7/31/2019 Pizza Brain Copy

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Pizza Brain (Restaurant)

Pizza Brain was born in 2010 when two men innocently issued a call for Philadelphians to “GivePizza Chance.” Twenty-five artists responded, turning Fishtown’s Rocket Cat Café into a signalfire for Philadelphia pizza culture. A small multitude came out to celebrate the intimate andcommunal nature of “something so simple, so ubiquitous, as pizza.” Little did they know theywere harkening the arrival of the world’s first pizza museum and pizzeria just a few blocks away. Inspired by the stories and camaraderie shared at that café, Brian Dwyer began to collect piecesof US pizza culture, from toys and posters, to records and video games; evidences of an ever-growing obsession that’s touched music, TV, film, industry, family life, dorm rooms, and

childhood lore. He simply wanted to expand on that first art show; instead, he caught the same pizza fever that launched a poor, urban, Italian-American dish from obscurity to mainstreammainstay, with 70,000 pizzerias raking in $32 billion each year. One night, Brian dreamed he was inside a sort of pizza Acropolis: people were sharing pies in alabyrinthine museum and arcade dedicated to the very food they were eating. Not long after, hegot a text from a pizza chef he’d never met: Joe Hunter. Throw in a fateful encounter with businessman Michael Carter, and the enlistment of industrial artist Ryan Anderson, and TeamPizza Brain was assembled. Within a year, Brian claimed the Guinness World Record for “theworlds largest collection of pizza-related items,” ensuring Pizza Brain’s landmark status. The innovative museum and restaurant model you see today was born of friendship, sweat, and atenacity bordering on madness. The partners dared to ask, Why not  a pizza museum? There’s amuseum for cheese, ramen, even mustard; doesn’t the “ultimate populist, minimalist food”deserve one of it’s own? This question led to two years of dreaming and planning, fundraisingand promoting, zoning and building, testing and tasting, and investing everything in a vision. Itcame together like an urban barn raising, with countless volunteers pitching in along the way.  Pizza Brain is tied to the great American pizzeria tradition, which has long yielded passion,invention, and togetherness. It’s more than toppings, dough, and a world record: it’s culturalhistory, collective memory, and communal ritual. When it comes to the humble tomato pie,everyone has a story to tell. Share yours.