Pizza News

Latest crazy beer from Fort Worth's Martin House is pizza-flavored

Do you even need the pizza at this point?

Photo courtesy of Martin House

Fort Worth craft beer maker Martin House Brewing is known for its creative beer flavors but on their newest one, have they gone a step too far? Called Space Pizza, it's a beer that summons the flavors of pizza, and is currently available on store shelves.

According to a release, Space Pizza has an ABV of 5.2 percent and is brewed with pizza spices.

"We had to start off 2021 with some crazy," the release says. "We've been wanting to make this one on a large scale for a long time and that time is now."

The release claims that they've "done a lot of research" on this one, designed to "complement that extra large cheese pizza on family game night."

Martin House brand manager Shugg Cole says that this release represents a departure from what the brewery usually does, in that it is not a sour beer.

"We first did a test batch of this beer in the taproom on Valentine's Day in 2020," he says. "It was just trying a silly beer. But that test batch was a sour beer, and that's a big difference between what we ended up releasing."

"Most of our beers are sour based, we almost always do sour beers," he says. "For this, we decided to play with the ingredients, just make it be a pizza beer in its own category."

The beer is a conceptual cousin of their Salty Lady Michelada, in that they both have a tomato component.

"It's the flavoring and spices of pizza, you've got tomato and oregano in there as well," he says. "There is actual tomato paste and tomato powder, although it doesn't change the consistency. It's not thick. But the tomato adds flavor and color, and you can taste tomato."

Martin House puts out a new beer every week in the taproom and for sale in stores. Prior attention-getters include their Buffalo Wing Sauce beer, which they released in October and which earned national attention. "We had people calling for it from Buffalo, New York," he says.

If there's a particularly popular flavor, they'll occasionally reissue it. And if it's really-really popular, like their breakout pickle beer, it gets added to the regular roster.

"The pizza beer will be the same as all the other ones — it'll be distributed this week and next, and then gone forever," he says.

craft-beer pizza

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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