Joe Squared has been praised by Zagat, The Food Network and appeared on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” Now, the Thrillist series “Really Dough?” is challenging the beloved Baltimore pizza shop to create its most outlandish pizza in its Season 3 premiere airing June 24.
“We never try to be a traditional pizza shop,” restaurant owner Joe Edwardsen said.
The non-traditional route seems to be working for the 14-year-old business. Its square-shaped pizzas are made with uncommon ingredients like sourdough and baked in a coal oven.
“Really Dough?” follows show host Scott Wiener and Lucali (a popular pizza shop in Brooklyn) owner Mark Iacono as they travel the East Coast to taste unique pizza creations and decide whether they qualify as pizza.
“We [use] a coal oven; we’re the hottest food oven in the state of Maryland,” Edwardsen said. “We’re square. We’re different in so many ways.”
Although Edwardsen, 39, had never heard of the show prior, he recalled meeting Wiener once at an Artscape event in Baltimore nearly 10 years ago.
“He’s pretty well-known in the pizza world,” he said.
For his pizza creation on the show, Edwardsen made a crab pizza with a key ingredient — raw egg yolk. As someone who frequently uses his own palette to inspire new ideas, and as a proud Baltimorean, he was pleased with the finished product.
“I’ve got weird taste,” he said. “I’ve always just made a pizza that I want to eat, which isn’t necessarily a pizza that already existed.”
The Joe Squared episode premieres at 11 a.m. June 24 on Amazon Prime Video and Thrillist’s YouTube channel. Subsequent episodes will feature shops like Philadelphia’s Pizza Brain and Iacono’s Lucali in Brooklyn.