Recently I decided to become an artisan pizza maker. It’s likely that the pursuit of a perfect pizza will consume the better part of my remaining professional life. I haven’t told my mother yet. I don’t think she’d understand. But then I had the same doubts when I told her I wanted to be a professional chef, some thirty years ago.

It was a Jerry Maguire moment - an epiphany - a sleepless, sweaty night of tossing and turning when Howie’s Artisan Pizza was conceived. Not entirely different than the night Louis, my young son was conceived, but that’s a story for a different kind of web site. Having achieved a fair amount of success in the whacky world of restaurants, I found myself entirely dissatisfied with what I had accomplished. I went to bed thinking about which sauce to serve with salmon and woke up contemplating the demise of western civilization.

There are some serious and pressing issues regarding the way we feed our families in this country. These are issues which affect our health, the integrity of our families and the well-being of our planet. These are issues which I am passionate about, committed to, and have been somewhat powerless to affect, until now. And while it might seem strange, perhaps absurd, to talk about changing the world and building a better, healthier community in the context of a simple pizza pie, that’s exactly what I plan to do.

Howard Bulka, proprietor/chef