# Continents Apart, A Kansas City Pizza Chef And A Turkish Restaurateur Help Each Other’s Dreams Come True

- Link: https://www.widthness.com/continents-apart-a-kansas-city-pizza-chef-and-a-turkish-restaurateur-help-each-others-dreams-come-true/
- Published: 2021-03-02T09:45:32-06:00
- Author: Curated by Theresa Wysocki

Photo: Carlos Moreno/KCUR 89.3 A transcontinental experiment in Turkish pizza recently took place in the custom-made brick oven at Clay and Fire on 17th Street, representing the best of two culinary worlds. Article by Gina Kaufmann. KCUR 89.3 – February 28, 2021. Two men living on two separate continents went into the pandemic with plans to open two very different restaurants. When COVID upended those plans, fate — and technology — threw them together. In a restaurant in an old house on Kansas City’s Westside, chef Brent Gunnels has been tending a clay oven, making a style of cuisine almost as new to him as it is to his customers. Poached eggs in simmering stews of warmly seasoned tomatoes; savory lamb balls wrapped in freshly baked flatbread; yogurt topped with shaved carrots, pistachios and pickled beets. He’s carrying out the culinary vision of a Turkish pub owner named Orcan Yigit, who’d planned to move to Kansas City to open a Near Eastern restaurant called Clay and Fire with a friend here. The restaurant, Clay and Fire, is now open. But pandemic and visa issues have kept Orcan in Ankara. That’s why Brent Gunnels — known around town for his pizza — is running the kitchen in Orcan’s place. […] Click here to view original web page at www.kcur.org