Paul Kasten previously worked in fine dining but wanted to ‘put down the tweezers’ and bring rarely found authentic regional American pizza styles to Australia. He opened Deep End Pizza last March in the space formerly occupied by Hammer and Tong just off Brunswick Street and it has been gloriously popular ever since he first opened the doors. Deep End’s Detroit, Chicago and New York style pizzas are each made with a different dough, a different oven, and different care. The bases are meticulously crafted using a variety of flours, fermentation times, handling techniques and baking temperatures. What I loved about talking to Paul was the many surprises along the way in this conversation. There was a time early on when Paul thought he might like to be a poet and embarked on a university degree to pursue this, before deciding that perhaps that was not the path for him. However, there is much that is poetic in the story of his life thus far. He set up a cookie business at the age of nine and loved how happy his cookies made people, then worked his way up over the years to the role of sous chef and beer director in award-winning farm to plate restaurant, Wildwood in Portland, Oregon, a job that he loved. Following that venture, he got more into running beer and food matching events and happened to be offered a position as head chef in a pizza restaurant, an idea that did not appeal to him at the time. In an unexpected plot twist, he moved to Melbourne and opened his own pizza joint (there were a few steps in between) and he now loves seeing how happy his pizzas make people. If that is not circular narrative, I’m not sure what is.