Andrew Foreman and Marguerite Viola, the husband-and-wife owners of Switchback Pizza Company in Emmaus, have spent countless hours doing all the hard work for your enjoyment of their pizza. And for that, the Lehigh Valley is eternally grateful.
“We tried really hard to find really good tomatoes, from everywhere,” says Foreman, and that they did. After opening can after can, they finally settled on some imported San Marzano tomatoes from La Valle, “the most tomato-y tomato,” says Foreman. “Some have additives in them,” notes Viola. They've found optimal cheeses for their pizzas—greasy and gummy need not apply—from BelGioioso, the very same brand you can get at the supermarket. It's reliable and always available, and it comes from a cooperative of farms in Wisconsin that pledge to not use rBST, a hormone that artificially pumps up milk production in cows.
When it comes to flour, they've sourced the best (King Arthur, naturally) and have worked extensively to come up with the optimal combination of flours (they blend a couple) for their signature thin pizzas with a chewy crust. But you can also thank a two-day cold fermentation process—a.k.a., a two-day rise in the fridge—for the texture, another process painstakingly tweaked by Foreman. And then there are those toppings, which are as locally sourced as humanly possible, from the sausage to the microgreens and heirloom tomatoes and apples and peppers. What you're tasting, smelling and seeing is how two people (who met while hiking and thought they'd be farmers) do pizza.
That fastidious attention to detail takes time, but the pair has done their homework and, in the past three years, has earned a seriously loyal following. Devotees of the Easton and Emmaus farmers' markets know Switchback well; Foreman and Viola have been staples at these venues for the past couple of seasons with their trailer-mounted, mobile wood-fired pizza oven (seriously, it has a license plate!). Fans have become accustomed to Foreman's signature wool cap (he's of Scottish descent) and his careful, expert touch with
the pizza as they line up for these personal-sized orders. Toppings are directly inspired by market offerings, whether it's their Blue Moon, with caramelized onions, roasted portabella mushrooms and gorgonzola or other inventive permutations of seasonal veggies and fruits, many utilizing homegrown garlic from a 14-acre farm in Jim Thorpe, near where they used to live.
At the end of the 2014 season, exactly one year ago in December, Viola and Foreman signed the papers on their current location, which opened just a few months ago in September. Even though it offered some challenges initially (they had to remove the windows in order to maneuver the massive, imported wood-burning oven into the place), it suits them well. It's a brightly painted, low-slung building that, yep, you guessed it, used to be the Emmaus train station, “from 1896 to the 1960s,” says Viola. Jubilee Street runs right along the train tracks, and it's an active cargo railway. When they were renovating from its previous iteration as a gym, “with pink carpeting and bodybuilder posters on the wall,” says Foreman, they uncovered some weathered-looking oak flooring that is likely original. That floor certainly informs the rest of the interior's rustic and bright approach, with reclaimed elm fashioned into countertops, and the chalkboard menu aesthetic that's the most common modus operandi for sustainable places that often change their offerings.
Attending markets several days a week was time consuming on a number of levels, travel time notwithstanding—the oven itself takes two hours to heat up. Switchback also runs a robust catering business with that oven, hauling it all over the Valley (and beyond). One of the bonuses of their new spot is that the line between work and home life is now mercifully thin—they live in the other side of the building. That's by design, as they looked in Easton, Bethlehem and Emmaus until they found the most apt accommodations. “After spending so much time driving over the last three years, we wanted to be able to live next to our business in a walkable, bike-friendly town,” says Viola. She's not kidding: Switchback's proximity to Funk Brewing Company facilitates pizza and beer gone local, very easily. “Many people come in, order their pizzas and then one person runs over to Funk to get a growler and bring it back, or take it to go,” she says. Switchback is planning bike delivery—a natural, given the town's gonzo cycling scene and overall holistic vibe.
To those of us on the eastern end of the Lehigh Valley who missed them dearly at the Easton Market this year, a brick and mortar venue feels like a quick turnaround—we hardly knew ye! (Emmaus is doubly lucky, as Switchback returned to that market mid-summer.) But it's really a success story and a tribute to the markets. When asked if it seems fast, Foreman says, “It's just about the exact timing Marguerite wanted for us—three, three-and-a-half years.” Oh, and in the middle of shepherding a new business, they had a baby boy, Whitney, who is just under two years old.
Thanks to the train, their location has serious kid appeal. The logo illustrates the wood oven and a train, which works on a number of levels. “Switchbacks” refer to pathways that switch back and forth up the side of a mountain. This description is easily applicable to both trains that snake through the mountains and hiking trails—Jim Thorpe has both. It's pretty canny, as the pair met while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington. Nature, farming and food brought them together. In 2011, they spent a few months at Casa Lanzarotti near Parma, Italy where they farmed organically, learned how to make cheeses and pasta and, of course, that ever-important Neapolitan-style pizza.
Viola comes from an Italian (and German) background and has been making pies with her family every Sunday since she was a kid. Still, pizza wasn't immediately obvious. In 2012, Viola was an apprentice at the Seed Farm and Foreman was an intern at Ledamete Grass Farm—they were still talking about farming and owning a food truck. “But after we started our business, we realized we wanted to focus on making awesome pizza. The Lehigh Valley has a fantastic farming community that allows us to source amazing food from our local farmers and lets us focus on pizza. At the Seed Farm, I took a class on garlic and realized we could grow enough of own garlic to supply our business without having our own farm,” she says. And that's how it all came together.
