Wood-fired Pioneers The Tree Serve Up Smokey Slices

To get you in the mood for the ongoing voting in the 2014 Pizza Cup (voting in the Final Four ends Thursday (Nov 20)), we sent our minions out to patrol the streets for pizza. Here's what they've found:

One by one, Patrick De Smet laid the bricks for his oven, compelled by the possibility of cooking smoky, mouth watering wood-fired pizza. But as he finished building its dome in 2001, the owner of pioneering Sanlitun pizzeria The Hidden Tree began to realize how elusive his goal was.

“I wanted that fire because it creates such a unique pizza flavor, and because it creates a good atmosphere in a restaurant, thanks to that fantastic smell of smoke,” De Smet says, adding that he partnered with Vito Froio, an Italian chef who then worked at the Sheraton hotel, to build the stove in their spare time.

And while laying the bricks seemed arduous at the time, it paled in comparison to the next step. When the cement dried, De Smet and Froio assumed their oven was finished. But as they stoked its flames, they realized it was far from ready.

“I didn't understand the concept of the airflow, that a stove like that consumes so much oxygen,” De Smet says, before elaborating: “I thought it would make the restaurant warmer, but it just ended up making it colder and sucking the warm air outside. It was like sucking on a bottle, and getting your tongue stuck inside.”

With those flaws in mind, they did some research and adjusted the stove until its fire blazed properly. Foodies flocked to taste those flame licked pies, and today several other nearby pizzerias, such as First Floor bar, cite The Tree as a key influence for their own wood fire slices.

That legacy began in 1996, when De Smet’s friend, Katrien Costenoble, opened a restaurant in Sanlitun called The Hidden Tree. De Smet took over for her in 2000, then began making pizza there a year later. The success of his wood fire pies allowed him to open another restaurant called The Tree in 2005, which became his flagship establishment after demolitions forced The Hidden Tree to close. Despite that setback, The Tree’s famed wood fire flames drew customers like moths, allowing De Smet to open Nearby The Tree (a bistro and pasta joint) in 2008, and a sports bar called By The Tree in 2012.

Among all those new options, The Tree's wood fire pizzas are still a favorite for De Smet’s clientele. Some of the restaurant’s most popular pies include their Tonne e Cipolle which is rife with tuna fish, their Quattro Stagioni with artichoke, mushroom and ham, along with standards like pepperoni and Hawaiian, and the option to have any of those items served as a “rolled up pizza” that is served on a bed of greens and topped with cheese shavings. De Smet attributes those pies’ distinct flavor to the brick oven’s lack of perfection, compared to more modern electric stoves.

“The heat and the flame distribution is not even, so some parts of the pizza get cooked a little more than others,” he says, adding that those contrasts in texture and flavor compliment the smoky aroma of the pies perfectly. He adds: “The lack of constant temperature makes it better.”

Photos: Courtesy of Patrick De Smet