Pizza Master Chris Bianco and Tartine Bakery Are Joining Forces on a Colossal LA Project

Blockbuster alert: Chris Bianco, maker of perhaps the finest pizzas in America, and the team behind San Francisco’s beloved Tartine Bakery are teaming up on a major project in Southern California. Tartine Manufactory will open at the ROW DTLA development in Downtown Los Angeles, Eater LA reports. Expect to find breads, pastries, coffee, and two restaurants as part of the new venture.

The project will include expansive market space. A bakery from Tartine owners and pastry chefs Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson will stock breads and pastries, and there will be a 10,000-square-foot space dedicated for milling grains. Coffee will be available from an on-site roastery.

Bianco is the man behind Phoenix’s Pizzeria Bianco, which landed on Eater’s list of the 38 best restaurants in America for 2016. He will oversee both Tartine Manufactory restaurants. The first, a casual daytime operation in the market, will reportedly offer Roman-style pizzas, charcuterie, and cheese, and the second will be an upscale dinner spot that “acts as a modern trattoria,” according to Eater LA. Robertson is expected to collaborate on the latter eatery.

Robertson lured Bianco onto the project by describing it as a culinary theme park. “He said, ‘I’m doing an insane project, a Disneyland for bakers and people who dig food, do you want to do it with me?’” Bianco tells Bloomberg. “I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ I love that it’s so outside-the-box. I love that he’s prioritizing the manufacturing of food.”

In total, Eater LA reports the two-story Tartine Manufactory will take up nearly 40,000 square feet. Restaurateur Bill Chait, formerly of LA’s Sprout Restaurant Group (Bestia, Redbird, Republique) is backing the project, and the early timeline calls for an October 2017 debut.

Prueitt and Robertson opened Tartine Bakery in San Francisco’s Mission District in 2002. In 2008, they shared the James Beard Foundation’s award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. The wife-and-husband opened their first Tartine Manufactory concept last year in San Francisco.

• Tartine Partners With Chris Bianco on Massive New Projects in Downtown LA [ELA]
• Tartine Manufactory Is an Artisanal Utopia in the Mission [ESF]
• 20 Years In, Chris Bianco Is Still America's Best Pizza Maker [E]
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