James Beard and Michelin Star Chef Wylie Dufresne inspires the pizza community with culinary creativity
Wylie Dufresne kicks off Pizza Expo with a powerful and motivating keynote address that tapped into the curiosity happening in restaurant kitchens. Dufresne is a James Beard Award-winning, Michelin-starred chef and owner of Stretch Pizza in NYC. He is known as the leading proponent of modernist gastronomy in America.
The pizza community packed into the keynote room to hear Dufresne detail how he uses what he calls obsessive learning and creativity in culinary innovation. According to Dufresne, it starts with asking “What happens if…” and “How can we…”
Dufresne begins, “Creativity starts with habits.” He notes that these things are small and they compound to create movements.
Creativity often stems from obsessive learning. “In a kitchen obsessive learning feels like play,” Dufresne. For the renowned chef, exploration feeds curiosity by looking at techniques and processes for commonly used ingredients — using things like liquid nitrogen and air brushes. It’s taking apart ingredients like mayonnaise and asking, “What if I fried mayonnaise?” he asks.
He urges the pizza community to look at things a bit differently and take things part physically and theoretically.
He commends the efforts of John Arena, Chris Decker and Michael Vakneen and the paradigm shift they created with Truly Pizza’s microblistered crust.
Dufresne finished his keynote address with a call to the pizzeria industry: “Creativity isn’t something that visits you. It isn’t italic you’re born with. It’s a muscle and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. It’s something you practice every day, in the details, in the repetition, and the moments. When you decide to look just a little bit closer at something you’ve seen 1000 times before.”
Tune in for Wednesday’s Keynote Address: Hengam and Matt Stanfield, Mattenga’s Pizzeria, Pizza Today’s 2025 Pizzeria of the Year.
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