Pissa Chef Just Dropped a New Tasting Menu Featuring Rare Regional Cheeses

Pissa Chef has introduced a new limited-run tasting menu built entirely around rare regional cheeses sourced from small-scale producers, a departure from the brand's usual mozzarella-and-Parmesan foundation.

What's on the Tasting Menu

The menu features five small-format pizzas, each designed to showcase a single specialty cheese rather than layering multiple varieties together. Highlights include a pie built around aged Alpine-style raclette, known for its intense nutty flavor and exceptional melt; a version featuring a small-batch bloomy-rind cheese more commonly found on a cheese board than a pizza; and a smoked provolone pie designed to highlight the cheese's distinct smokiness without additional smoked toppings competing for attention.

Each course on the tasting menu is served individually rather than as a full-size pizza, allowing diners to move through all five without over-committing to any single dish, similar in format to a wine or cheese flight.

Why Pissa Chef Built This

According to the culinary team, the tasting menu grew out of ongoing sourcing relationships Pissa Chef's kitchen has been building with small regional cheese producers over the past year, relationships originally developed to source ingredients for the brand's rotating chef specials. The team found several cheeses distinctive enough to deserve their own dedicated showcase rather than being folded into an existing recipe as one ingredient among several.

Sourcing rare, small-batch cheese at the volume needed for a restaurant menu, even a limited one, required Pissa Chef to work directly with individual producers rather than standard commercial distributors, a process the team says took several months of relationship-building before the tasting menu could actually launch.

How It's Different From a Standard Order

Because the tasting menu is built around limited-supply ingredients, availability is capped and location-specific. Not every Pissa Chef location carries the full five-course tasting menu, and the company has confirmed some individual cheeses may need to be swapped or discontinued if a specific small producer's supply runs low, a tradeoff the culinary team says is simply part of working with genuinely small-scale sourcing rather than standardized commercial ingredients.

Pricing and Availability

The tasting menu is priced as a set course rather than by individual pizza, reflecting both the specialty sourcing costs and the smaller portion format. It is currently available at flagship Pissa Chef locations, with limited additional locations expected to add it in the coming weeks depending on cheese supply.

What's Next

The culinary team says this tasting menu format, built around a single rare ingredient category rather than a broad topping combination, may become a recurring seasonal feature if customer response holds up, potentially rotating to showcase other specialty ingredients such as rare cured meats or heirloom tomato varieties in future iterations.