Wait! You may be wondering about the garlic. No, you can't grow tons of garlic on a long sliver of grass alongside the train tracks, but that doesn't mean they're abandoning their farming ways. Their garlic's been safe with friends at 14 Acre Farm in Summit Hill, near Jim Thorpe. This year Viola and Foreman harvested 150 pounds and they aim to double that next year now that they've got an active, fixed storefront that's open four days a week—plus the Emmaus market on Sundays and any catering, too.
Photo by Carrie Havranek
These days, the menu is just a tad bit more expansive than the usual handful of pizzas they’d offer at markets. You can find the aforementioned Blue Moon, the signature Margherita with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil, and the vegan (veggies, tomato sauce and no cheese), along with meatier choices—the Happy Pig, with local sausage and bacon, and the requisite pepperoni. Quinoa salad is on hand with rotating accompaniments, and salads come with a ciabatta roll for an additional $2. But not much else has changed. Mercifully, the pizzas taste the same and are that same smaller, 10-inch size. “We thought we’d stick with the same equation—why mess with it?” says Viola. It’s very easy to polish off one all by yourself, but order a few and share. This way, no one misses out on the fall and winter’s eagerly awaited Drunken Apple and Swine pie, with bourbon-flambéed apples, sausage, caramelized onions and gorgonzola cheese. (Yes, they definitely have a thing for the stinky stuff.) There are typically one to two special pizzas per week that feature seasonal produce. Thanks to their market days, “We have such a cache of special pies we can pull from. But now we have more time and space,” says Foreman.
These days, the menu is just a tad bit more expansive than the usual handful of pizzas they’d offer at markets. You can find the aforementioned Blue Moon, the signature Margherita with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil, and the vegan (veggies, tomato sauce and no cheese), along with meatier choices—the Happy Pig, with local sausage and bacon, and the requisite pepperoni. Quinoa salad is on hand with rotating accompaniments, and salads come with a ciabatta roll for an additional $2. But not much else has changed. Mercifully, the pizzas taste the same and are that same smaller, 10-inch size. “We thought we’d stick with the same equation—why mess with it?” says Viola. It’s very easy to polish off one all by yourself, but order a few and share. This way, no one misses out on the fall and winter’s eagerly awaited Drunken Apple and Swine pie, with bourbon-flambéed apples, sausage, caramelized onions and gorgonzola cheese. (Yes, they definitely have a thing for the stinky stuff.) There are typically one to two special pizzas per week that feature seasonal produce. Thanks to their market days, “We have such a cache of special pies we can pull from. But now we have more time and space,” says Foreman.
These days, the menu is just a tad bit more expansive than the usual handful of pizzas they'd offer at markets. You can find the aforementioned Blue Moon, the signature Margherita with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil, and the vegan (veggies, tomato sauce and no cheese), along with meatier choices—the Happy Pig, with local sausage and bacon, and the requisite pepperoni. Quinoa salad is on hand with rotating accompaniments, and salads come with a ciabatta roll for an additional $2. But not much else has changed. Mercifully, the pizzas taste the same and are that same smaller, 10-inch size. “We thought we'd stick with the same equation—why mess with it?” says Viola. It's very easy to polish off one all by yourself, but order a few and share. This way, no one misses out on the fall and winter's eagerly awaited Drunken Apple and Swine pie, with bourbon-flambéed apples, sausage, caramelized onions and gorgonzola cheese. (Yes, they definitely have a thing for the stinky stuff.) There are typically one to two special pizzas per week that feature seasonal produce. Thanks to their market days, “We have such a cache of special pies we can pull from. But now we have more time and space,” says Foreman.
A healthy sign of a beloved food business is the degree to which there are things available that aren't widely known or advertised. For example, Switchback offers a “Community Supported Pizza,” says Viola, in conjunction with Quiet Creek Farm's CSA, where they offer organic, whole wheat and regular pizza for customers to pair with their weekly produce share. She says, “They're parbaked [partially baked] ahead of time, frozen and you can just eat them whenever you want.” This has definitely turned into a thing. “We have quite a few farmers' market customers that buy parbaked pizzas that we don't slice, to freeze at home and eat later.”
It's a testament to Foreman's dough development skills that those pizzas are engineered to withstand such vagaries; a good pie holds up. The slow rise in the fridge means the end result is sturdy. “The gluten chains can develop better, so you don't need as much dough and it stretches further,” he says. After a brief 90 seconds in that searing 900-degree heat, pizzas are ready. “The speckled bubbles, with the little bit of char—that's always my goal,” says Foreman. Another goal? Foreman talks about the beauty of the space, and the full basement, which logically means house-cured meats are in the future. I suggest a signature pizza in homage of their new location; something like “The Caboose” comes up.
Allentown may be happily showing some signs of a restaurant revival, but look at Easton and, more recently, Emmaus. It's not a surprise that food businesses that keenly prioritize close relationships with farmers have popped up in these two robust market towns. “Being at the market keeps you in touch with what's happening in season. You know when the heirloom tomatoes are going to be done,” says Viola.
“Besides,” says Foreman, “we have the best bargaining chip at the farmers' market.”
