California Pizza Kitchen has a test kitchen; here’s what’s in the works

Diners at California Pizza Kitchen didn’t have to wait until Labor Day to see what the casual restaurant chain has been working on for its fall menu.

CPK rolled out three specials in late August: the return of its pumpkin cheesecake, Samuel Adams Octoberfest Lager and a new item that pairs well with it, according to Paul Pszybylski, vice president of culinary innovation.

It’s CPK’s take on “swicy,” meaning sweet and spicy, and it’s called Nashville-Style Hot Honey Pizza. It’s made with Mike’s Hot Honey — Extra Hot sauce as well as chicken instead of the usual pepperoni.

Pszybylski likes to put a fresh spin on things. Another new dish is CPK’s take on a Vietnamese dish, Shaking Beef Pasta.

“It’s generally served over salad greens,” he said. “That wouldn’t work for us. “I was really stumped, to be honest with you. What am I going to pair with this that’s going to work? And it was my procurement lead James Leung, who I work really closely with, who said to stick it on spaghetti, like the kung pao. I was like, ‘Why the heck didn’t I think of that?’”

He was speaking at the restaurant’s newest location in Laguna Niguel. Although CPK is based in Costa Mesa, he said this location functions as his innovation kitchen. He said it’s also used for photo shoots, developing training materials and a spur-of-the-moment video that went viral on social media last month.

A customer had ordered CPK’s mac and cheese for home delivery and when it arrived it was only cheese sauce with no macaroni. She turned the situation into a TikTok video that got 4 million views and thousand of comments.

CPK decided to own the mistake, sending the customer a large gift basket, offering all its guests a 50% discount and drafting Pszybylski for its own video, a 50-second tutorial and apology. It has gotten 12 million view, according to representatives, and the story got picked up by several news outlets, inlcuding USA Today and KTLA.

CPK wants to be known for more than pizza, Pszybylski said, but, “We don’t want to do everything, because then you’re not doing anything well.”

“We’re probably at about 65 menu items right now, and we’ve never been leaner. We do have to remove something when we add something. A smaller menu is a smarter menu.”

One of the hardest parts of his job, he said, is explaining to people why items drop off the menu. The reason is that they’re not selling well enough, he said, and often those dishes are the most innovative.

But sometimes a dish can be ahead of its time. He said that was the case with Neapolitan Burrata Pizza.

“We tried to do burrata eight years ago. Nobody knew what it was. We couldn’t tell our servers what burrata was. And I kept going,’This is the best mozzarella you’re ever going to have. If you love mozzarella, this is next-level stuff.’ And that’s what we were saying eight years ago. It didn’t sell. We put it on the menu last year. it sold through the roof.

“Sometimes people are hesitant to try new thing. Indian flavors on a pizza, like a curry, are really, really hard to introduce. And those are probably some of my most favorite pizzas that we’ve ever done. Now is the time that people are starting to understand it and appreciate it, so we’re looking to bring some of those flavor profiles back.”

He’s already working on several items to follow the Hot Honey Pizza. He’s excited about a pasta dish he called really simple but really different. It will feature linguine fini, a thin pasta, roasted tomatoes and olive oil in a bowl smeared with feta.

“We don’t want people to think of us only as pizza. We do a lot of other great, innovative things.”

Information: cpk.com