Earlier this year, Aki’s Breadhaus moved out of 2506 Central Ave. NE, its Minneapolis home for a full decade.
It was a bummer—not so much for the German-style bakery, which has since relocated to a bigger space and opened a wine bar called the WunderBar—but for regulars at the adjacent Fair State Brewing Cooperative, who know how well Aki’s perfect soft pretzels pair with a crisp Köld or a Union Lager.
Well turn those frowns upside-down, pretzel-heads, because you know what else goes well with beer? Pizza. Fair State has taken over the kitchen space that Aki’s previously occupied, and it’s already up and running, with delicious pies from Farina Rossa Kitchen now available to order in the taproom.
Farina Rossa comes from John Michael (JM) Lynch, a New Jersey born-and-raised chef who spent close to 20 years working in fine dining before making the shift to pizza. Locally, Lynch was an executive chef at Robbinsdale’s Travail for about two years and later became head of menu development at Nouvelle Brewing. Thanks to his NJ roots, “pizza has always been a part of my food culture,” he says. “It’s kind of like a religion there.”
The name “Farina Rossa” is Italian for “red flour,” and it’s flour that’s the focus here—specifically high-gluten, high-protein, whole-grain flour derived from red spring wheat. The flour that eventually becomes Farina Rossa’s unique pizza dough is grown in the Upper Midwest, most of it at southern Minnesota’s A-Frame Farm, and it’s then stone-milled at Baker’s Field Flour & Bread, less than a mile from the pizza shop’s Central Avenue address.
“I didn’t want to make a pizza where it was like, this is whole grain in a bad way,” Lynch says, perhaps anticipating crust skepticism. He spent a year developing a dough recipe that “doesn’t taste like health food,” then honed the pizza recipes during a stint at St. Paul’s Bang Brewing Co. (itself a grain-focused brewery).
The resulting menu at Fair State is a selection of Farina Rossa’s greatest hits, along with a few seasonal pies, all made with organic, local produce. Some are a little more classic than others—Bring Za Heat ($19), for example, is a Minnesota-spicy pie with jalapeños, sausage, pepperoni, and hot honey. You’ve likely had similar spicy-slash-meaty pies, but they’re not always as good as this one; Farina Rossa focuses on the details, making the sausage from scratch along with most of the cheeses (housemade ricotta, hand-pulled mozzarella).
Elsewhere on the menu, you’ll encounter some much less-familiar creations. “I’ve never had a pizza like this,” I murmured upon biting into a slice of the Frenchy ($19), which is like a French onion soup on pizza crust. It’s topped with pickled apples and a sprinkling of addictively crispy parmesan bites, and I can’t emphasize how much it’s like enjoying a warming bowl of soup—the caramelized onions are layered underneath the cheese, with an unreal amount of sweet and savory flavor bursting through every bite. There must be two or three whole onions on here.
While most of Farina Rossa’s signature sourdough pizzas are Neapolitan, there is one Detroit-style pie on the menu right now. The Italian Stallion ($21) is described as “if lasagna was a pizza,” and it lives up to that billing; its bolognese sauce will have you scrapin’ the plate and wondering why we don’t put more meat sauces on pizza. At maybe a half-inch thick, the Stallion is less dense than some Detroit-style pies without sacrificing richness, and the crispy cheese crown kicks ass. And that whole-grain dough is especially impressive here, somehow pleasantly light and unassertive, and almost springy when prepared in this fashion. Were it not for the brownish hue, you might not realize it was made with whole grains at all.
Just about everything at Farina Rossa, like the house-made mushroom cream sauce that’s the base of the Funguy pizza, is pretty labor-intensive. Even the Caesar salad (“Say-zar,” $13) is a little special, garnished in a miso-garlic dressing for ultimate umami craveability. But Lynch says it’s worth the work: “We’re just trying to pay attention to the details that make the difference between a great pizza and a good pizza.”
“The cool thing about pizza is that everyone can relate and connect with it,” he continues. Fine-dining is nice, but it doesn’t feel comfortable in the same way. You might see guests once a year, or less. Not so at Fair State, where, Lynch chuckles, gesturing to a table a few down from ours, “This guy—he’s been here a couple times, right? They just keep coming back.”
Farina Rossa Kitchen at Fair State Brewing Cooperative
Address: 2506 Central Ave. NE, Minneapolis
Hours: 4-8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; noon to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; noon to 8 p.m. Sundays
