- Luke Zahm: This week on Wisconsin Foodie: We're here to check out Flour Girl & Flame.

- Dana Spandet: I would say pizza is the best food ever.

- Luke: Any time I walk up to a restaurant and I see the wood-burning pizza oven in the back, I know that there's some serious cooking going on on the inside.

- Dana: We're the only people that are doing a wood-fired Detroit-style.

- Oh, my gosh, that's so good.

- Dana: Tonight, we're celebrating our four-year anniversary over at Alice's Garden Urban Farm.

- Venice Williams: This is sanctuary in the city.

- Dana: When you walk in through the gates here at Alice's Garden, you feel it.

You feel magic.

- Venice: We're growing food, but we're growing community and building relationships and crossing bridges.

I want everyone to see the beauty that comes from the earth and how it nourishes us.

- Luke: This is the winning combination.

Milwaukee's having a moment, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

[groovy music] Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

[gentle music] - Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?

So are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?

Yes; yes, we are.

Organic Valley.

- Twenty-minute commutes.

Weekends on the lake.

Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.

Not to mention all the great food!

There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.

Learn more at InWisconsin.com.

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer's made.

[sizzling] - For generations, our bacon recipe has remained the same.

You can see it on our labels, smell it as you cook it, and taste it in every bite.

Breakfast better with Jones.

- The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.

It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.

Ask any potato farmer and they'll tell you, there's a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer.

Love your butcher.

- Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

[bright, driven folk pop music] - Luke: We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet.

We are a merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.

[sizzling] We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.

[glasses clinking] We are storytellers.

We are Wisconsin Foodie.

[groovy music] Today, we're in West Allis, and when you walk up to the back of a restaurant and you see a wood-fired oven literally juxtaposed against the side of the building, you know you're in for some seriously delicious wood-fired cooking.

We're here to check out Flour Girl & Flame.

Let's go see what this is all about.

- Dana: I'm Dana Spandet from Flour Girl & Flame.

We're a wood-fired pizza truck.

We came out the gate in 2020 doing vending events, pop-ups, community-oriented events.

You know, my style of cooking has always been a little bit on the rustic side.

I love working with fire and embers and coal and kind of teasing out those smoky flavors.

We wanted to be really careful not to say that we're a Neapolitan-style pizza.

Our oven is not from Italy.

Our flour is all from Wisconsin.

We're really trying to differentiate.

We've mentioned Wisconsin-style pizza.

I don't know if that's gonna stick or not.

I would say pizza is the best food ever, truly.

I think Kenji López-Alt wrote a book called Every Night Is Pizza Night, and it's one-- I go to schools and read it to kids, but it talks about how and why pizza is the best food.

But yeah, I mean, pizza is the best food.

- Luke: Well, hey there, friend.

- Dana: Oh, hey.

- Luke: How are you?

It's good to see you.

- Dana: You too.

Thanks so much for coming.

- Oh, it's so good to be here.

I'm so excited to see all the intricacies of Flour Girl & Flame.

Would it be cool if I came inside and we walked through?

- Please.

I bet it's a little warm where you're at right now.

- Seriously!

Like, my shoulder is fusing to my shirt.

- Come on in.

- Great, thanks.

Any time I walk up to a restaurant and I see the wood-burning pizza oven in the back, I know that there's some serious cooking going on on the inside.

- Do most restaurants have it outside in the back, or how do we... - Luke: No, this is, uh, unusual, I think is the... - Dana: We go for unique.

- Luke: Unique, okay, yes.

Yeah, yeah, this is unique.

So what's going on tonight?

- Tonight, we're celebrating our four-year anniversary.

We're doing it a little bit different this year.

We're over at Alice's Garden Urban Farm.

- Luke: Awesome.

Can you give me, just, like, a little context about why Alice's Garden Urban Farm for the four-year?

- Dana: Alice's Garden has just held such a special, intentional place in our hearts for the last four years and for the community for the last 35 years.

Our intention tonight is to just feed our community.

People don't usually have a lot of opportunity to see how we set up for private events and weddings and that kind of thing, so just kind of feed the people.

- Luke: I love that, I love that.

Speaking of feeding the people, I rolled in here hot.

Is there maybe any chance I can get a snack today?

- Oh, my gosh, it would be our honor to feed you.

- Oh!

- Yes, yeah, yeah.

- An honor?

- I can get you taken care of.

- Thank you so much.

Well, let's check this place out.

You mind showing me around?

- Dana: Yeah.

We have a really great, really special team.

It's all women that work here, not that we don't hire men, but we just currently have an all-women team, and pretty much everybody that comes to us doesn't have a ton of food experience.

They don't have a hospitality background, but they come because they're powered on enthusiasm and just a sheer kind of love for what we're trying to do here beyond pizza.

I mean, we always say it was never about pizza.

