Chef Baldee's Pizza rolls into St. Joseph
Mar. 22—St. Joseph residents might want to set aside some dough because there's another food truck to try in town.
Chef Baldee's Pizza is located at 1013 Seneca St., near Patee Park and the Pony Express National Museum, where the white and blue mobile pizza kitchen sits behind a home on the property.
The pizza kitchen, which opened Thursday, serves pizza on a New York-style thin crust. Customers are more than welcome to walk into the backyard, where they will be greeted by owner Chuck Baldee if he isn't busy preparing a pizza.
"Being me, I've got to be different," Baldee said. "Everybody is either a 16- or an 18-inch — I do a 17-inch size pizza. Now, every single pizza I make has a whole pound of cheese right on top of it."
But Baldee said his sauce is what sets his pizza apart from other restaurants.
"The signature spicy, sweet pizza sauce, now it's made with Marsala red wine, which gives it that raisiny flavor, and seven other ingredients, including fresh garlic, oregano and a lot of other things, including from the heart," he said.
Ordering ahead of time will give customers the best experience. A pizza takes 25 minutes to make from when the order is received, but it's worth the wait for one repeat customer.
"I stopped by yesterday for opening day," Bryson Bolton said. "It was just very unique. It has a sweet and spicy sauce to it that I really haven't ever tasted before, and it was really good."
Bolton ordered a cheese pizza on his first visit, and he had the opportunity to tour the inside of the pizza kitchen.
"I'm a big pizza fan, so I was like, 'That was really good,'" he said. "And there's not a lot of places that have Hawaiian pizza. So today we're back to try the Hawaiian pizza."
The current menu includes pizzas like "Dynamic Duo" (pepperoni and Scimeca's Italian sausage) and "Classic Deluxe" (pepperoni, fresh mushrooms, green pepper, yellow onion and black olives).
"I am just overwhelmed by the support of the community," Baldee said. "You should see all of the different comments on my Facebook page. Finally, I said, 'We did it.'"
Baldee launched his mobile pizza kitchen in 2012 and made stops in Kansas City and Springfield before finding a new home in St. Joseph.
"I would scope around towns like St. Joe and Atchison and all kinds of little towns in between, looking for just the perfect property where I could actually host my mobile pizza kitchen right here and live on the property," he said.
Baldee isn't very interested in competing with other businesses. He said he's just a guy who wants to make pizza and be happy.
"I just know that my mother in heaven is looking down at me and very proud of the fact that we were actually able to make this dream become a reality," he said.
Chef Baldee's Pizza is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Customers can order by calling (913) 605-0988 or by sending a message to the business's Facebook page.
