By Brittany Andes | 6:44 PM Dec 21, 2021 CST | Updated 6:47 PM Dec 21, 2021 CST
Carissa and Ryan Kell said they are so passionate about Italian-style pizza that they went all the way to Italy to bring back traditional recipes for Neapolitan-style pizza to their business, Körk Wine Bar.
Neapolitan pizza is made with tomatoes, basil and mozzarella cheese, but the pizza at Körk Wine Bar features more variety. The crust of the pizza is the same, but the Kells change the pizza toppings every quarter and usually feature eight or nine different pizzas on the menu. Ryan also trained at the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana in Los Angeles, which is an international organization that seeks to cultivate the culinary art of making Neapolitan pizza.
“We went to Italy, to a pizza restaurant in Naples, and they invited us back into the kitchen,” Ryan said. “They walked us through the process of how to make dough, how to stretch dough, how to properly build a fire in the pizza oven.”
Creating a perfect Neapolitan-style pizza is a very precise process, Ryan said. The restaurant only has one heat source in its kitchen, and that is the Stefano Ferrara pizza oven. It is a traditional-style Neapolitan pizza oven that cooks at about 850 degrees. If the fire in the oven dies down, Ryan explained, you do not get the type of marbling around the edge and crispiness of the crust that is a signature of a traditional Neapolitan-style pizza.
“We use Italian flour in our dough, bufala mozzarella, a traditional-style sauce with Italian tomatoes; our dough is made from scratch every day, and we let it rise for 48 hours,” Ryan said about the process at Körk Wine Bar. “It’s a very intentional process to create something that we frequently get compliments on by true Italians. It’s a big deal.”
Wine is the focus of the bar, Carissa said, but food pairings are important, so the couple thought hard about what type of food they wanted to serve. The menu has a variety of foods, including nuts and olives, hummus, a cheese board, bread with ricotta and honey, salads and pizza.“We wanted to create a place where people could relax, to create a social event, so choosing to add food to the menu was a natural addition to the bar,” Ryan said.
They also incorporated shareable plates at Körk so that customers could enjoy hanging out while also learning about food and wine pairings. The pair also relish sharing their love of wine and food with customers and are happy to be part of Georgetown’s community culture.
“When we moved to Austin almost 11 years ago, we wanted to find a community, and that’s when we discovered Georgetown,” Carissa said. “We wanted to bring that sense of community to Körk Wine Bar and think of it as someplace people can get together.”
Körk Wine Bar
815 S. Main St., Ste. 101, Georgetown
512-240-5999
Article courtesy of Community Impact Newspaper
