I pick up the phone one night and answer with our usual spiel. The woman on the phone orders a pizza and a couple of containers of pasta and a garlic bread for delivery.
After ordering her normal food, she pauses and says this:
Woman: “This is going to sound nuts, but do you think there is any way you guys could make a rainbow pizza?”
Me: “Uh… so, a pizza shaped like a rainbow? Or with all the toppings mixed on top?”
Woman: “Honestly, I don’t mind. It doesn’t even have to taste nice. My five-year-old daughter is very sick and in hospital, and tonight is her birthday. She asked earlier for a rainbow pizza, and I didn’t think it was possible, but I figured it never hurt to ask. I don’t think she’d even be well enough to eat any of it, but seeing one would make her happy…”
The woman’s voice cracks as she’s talking. One of the pizza cooks has wandered over to get a drink and has heard my half of the conversation. I put the woman on hold and ask the pizza cook directly. When he hears it’s for a sick kid, he picks up the phone himself.
Pizza Cook: “Hi! Any allergies?”
Woman: “Nope. Can you really do it?”
Pizza Cook: “I’m gonna try my hardest!”
I take her address for delivery — it’s going to the hospital — and let her know it’ll be there as soon as possible. By now, the pizza cook has grabbed the other cook and they are excitedly talking between themselves. One of them ducks to the supermarket while the other one carefully stretches a pizza base into a rough rainbow shape.
When he comes back, they set to work on making the rainbow pizza. They use capsicums for the orange and green, cheese for the yellow, and tomatoes on the red arch, and I laugh when I realise the supermarket trip was for purple cauliflower that they’ve quickly blanched. I wonder what on earth they are going to use for the blue strip, and they produce a bottle of blue food dye and start tinting some of our bechamel sauce!
After it runs through the oven, it looks incredible. They carefully arrange some of our garlic poppers at the base of the rainbow-like clouds and pack it neatly into an oversized calzone box. The delivery driver has gotten involved and is doodling balloons on the outside of the boxes.
The girlfriend of the pizza cook is our dessert girl, and she has arranged some brownies in a box with some sprinkles and icing. The delivery guy carefully carries it out and the pizza cooks look pleased with themselves.
About half an hour later, the delivery driver comes back, grinning ear to ear. He pulls out his phone to show us photos of that sweet little girl’s face when she opened up her rainbow pizza and her birthday brownies. She was over the moon!
Her family regularly comes back to us now. She is still sick, but she is doing much better and is always a ball of sunshine when she comes in, calling us all her friends. Rainbow pizza went through some flavour testing and recipe changes and is now a permanent part of our menu!
This story is included in our Feel-Good roundup for June 2020!
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