It was kind of about "How can we get the community to rally around something?"

Pizza's easy, so... Oh, Luke, this is my co-owner, Madeleine.

- Hey, Madeleine.

- Madeleine Schweitzer: Hey, nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

- Here's the rest of the kitchen and our team.

- Hello, team!

- Come have a seat.

- Thank you so much.

I love this space.

- Thank you.

- Luke: It's so warm and, like, interesting both visually, but, like, energetically, too.

You've got the yellow.

You got the nice, warm lighting.

The wallpaper is something to behold in and of itself, but then the art, too.

This feels like a great place to sit and, you know, kind of contemplate what's on the plate in front of you.

- Dana: Today, we're doing our Baddie pizza, and it's great as vegan or vegetarian.

We've got some house-grown tomatoes, mozzarella, little house pesto-- nut-free, dairy-free-- and finishing it with a burnt honey balsamic.

Honey is a really big deal around here.

We've got four beehives on the rooftop of our shop, so we've got a little apiary going, and that powers our hot honey that we make in-house.

- Oh, man, that smells great.

- Mmm, here we go.

- Yeah.

What am I looking at?

- Dana: All right, so this is the Baddie, and it was actually designed by Maddie.

- Like, this is a feast for the eyes and the senses before I even take a bite.

Mmm.

That crust is perfect.

You know, what I look for in a good pizza crust is that sweet, delicate balance between crispy and chewy.

You get all the freshness of the tomato, that deep richness in the mozzarella cheese, a little Parm on there, and those tomatoes.

It's one of the things I love about supporting local farmers and producers, or in an instance like this, someone who's growing a lot of this food themselves.

You just get these flavors in their moment, which is one of my favorite ways to eat.

I've often said that the key or the life hack to the Midwestern palate is sweet, salty, and fat, and this nails it.

- Detroit-style pizza, that quickly became an obsession of mine after we opened, trying to get this out to market, and I think we're the only people that are doing a wood-fired Detroit-style, and we're gonna be making our Smolwaukee pizza today because we just love the small-town feel of Milwaukee.

So, got a little fennel sausage, caramelized cheesy edges, and a little Grande cheese.

Got some balsamic caramelized onions that we're putting down, and then we've got some locally-cultivated mushrooms, a mix of trumpet, beech, and I think we've got some chicken of the woods this week.

Pizza has been such a great connector of people, and, I mean, my trajectory with pizza is sitting in the passenger seat with my dad and having that warm box of pizza on my lap, and, you know, we lived down the street from a Pizza Hut, so that was kind of, that was our deal, and when I moved to Milwaukee, and I mean, which we like to call Smallwaukee, getting into the local pizza scene and just seeing what people were doing is great, but we wanted to take it just a little bit further and just get in depth with being able to honor and respect ingredients and elevate plates here and there, and that's been really fun and important to us.

How about a Detroit-style for you today?

- How about it?

- Yes.

- Look at this.

Talk me through this one, please, chef.

- Okay, we're using Meadowlark Mill and Farm's organic heritage bread flour for this one.

We've got a pile of Grande cheese on top.

Little house red.

This is our Smolwaukee, so we're talking about all the ways that Milwaukee is small, and we love it, so we've got some cultivated mushrooms on there.

We got some trumpet, some beech, some maitake, balsamic caramelized onions, and then a little bit of fennel sausage.

- Motown in the house.

Oh, my gosh, that's so good.

It's got that really crispy, light bottom crust.

You see a little bit of that dough in the middle, which gives it a subtle chewiness, but the flavors in this are just humongous.

That tomato sauce, the onions, the mushrooms, and that fennel sausage.

It'll be really interesting, and I'm very, very excited to see what pizza that looks like this translates to in a place like Alice's Garden.

Alice's Garden is one of the most revered urban agricultural centers in all of North America, and its curator, Venice Williams, has spent her life connecting people to the idea of growing their own food and food unifying communities that perhaps have been historically divided in America and growing them together.

With this pizza and that ethos, this is gonna be one heck of a party.

[bright music] - Tonight, we're celebrating our four-year anniversary.

We're calling it Four Years in the Flames, and we're also celebrating Venice Williams's 35 years of serving Milwaukee.

Tonight, we have opened everything completely up to the public, and we're doing a pay-as-you-may, so we'll see who comes.

[bright music] - Worker: I need that hot box.

- Venice: Here at Alice's Garden, we like to say that we use gardening as the carrot-- pun intended-- to get people to come through the gate to impact their entire quality of life.

We cultivate the food to help folks understand that the earth provides us with more solutions than anywhere else, any institution that we can create.

Helping our community to reconnect and to embrace cultivating food is one of the reasons why I'm here at Alice's Garden.

[bright music] Let me get outta the way so you can get to cooking.

