Would you travel 60 miles for pizza?
I would, I did and I will again. Especially if the pizza is from The Copper Oven, at Cayuga Ridge Estate Winery in Ovid.
The Copper Oven is a new addition to sipping and noshing choices on the Cayuga Wine Trail. Each weekend, owners Mary Jane Challen and Seth Kircher (above) fire up their custom-designed Le Panyol copper oven, made for them in Maine.
MJ preps artisan pizzas inside the winery (her dough takes two days to make) and Seth tends the wood-fired oven, keeping it at 750 to 800 degrees -- and keeping a close watch on pizzas. At those temperatures, your meal is ready in about two minutes.
It's fast food with slow-food sensibilities.
Just two kinds of pizza ($10 to $12) are on the menu each weekend -- one meatless and one with meat. Almost all of the ingredients are from the Finger Lakes, and you can enjoy your pizza with a glass of Cayuga Ridge Estate wine. If it's nice out, grab a table on the deck and savor the view of the lake and surrounding countryside.
A customer favorite this summer has been the 26-Mile Pizza, so named because all its ingredients come from within 26-miles of the winery -- toppings like caramelized onions, mushrooms from Blue Oyster Cultivation in Ithaca, chevre from Lively Run Goat Dairy in Interlaken and a finishing touch of butternut squash seed oil from Stony Brook WholeHearted Foods in Geneva.
The weekend I visited, the choices were the Straight from the Garden Pizza, with fresh tomatoes, yellow and green squash and Emmantal cheese and the Dakar, with white sauce, dry cured smoked New York State ham, mushrooms and Emmental cheese. The name Dakar is a reference to MJ's past life as a student and teacher in Dakar, Senegal, where she enjoyed thin-and-crispy, French-style pizza. If you've ever traveled to France, MJ's hand-crafted pizza will remind you of the rustic pies served there.
The Copper Oven is at Cayuga Ridge Estate Winery, 6800 Route 89, Ovid (about 15 miles south of Routes 5 and 20). The winery, owned by Tom and Susie Challen (MJ's parents), is open daily through Nov. 15. The Copper Oven is open Saturdays and Sundays only, 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information, call 607-220-8794.
The pizza at The Copper Oven IS great, Finger Food! Check it out... and thanks for visiting my blog.
--Margaret
Posted by: Margaret | 09/19/2010 at 04:47 PM
Great post!
Posted by: Finger Food | 09/19/2010 at 03:56 PM
Pizza looks great - nice and rustic! Will have to come over and try one day!
Posted by: Finger Food | 09/19/2010 at 03:55 PM