Roger Pigozzi, assistant director, executive chef
Los Angeles, Calif.

Category: university foodservice

Chef Roger Pigozzi is responsible for campus dining and catering at U.C.L.A.
His crew serves 15,000 to 20,000 meals a day.

Concept: We have four main dining halls and two other grab-and-go operations. At one we do beverages, like juice drinks and protein drinks. The other is Mexican fast food, and it has been very successful. At most of the dining halls, we have impinger ovens, conveyor belt types. But we themed Covel (dining hall) to be more Mediterranean, and we wanted to be able to offer deep-dish pizza. So we purchased a rotating stone oven, like a pizza oven, with gas and infrared heat. The revolving stone inside is an almost two-inch-thick slab that really holds the heat, so it's ideal for pizza. It gives you that 550ºF to 650ºF temperature, and we can put small pots of soaked wood chips in the oven. It gives you a really nice aroma. We designed it as a focal point, decorated it with small mosaic tiles on the front, and we call it the pizza oven. It's going great.

One great idea: We're looking at a new dining concept that would serve sandwiches on focaccia made with the deep-dish pizza dough. It makes great bread. We would do olive bread, whole wheat bread, sun-dried tomato bread, and it would be unique. Everybody's doing baguettes, but these would be round sandwiches.

We're also making focaccia to put with soup or an entrée, so you have a fresh-baked bread that is delicious. We bake in the morning for lunch and in the afternoon for dinner. Another idea: Everybody likes the crust on macaroni and cheese. So I thought, let's not put it in deep three-inch casseroles. Let's do it in a shallow dish so you're getting more of the part you like best.

Menu hits: We do a Greek-style lemon leg of lamb with rosmarino (orzo) pasta. It has lots of garlic, herbs, lemon and seasoned salt. We make moussaka and that sells out. We do grilled breast of chicken with creamy polenta and tomato coulis. We do a lot with couscous and polenta and Provençal flavors. We serve couscous as a salad, as an accompaniment to sandwiches. In the evening, we'll have a piece of grilled fish with Moroccan flavors and serve the couscous with that. And we have couscous salad on our salad buffet, but not every day.

Menu misses: Maybe it would be lamb. We do a lamb stew with Moroccan flavors. It will sell but it won't be on the higher end. We have to take a safe approach. We're not getting too far out there.

Creative adaptations: At the (CIA Greystone Worlds of Flavor) conference, I tasted a loin of rabbit wrapped in prosciutto. As soon as I tasted it, I knew there was something else going on there. It had been wrapped in caul fat, then sautéed. Well, I would have to buy whole rabbits and then I would have to make a lot of pâté, so I just bought chicken tenders that I seasoned with a bit of sausage seasoning and black pepper. I did them with creamy polenta and roasted pepper coulis. It was really pretty and very tasty. If it doesn't translate for one of the halls here, it could work in catering.