Pizza Time!

My family has been to Peter Piper Pizza many times...usually to celebrate a birthday, either of our own daughters or of their friends. This summer, however, we discovered a new way to have fun there, besides hanging out in their noisy arcade. It turns out that each Peter Piper Pizza location offers kitchen tours for kids, complete with an individual pizza they make themselves! And it's only three dollars a kid to participate! We had to try it out.

The tours are offered in the mid-morning, before the restaurant officially opens for business. That makes sense; during business hours, the kitchen would probably be too noisy and fast-paced for young children to be wandering around. We arrived at 9:30 am, and waited for an employee to come open the door for us. It was weird to see the place so quiet and deserted; whenever we've come in the past, Peter Piper Pizza is usually packed with loud families and/or celebrating youth soccer teams.

After a short wait, the restaurant manager met us and led us behind the counter to begin the tour. First, he showed us the registers where pizza orders were entered...it looked pretty complicated and dull, but important. The girls weren't super impressed.

After that, things got more interesting...we got to see the day's pizzas being laid out and topped.

We also got a look at their huge vat of special pizza sauce. I don't know if this is gross or awesome, but I'm leaning to the side of awesome. Yes, those are ice cubes in the sauce; apparently, keeping the sauce cold is a requirement while mixing it up; otherwise, the tomatoes in the sauce would ferment, and no one wants that.

The walk-in fridge was possibly the girls' favorite part of the tour. It was so cold! And the floor was so slippery! (all the paint had worn off over the years from being trodden on so much). They were amazed at the mountains of food stacked up along the walls (in the picture, for example, they are surrounded by literally tons of pizza dough).

This is the Wall Of Cheese; the restaurant goes through this much cheese per week. Mmmmm....cheese.

We also got to watch the pizza dough rolled out and then cut. There was a nice automated roller attached to a long thin table in one room; it whisked the dough back and forth between it over and over, while the dough got nice and skinny.

All those bags on the right? That's how much flour the restaurant goes through in a week. They were stacked to the ceiling!

After that, the dough sheet was spread out over another table, and cut into round pizza shapes with a big round "cookie cutter" contraption. It was pretty neat to watch!

After seeing how all the basic parts came together, it was time for the girls to make their own pizzas! The restaurant had already pre-cut the dough for their individual pizzas; each girl got to add sauce, cheese, and one additional topping. Lorelai chose sausage; Celeste and Aurora both wanted pepperoni.

 

They were mesmerized watching their tiny pizzas roll slowly through the oven; they were amazed that the pizza would be completely cooked in only seven minutes! They kept asking to look through the window of the oven to see it happen.

Lorelai waited around the longest; probably because she has the longest attention span.

Celeste & Aurora kept taking off to the arcade and gift shop and trying to mess with everything. I had to keep telling them that the tour was why we were there that day, and no arcade games would be played. Old habits are hard to break, I guess. However, the girls did enjoy watching the larger pizzas being unloaded from the oven and cut into slices.

All the employees at the restaurant were efficient and bustling, but quite friendly and patient with three young girls bouncing around them at all times. I was secretly grateful we'd done this with just our family. The kitchen is a little cramped, and I imagine that larger tour groups would become very crowded and uncomfortable, not to mention stressful for the employees.

And finally their pizzas were done, and it was time to eat the fruits of their labors!

In addition to their pizzas, the girls each got a certificate of completion at the end of the tour. Attached to that certificate was a coupon for another free personal pizza, to be used at a later date. The girls were thrilled! I'm really grateful we were able to take this tour; it was a fun, easy-to-arrange, cheap summer activity.