[Chef's Table] is a semi-regular "treat" for our editors, because it goes beyond the traditional sit-down, question-and-answer format of typical interviews. We kind of said, "Bleh, let's do something different," so... we decided to opt for having DINNER with these culinary maestros instead to see if they hold chopsticks correctly or if they are more fork/spoon spirits. These are entirely organic conversations in nature, edited for clarity and flow, for your delight and ours. Got a chef we should sit down with? Drop their name/resto in the comments on the WeChat version of this article. Not subscribed to us yet? Search City News Service on WeChat!

Shanghai has a lot of places to get good pizza and just a couple of places to get eff'ing great pizza. One of our favorites is the very clutch, Chicago-inflected pizza-plus-drinks storefront, Zup. They had a rocky start at the outset of their run, opening a larger venue in the center of town in the year 2022 – not the most perfect of times to be opening up a restaurant. These past few months, they've scaled down to a more streamlined menu and operation in Jing'an, where they continue to do the Lord's work of slinging late-night thin-crust 'Merica pizza to the thirsty masses.

The pizza is rad. But if we can be bold: also one of the best burgers in town. Also some of the best sammiches. Also get the street corn. Also get the garlic knots. Also drink all their damn beer and pay them accordingly!

We caught up with the man with the plan, chef Wayne Ho, to cherry-pick the best stuff on their menu and to find out more about your boy.

CNS: To start, why don't you tell me what your name is and where you're from?

Wayne: My name is Wayne Ho. Yeah. Ain't nothing but a ho. I'm from Chicago, Illinois. I've been in China since 2004. I kind of just fell in love and had a really good network of friends there.

I went to Dalian. That was my first stop, and I ended up staying there for 15 years. I went there to study Chinese for a year. And then I kind of fell in love with the scene and the people there.

I opened my first restaurant in 2008 called Brooklyn. At that time, there were no Western restaurants in Dalian. Very New York-esque food and vibes. We organized a lot of big parties. The scene was pretty kicking back in Dalian around like 2004 to 2010.

Anyway, I was doing a lot of dinner parties, and I kind of became obsessed with pizza back in the day…

CNS: Alright, what do we have here?

Wayne: We have what we call street corn, which is our take on Mexican street corn. Yeah, so this is almost like corn on steroids. We make our own sauce. There's a lot of cheese, a lot of different types of cheese.

And we cook it on a very, very high heat. Okay. So you get the char, because the char is very important for the taste in general. And then we put a lot of Parmesan on top of it. And a little bit of cilantro and a squeeze of lime.

And then you mix it up, and then you go ham on it. Perfect.

CNS: To take a step back, can you introduce Zup to someone who's never been here?

Wayne: Sure. So Zup Pizza Bar is a new concept that my business partner Lee Tseng (whom we've written about here) and I came up with. We focus on Chicago tavern-style pizza, thin and crispy.

CNS: What's Chicago tavern-style?

Wayne: So, you know, I think it's a misnomer that people think everybody in Chicago eats deep-dish pizza. This kid's from Chicago; he doesn't eat deep-dish. It represents my culture., but, I mean, for locals that grew up in Chicago, we eat thin crust because deep-dish is too heavy.

CNS: Deep-dish is for tourists, right?

Wayne: It's very ceremonial, or it's for tourists.

CNS: Ceremonial? Like a special graduation pizza?

Wayne: Like for when kids get baptized and stuff.

CNS: Baptism pizza. Okay, okay.

Wayne: Yeah, so we focus on Chicago tavern-style. And, you know, we wanted to kind of meld pizza and the old tavern history of drinking.

So we came up with the pizza bar.

The whole story goes like this: between 1930 and 1940, a lot of tavern bar owners in Chicago were trying to figure out how to get their patrons to drink more.

CNS: Just the noblest of intentions.

Wayne: Yeah, noble intentions for sure. So they made them thin and crispy and cut them into squares. There was no cutlery back then in taverns, right? So they just put it on a napkin.

If you buy a beer, they give you a piece of pizza. That's how it started in tavern style.