- All right, sounds good.

Thank you again for having us.

- Oh, please, thank you for being here.

- Dana: Yup.

- Venice: I'm live on Facebook, everybody.

[all cheering] Look at this incredible setup in this incredible location.

Look at all these pizzas!

Look at this!

- Dana: French burrata, peaches, pitted cherries, heirloom tomatoes.

- Venice: And burrata is the cheese?

- Dana: It's the cheese.

It's a very creamy cheese.

- Venice: Oh, my gosh.

Come on out, city of Milwaukee.

This is a pay-what-you-can, and it's also a fundraiser for Alice's Garden, but that doesn't even matter.

[bright music] Hello, sir.

- Hey, Miss Venice, how are you?

- I'm fine, Luke, good to see you.

There's so much to say about Alice's Garden.

Some of the most important things for me is recognizing that this space is the part of the birthplace of the Underground Railroad in the state of Wisconsin, so that's a very important part for me... - Yeah.

- ...as a descendant of many folks who fought for and claimed their freedom, and of course, that enslavement story is connected to food.

- Luke: Yeah.

- Venice: It's connected to, unfortunately, how land and food, as I have shared many times, was weaponized against us, but we get to reclaim it.

We get to retell our story.

We get to frame it in a way that is celebratory for how we endured, and we get to create magical spaces like this.

- Luke: Mm-hmm.

- Part of our task, our whole team, is to create in this 2.2-acre space an oasis in the city of Milwaukee, and that's really what has been done.

There's way more diversity here than is in your average neighborhood outside of these fences, and we use food as the thing to bring them in to build community.

We're growing food, but we're growing community and building relationships and crossing bridges more than anything else.

- Luke: Yeah.

This is obviously such powerful work.

- Venice: Mm-hmm.

- Luke: This is the work of mending relationships, relationships to food, relationships to this place.

What does it mean in the community?

I mean, do you get a tremendous amount of support from the community that we're in right now, and, like, how does that radiate out?

- Venice: This garden sits in the Lindsay Heights neighborhood, which itself is so focused on food and health and wellness.

People come from all over this city to be a part of this garden and to meet up.

I want everyone to see the beauty that comes from the earth and how it nourishes us.

- Luke: Mm-hmm.

- Venice: And how it sustains us, and I want everyone to share in that beauty and in that dream, whether it's related to food or those zinnias over there.

- Luke: Mm-hmm.

- Venice: The beauty of building businesses out of this garden.

At least a dozen businesses have been birthed out of this farm, out of this, what's considered a small urban farm, out of this environment.

- Luke: Yeah.

- Venice: So I want everyone to do well.

I want everyone to succeed and be happy, and I want Alice's Garden to always represent that.

- Luke: Mm-hmm.

- Venice: I don't ever want it to end.

You should not have to leave the city to find peace, and I think that's one of the myths.

That's one of the things that's perpetuated when people ask me, "Is it safe to come to Alice's Garden?"

Like, of course it's safe.

Without a doubt, it's safe.

It's not just safe.

It's beautiful, and it is going to strengthen your understanding of what sanctuary is.

- Luke: Mm-hmm.

- This is sanctuary in this city.

If you have to leave where you are from to find peace, then things are off balance.

Alice's Garden Urban Farm exists in this city to help the residents of this city and this neighborhood to bring life back into balance.

- Luke: Yeah.

Venice, I am in awe of what you've done here.

- What we've done.

- What, okay, sure.

I am in awe of what we've done here.

I am in awe of how you carry yourself, you present yourself, how you always approach the world through the lens of the people that shape your community.

- Proud of that.

- I think that is such a noble and beautiful way to live your life.

I'm always so happy to see you.

- Well, I'm as happy to see you, and come whenever you want.

- Well, thank you.

[bright music] - Venice: I would love to welcome everyone to Alice's Garden Urban Farm.

We always say, "Welcome home."

It may not be the home that you thought you needed, but if you hang out here long enough, you will be nourished and supported and embraced the way that every human should be in their own home.

So welcome home, and we are here to celebrate, to remember, to honor, to share with all of you the goodness that continues to be Flour Girl & Flame, so give Miss Dana a hand.

- Oh, my, thank you.

[cheering and applause] - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Thank you, gosh, thank you.

- Oh, no.

- Don't make me talk, okay?

- Oh, she said, "Don't make me talk," so you can whisper in my ear, and then I can tell them what you want them... - Oh, no, no.

I mean, she covered it, but my goodness, it is an honor to be here, having our anniversary party in this garden.

It just-- you probably all noticed when you walked in.

It just feels different.

It feels like magic here, and driving by and just seeing everybody bent over and putting the work in and knowing that it matters here is everything that our business has ever been about, so thank you so much for having us, truly.

[cheering and applause] - Luke: This is incredible.

