What is Behind the Recipe?
Each month, I (LINK’s digital editor and newsroom food aficionado) am going behind the scenes with a local chef, bartender or barista to learn how their recipes came to be and what makes them unique.
This month, we’re stopping by Wayfarer Tavern to hear from chef Mike Dew.
Self-described “restaurant junkie” Mike Dew, owner of Wayfarer Tavern, has traveled near and far looking for menu inspiration.
“The menu is kind of a collection of a lot of things that I’ve experienced in restaurants in my time traveling,” said Dew. “I’m a restaurant junkie. I guess I love traveling to different cities and visiting a bunch of restaurants. And there’s just been a lot of moments in time where I’m like, ‘I would love to have this in Cincinnati.’”
Dew has always been known for his pizza. Before starting Wayfarer, he worked in tech and also with the Lang Thang Group, which owns several restaurants and bars in Cincinnati, but he was always making pizza, whether it was at dinner parties or during pop-ups held out of his home in Dayton.
“On the day of our first pop-up, I got laid off from my job,” said Dew. “So from there, I had a little bit of time to do some soul searching, and my wife encouraged me to just go for the pizza restaurant.”
Wayfarer Tavern is located on the first floor of the historic Burton Building in Dayton at 635 6th Ave. Dew said that when his friend told him the building was soon going to be up for sale, he jumped on the opportunity.
“I live in the neighborhood, walking around with my wife, we would always walk past this spot and think about how great it could be,” said Dew. “And I knew if somebody else did something in here, I might not be as happy with what the result would be. So I was happy to take that leap here and into Dayton.”
Known as both the Rayme Building and the Burton Building, the brick space at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Berry Street, which now houses Wayfarer, was built in 1884. Over the years, per the City of Dayton, the building was used for a variety of commercial and civic uses, including a Pythian Temple, the city’s first Kroger’s grocery store, a druggist, barbershop, attorney’s office, insurance agency, print shop and a movie theater.
Wayfarer Tavern officially opened in the space in January of this year.
Dew said he wants the restaurant to be a “third space,” meaning a place where people can spend time that’s neither at home nor at work.
“A space where you can celebrate little moments and the moments that are big as well,” said Dew. “So, from having a first date, to having your kids’ first birthday party, to graduation parties all the way through, that’s kind of the hope anyway.”
As a Dayton resident, Dew said he has loved seeing how the community has grown in recent years, “We’ve got a cool neighborhood here. It feels like a Chicago neighborhood, where there’s a little bit of something for everybody.”
But let’s get to what we all came here for: the food.
Menu inspiration
Wayfarer Tavern’s pizza is described as a combination of “East Coast thin and crispy bar-style pizza with a Detroit-style caramelized cheese edge cut into Midwestern tavern-style squares.”
So, suffice it to say, many things inspire the menu.
Some, close to home, like the horseradish onion dip. Dew said that it is “just a family recipe that we would have at parties on holidays, or whatever. It’s just horseradish, garlic, cream cheese, Fritos. It’s pretty simple, but it’s really, really good.”
Sometimes, the inspiration comes from the season. Currently, they’re offering a French dip, and their next seasonal pizza will be a buffalo chicken-style pie, just in time for the football playoffs.
Sometimes, Dew said, the seasonal offerings will become so popular that people will ask for them to be kept around, but he noted that they always want to have a fresh menu, plus it’ll be something to look forward to when they’re brought back next year.
Many of the menu items feature flavors from different cultures and traditions, but Dew also incorporated other ideas from his travels.
Right before opening, Dew said they took a “research trip” to New York City and visited over 20 restaurants in 36 hours. They weren’t there to try the food; mostly, he said, they wanted to learn how these spaces created an atmosphere and how they handled high-volume service.
Behind the pickle pizza
One of Wayfarer’s most popular and certainly most viral pies is the “Pickle Power.” A white sauce pizza with confit garlic cream, pickles, onion, a three cheese blend, fresh dill, chive, house-made ranch, topped with ridged potato chips.