So we kind of wanted to recreate that. We wanted to have drinks and pizza. And we also do share plates and sandwiches and burgers.

CNS: Let's get the menu out. You can give me a rundown of what we're looking at.

Wayne: Our shared plates are just the garlic knots; it is a big seller. Garlic knots are made from our dough. So we ferment, we make our dough, we cut it up, we put it in little knots, and then we let it ferment at room temp for about two to three hours, and then we bake it. And then we toss our garlic butter and in our vodka sauce.

Wayne: And then we have, like, the fried chicken bites, which is our house hot sauce.

We do a hot sauce here. It's not really like Frank style. It's probably a little bit thicker, a little bit more Asian Frank style. So we ferment our chilies for about 9 days. And then we turn it into the hot sauce. And then we take the residual peppers, we strain it, and we make chili oil out of it. So no waste.

Meatballs we make in-house, of course. It's a pork and beef mix. House ricotta, garlic bread with a red sauce.

In our old Zup, we did sandwiches only for lunch. And people loved it. Like there's a very small minority, they just came for sandwiches. And so we put those on the menu available all the time. We have the Zup combo, which is kind of like your Italian combo. Cured meats. We add our own take to it with our pickled peppers.

Of course, a dash of oregano, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. So it's like your classic Italian sandwich. But with our take on it.

And then our hot chicken sandwich. So fried chicken, house hot sauce.

We also have a fermented hot sauce that we put on there that's very spicy. Asian slaw, pickled pepper, bread and butter pickle. That's it.

And then burgers, single and double smash burgers.

And then our pizza. Okay. We only have six pizzas here at the moment for thin and crispy. We want to run things as specials so it just keeps everything a little bit fresh.

So we do the classics right now for thin crust. Like our "Holy Trinity," which is our triple sauce vodka sauce, red sauce and pesto. "Walter White," which is a big one for vegetarians.

Roasted garlic, house ricotta, white sauce. And then white gold, primo supremo. And then we also do the "Upside Down Sicilian," which is a little bit thicker.

So the individual squares. We do the "Holy Trinity," which holds up pretty well with all the sauce and cheese. And then we do the "Queen Bee," which is the marinara, pepperoni, and house ricotta.

Okay. And then you can make your own pizza. So, a 14-inch pizza, thin crust. That's pretty much the base price for the cheese pizza. And then you can choose marinara, vodka, or white sauce.

And then you can add your own toppings. We have a bunch of veggies, a lot of our own pickles, giardiniera, house ricotta, smoked bacon, house fennel sausage, and house meatballs.

CNS: Let's come back to the pizza. Can you introduce the Smash Burger?

Wayne: Yes. The Smash Burger – we only use US beef. In my opinion, US beef for a burger, I'm not talking about for a steak or anything else. You just got to go for US beef. We do two cuts.

We grind our meat in-house. We make our own bread and pickles. And then our special sauce. And it's just lettuce and American cheese. And it's very simple. We want you to taste the beef. We don't want any distractions.

CNS: Did you always want to open a restaurant? Or is it just something you kind of discovered later?

Wayne: I discovered later. Yeah. I studied finance, and then one thing led to another. I love food. And then I opened up Brooklyn. It was like a 300-square-meter restaurant, with three floors, and I had no idea what I was doing.

And then trial and error, baby!

CNS: Three floors? That's huge, though.

Wayne: Yeah! So pizza was New York style, and it was the primary focus. Because of the size of the place, we had a fully decked-out menu. Appetizers, burgers, sandwiches and a full cocktail program. It was pretty intense, but it was fun. I learned a lot.

CNS: So how long was that around for?

Wayne: It's still open. It's going strong after 17 years now.

CNS: What was the next step?

Wayne: Well, I opened a couple of restaurants after that as well. Like a smaller pizzeria. New Orleans type of restaurant there. That went down under.

And then I came to Shanghai.

My wife and I were going to move to Berlin in 2019. We were very close to moving to Berlin. Some things fell through. We couldn't get a visa there. We couldn't get whatever documents we needed to get in Germany.

