting for the meatless among us, and with Impossible Sausage and tons of veggie options on the menu, there’s a lot more to sample. In short? Try this pizza already.