I mean, I love being able to come and see communities getting together and celebrating over food, and what better arena than Alice's Garden?

This place has just got some oomph.

Why did you choose this place?

- 'Cause it has the oomph.

So when you walk in through the gates here at Alice's Garden, you feel it.

- Luke: Yeah.

- Dana: You feel magic, and, I mean, we are surrounded by beauty and local produce and hard work and intention, and it shows.

We love it here.

Our business plan was to be as intentional as possible to support small local farmers, farmers of color, LGBTQ farmers, and this was kind of the spot that we started, and we started making those connections in our community, and they have just followed us in such a big way.

- Luke: Evangelizing the local farmers, the local food, turning people on to that, but also creating an identity that people can resonate with in a place like this with ingredients and food like this, like, this is the winning combination.

- Dana: Thank you.

So we just have our peach burrata board here, and actually, the majority of the components were grown by us.

The peaches are the peach tree at my house, and all the heirloom tomatoes came out.

We did the arugula.

- Worker: And then we have crostini on the end with some peaches.

- Luke: Yes.

- Worker: And some cherries.

- Luke: Mm-hmm.

- Worker: And arugula.

- Luke: Yes, mmm.

- Worker: There you go.

Heirloom tomatoes, and then we're done.

- Luke: When you source locally and you grow some of this food yourself, I think that there's a tremendous appreciation for food in its moment, right?

Like, you're getting food that hasn't spent time being shipped.

It hasn't spent time being, you know, like, shuffled all over the map.

It's the pure essence of the ingredients, and this is, this is delicious.

To put food like this out is one thing.

To put food like this out in the middle of a garden space with the community gathered around you is truly another, and the fact that a lot of these ingredients actually came from this place, those full-circle storylines really captivate me.

I am so excited first to try this roasted squash salad.

I watched this kind of coming together, and it was gorgeous, to say the least, so I know that it's got a little bit of the hot honey that comes from the rooftop on it.

We have the chèvre.

We obviously see some chilies in here, some herbs.

Do you ever have those moments when you sit down at a dinner table and you're like, "Okay, this is gonna be a good bite?"

This one rocked me.

That hot honey, the fact that there's, like, that little bit of herbaceousness and basil, a couple other garden herbs in here, and the creamy nature of this kabocha squash really works well with the little bit of woodsmoke that's on there.

Kind of brings the whole room together.

That's delicious.

This is the lemon and ricotta pizza with just a little bit of rosemary on the top.

That lemon on there is incredible because it's sliced so thin, and you can see just the outer rinds.

All the essential oils that are in that outer rind permeate its way into that ricotta cheese.

It marries really, really nicely on the palate with that rosemary, and this definite local flavor of the crust here.

You've got a lot of different grains milled right here in Wisconsin that go into this bite.

This is a pretty spectacular pie.

Pepperoni and peppers.

What's not to love?

This is a pretty cool day.

Getting to be here in Alice's Garden and watching Chef Dana and her entire crew, start to finish, put this together, it's no surprise that this restaurant has made it to its four-year anniversary.

There are so many people behind the scenes that make this entire production come to life, but going back to what Venice said, how all of this is somehow ancestral, I can't help but think, for the future of Milwaukee, it's institutions like these that people will hold on to as being some of their formative food memories.

Milwaukee's having a moment, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

[gentle music] You know you're at a serious pizza joint when you accidentally, uh, get a little tomato sauce in your nose, hmm.

- There are 100 plots repre-- Oh, look at that beautiful insect.

- Yeah.

- Okay, it's not, really.

It's a beetle that's not helpful.

- [laughing] Exactly.

- It's still beautiful.

- It's beautiful.

I know people who aren't helpful, and they're still beautiful as well, but that's a different story.

- Yeah.

[laughing] Hey, what's up, "Donna?"

- Oh, hey.

- [laughing] Sorry.

His wife is named "Donna," but it's spelled the same way as Dana.

- I didn't even notice that you said that.

- Yeah, well, I did.

- Okay, got it, yeah.

[gentle music] - Did you know Organic Valley protects over 400,000 acres of organic farmland?

So are we an organic food cooperative that protects land, or land conservationists who make delicious food?

Yes; yes, we are.

Organic Valley.

- Twenty-minute commutes.

Weekends on the lake.

Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.

Not to mention all the great food!

There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.

Learn more at InWisconsin.com.

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer's made.

[sizzling] - For generations, our bacon recipe has remained the same.

You can see it on our labels, smell it as you cook it, and taste it in every bite.

Breakfast better with Jones.

- The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers are proud underwriters of Wisconsin Foodie.

It takes love of the land and generations of farming know-how to nurture a quality potato crop.

Ask any potato farmer and they'll tell you, there's a lot of satisfaction in healthy-grown crops.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal-sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Also with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.