So my wife's like if we're going to stay in China – she's a fashion designer – we're going to move to Shanghai. I was going to move to Chengdu or Shenzhen. I had a couple of big projects lined up. But she's like, We're going to Shanghai.

I'm like, okay, sure…

CNS: Okay, so what do we have here?

Wayne: So let's start off with the most simple pizza, which is the classic Margherita. Thin and crispy. We serve slices here, as opposed to our old shop, where we only served whole pies.

We use a blend of three different types of cheeses for all our pizzas. We have some Parmigiano-Reggiano, some basil, and some very good olive oil.

This one's called the Primo Supremo, which is your classic supreme pizza.

I think any good pizzeria always makes their own sausage, so we make our own fennel sausage. We have pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, and onions on that. Red sauce, marinara.

And this one's our white gold. White Gold is actually our best seller. It's a white pizza.

Mashed potatoes that we do in-house, pancetta bits. Also, there's a white garlic cream sauce in there that you can't see; we kind of bake it for you now. And then house ranch dressing scallions.

The Chinese love it, like the Chinese and the foreigners love that one.

And then this one's our upside-down Sicilian sold in squares. So upside-down Sicilian is basically cheese on the bottom and sauce on top; that's why it's upside-down. We have two varieties, the Hou Lee Trinity made with vodka sauce, red sauce, and pesto sauce. And the one we have here is the Queen B with marinara, pepperoni, house ricotta and hot honey.

Wayne: It's very New York, New York Sicilian. Definitely don't want to offend the real Sicilians, because they'll just mock it. So we do a thicker Sicilian style; it's different from our thin crust style.

The hydration is very high; it's over 80 percent water. It looks like a brick, but it tastes like a feather. Red sauce, marinara, and then we have pepperoni; we make our own house ricotta, and then we also infuse our own spicy hot honey.

You have savory, you have salty, you have everything in there, and you have spicy. It's delicious. That's it.

CNS: So with your extensive pizza knowledge, what's the secret to the perfect pizza crust?

Wayne: It's all about time. It's all about temperature. Time and temperature.

Those are the only two things you need. Yeah, so it takes a lot of time to ferment the dough at a good temperature. We use a method called DDT, which is direct dough temperature.

CNS: Okay, how does that work?

Wayne: It's just really simple formulas. So we're measuring the flour temperature every day.

We're measuring our pre-ferment. We're measuring the room temp.

CNS: So that all happens back there in the kitchen?

Wayne: It all happens back there, yeah.

And then we're measuring the friction factor, which is the rate at which the mixer moves and how much Fahrenheit it generates. So that's already stable. That's already 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

We measure everything in Fahrenheit, not Celsius, because it's more precise.

CNS: America, baby!

Wayne: Yeah, basically, every single day, whether it's 40 degrees out in Shanghai or it's 10 degrees like today, I want the dough temp after mixing to be the exact same temperature.

So we know what water temperature to pump in. So it varies every single day after we take these temperatures for the formula. So the water temperature is different every single day, but we aim for a 76 to 78 Fahrenheit dough temperature whenever we're done mixing.

Because we think that's the perfect temperature for fermentation. It's not too hot. It doesn't over-ferment.

CNS: So what's the pizza scene in Shanghai like? It seems like there's a lot of pizza stuff out there. Where do you guys fit in the community of Shanghai pizzerias?

Wayne: Sure. You know, there's a lot of Italian, for sure. A lot of Italian.

You know, like, Home Slice and Joe's are doing more New York style.

CNS: I guess you're doing completely your own thing…

Wayne: Yeah, I mean for pizza styles, I'm normally the first person to run if somebody's doing the same thing as me.

I'm running in other directions. So, I wanted to do something like Chicago Tavern style, which has hit close to home for me since I grew up there. And then also offer a different pizza style like a New York Sicilian.

CNS: What's your experience in Shanghai F&B in general?