“A lot of people like to try out the pickle pizza for their first visit,” said Dew.
The inspiration for this dish came from a pizza served at now-closed Minneapolis restaurant, Young Joni. “They did a pickle pizza with potato chips, and then I just kind of tweaked it in the ways that I wanted to do it,” said Dew.
“I’ve had people comment that it tastes like a Frisch’s Big Boy because of all the dill that’s going on,” said Dew. “And then there’s other people who are kind of blown away. And some people it’s not for them, and that’s okay, too. But I think every time I bite into one of the pickle pizzas, it’s still good.”
Behind the crust
“The crust is the main thing,” said Dew. “We build everything off the crust.”
Dew said that consistency is key. They make the same dough for all their pies, which are all the same size and cooked at the same temperature, to achieve the ideal crust.
Recently, he said they got new pizza ovens, and since their installation, they’ve been fine-tuning their process to the degree and seconds of cooking.
But the secret, he said, is their twice-baked method. The first bake is in a pan, which Dew said “sets the dough.” Then, the pizza is removed from the pan and returned to the oven, where it crisps the bottom and finishes baking the topping.
“There’s not a lot of pizza places that I know that do it that way, if any,” said Dew. “Honestly, I don’t come from a pizza background, so there’s no rules for me that I have to keep sacred or anything, I can just do what’s gonna work the best.”
The chef’s table
We asked Dew if he were to come in and sit down as a customer, how would he order? This is what he told us:
He started by saying his order would depend on the day and what he was in the mood for, but anything Wayfarer serves would be a good choice: “Our menu is like all bangers, there’s no slouches.”
Typically, though, he would start with a “Pizza Party Negroni,” which he and his wife developed while hosting pizza parties before opening Wayfarer. “We’d make a big batch of it in a big bottle. It’s so easy drinking, and they’re kind of dangerous.”
Along with his cocktail, he would have their newly introduced spinach artichoke dip, then he would move on to a wedge salad.
While it isn’t his number one, at the moment, for a pizza, Dew said he would go for a “Pepperoni Deluxe, with the blue cheese and our sweet and spicy pickled jalapenos,” and he would pair that with the Grenache Noir on their current wine list.
Dew eats two to three slices of pizza a day, and he told LINK he doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of it.
His favorite pizza is the Trusty Chords – sausage, rapini, garlic, bottarga, lemon zest, house-made red sauce and a five cheese blend. The name of this pie also comes from the same inspiration as the restaurant’s.
As a big music fan, the song “Wayfarer” and “Trusty Chords” from one of Dew’s favorite bands, Hot Water Music, gave the restaurant and his favorite pie their respective names.
Behind the bar
When it comes to Wayfarer’s wine list of 35 curated bottles, Dew said, “We’re really proud of it. I wouldn’t go as far as say it’s the best wine list around… but pound for pound, it’s great.”
The list offers both imported and domestic wines, all under 14% ABV, which Dew said makes it so that “You can have two glasses and not feel like you’re out of your chair.”
For beer, they just keep two on tap. Always the 50 West Pilsner, which Dew said is “a great pizza beer, especially with a spicy pizza.” Then, they have a rotating tap that they swap out often. Up next is Rhinegeist Truth.
Dew said that admittedly, he doesn’t get too crazy with cocktails; the most “complicated” he gets is the Negroni, but he’s got people on his team who love to develop creative concoctions.
“We have a team of bartenders and our general manager who are very much into cocktails, and they have put together a really cool program,” said Dew.
The cocktail menu changes frequently, adapting to the seasons; they have just revamped it with a focus on more wintery, cold-weather drinks.
“There’s always room for creativity in the cocktail world, especially,” said Dew. “So I try to let everybody kind of flex a little bit in that arena.
And of course, would Wayfarer be a Kentucky restaurant without a bourbon menu? Dew said they try to have several local bourbons available, including bottles from New Riff and Winzel.
Wayfarer Tavern is located at 635 6th Ave., Dayton. Check out their menu at wayfarertavern.com.