Wayne: It's a good community here. Yeah. It's very communal. You know, a lot of fellow F&B restauranteurs and chefs are always willing to help out. Which is awesome. Which is not what I'm used to, especially when I was up in Dalian. It's more competitive.

But that's a great thing, and it keeps you sane, right? You're not on this boat by yourself. I think all boats rise with the tide, and I think Shanghai F&B is a lot different than before. A lot of good F&B concepts have left. Partly due to lower consumer spending and also very high costs. It's not cheap to run a business here.

Yeah, of course. But we're all trying to do our part and try to make the scene better. I think it's our responsibility to make the scene stronger as long as we're here.

CNS: You guys moved here in Jing'an from your other location above Funkadeli. What precipitated that?

Wayne: It was a tough location, on the second floor. So it was very difficult. And maybe just a little bit too big for us. So, our strategy for going to that place was because consumer spending was still pretty high at that time.

Everything was kind of normal, and we liked the location; the size of it was about 200 square meters. We wanted to kind of build it up as a flagship shop and then scale down after that.

And for a new concept like ours, we never had sufficient cash flow, so we were playing catch-up from day one. And then we were four months behind… and it just never came back.

CNS: And how did this place come about?

Wayne: Well, we looked for this location for about seven to eight months. I think one thing very important for us that we learned from the first time was we need a street side. And we needed to be a leaner model and less labor intensive.

Yeah, and we found this place, and we kind of came in looking at it, and we're like, okay, let's build up the actual pizza bar.

CNS: How many seats is it?

Wayne: Including, like, the outdoor bench, probably around 30.

CNS: Tell us about the famous pickled peppers.

Wayne: So we do our pickled peppers, for sure. That's our giardiniera. Our giardiniera is kind of like our staple here. It's very Chicago. It started off in Italy, like the Italian immigrants brought giardiniera, which they eat like bigger pickled vegetables.

It's almost like an antipasti. And then once it got to Chicago, they decided to cut it up. That's a pizza topping if you want. It's also in our famous Italian Campbell's sandwich.

CNS: Are you looking at doing side events?

Wayne: It's a really great location and size for pop-ups, so we're thinking of having people in for guest pizzas and stuff. It doesn't even have to be pizza; it can be anything that we think is kind of interesting. We're also looking at partnerships with other venues. Maybe set up a DJ in the corner and have the chefs flipping in the back. And then some bar takeover stuff. We're trying to get Union Trading Company to come over here and do a bar takeover.

And we're also in talks with some other people to do collaborations. We want to make it a fun place, like a community-based place.

CNS: Tell me about your life and well-being in Shanghai. What's your favorite aspect of living in this city?

Wayne: I mean, we love our F&B community here. Yeah. We love our friends at Yaya's and Baxter's.

CNS: Oh yeah, you can give us some restaurant and dish recommendations.

Wayne: So if you go to Yaya's, I like the mapo lasagna, which is very good. And then we like our friends down at Clay as well. I mean, everything chef Hardeep makes is very, very good. I mean, I love his curries. I love his lamb. Everything I like there.

Where else do I go? For local restaurants, I still like Man Man Kang Bao. They're at my house near Gao'an Rd. They still make really good xiaolongbaos, I think. And the yaxue fensitang is so good.

When I come back to Shanghai after traveling, I try that.

CNS: Where do you go that's not eating and drinking?

Wayne: I like walking around Wukang Rd. It's always nice. I always, you know, see different things every time, like small nuances. It's nice and chill.

CNS: What are your plans for the future?

Wayne: I don't know if we're ready. But, I mean, we definitely want to expand. We really believe in this concept. We think it gels well with the local community as well. I mean, they like the single portions.

Future plans for Shanghai? We'll see, man.

We'll see where Shanghai takes us. It's a different day and age right now. We're taking it slowly, man.

If you go...

Opening hours: 11am-11pm (closed on Mondays until Dec 2)

Address: Unit 101, Bldg 4, 457 Shaanxi Rd N. 陕西北路457号

Average price: 100 yuan

Tel: 153-0049-6960