From the Pizza Corner: A Slice of Creativity with Lane

If you’ve ever walked into Tomato Bros and glanced toward the pizza corner, chances are you’ve seen Lane at work. Whether he’s tossing dough, sliding pizzas through the oven, or chatting with guests watching the action, there’s a quiet rhythm to what he does, one that comes from years spent in the kitchen and a genuine love for the craft.

Lane has been part of the Tomato Bros family for about four years. He originally started on the sauté side before stepping away for about six to eight months to try his hand at insulation work. But the kitchen has a way of calling people back, and Lane eventually returned, this time finding his groove in the pizza corner.

Before joining Tomato Bros, Lane worked at Main Street Grill, and even earlier he got his first taste of the restaurant world at Terminal Gravity Brewing in Eugene, Oregon. But his connection to cooking goes back much further than his first job. Growing up, Lane spent countless hours in his grandmother’s kitchen. She ran her own kitchen, and some of his favorite childhood memories involve playing on the floor with toys while she cooked nearby. Watching her work planted a seed early on, one that quietly grew into the career he enjoys today.

These days, Lane spends most of his time perfecting pizzas, which is more complex than it might seem. Dough has a personality of its own, and small changes in temperature, timing, and toppings can affect everything from stickiness to texture. During busy nights, Lane turns up the wood-fired oven to around 610 degrees and moves with practiced speed, sending pizza after pizza through the heat. Each pie cooks for about eight to twelve minutes depending on the conditions inside the oven.

Despite the precision involved, there’s still plenty of room for creativity. In fact, many employees rarely order straight off the pizza menu, they like to invent their own combinations! Just the day before our visit, Lane came up with a new creation that’s tentatively being called the ‘Island BBQ’. Built with BBQ sauce, cheese, Canadian bacon, Calabrese salami, pineapple, pepperoni, and finished with a drizzle of sweet chili sauce, the pizza was as colorful as it was flavorful. We were lucky enough to try it while we were there, and the result was unforgettable. The pizza was vibrant and lively, and each bite brought a new balance of sweet, smoky, and savory, like taking a bite of summer. The sweet chili sauce is normally only used on the cauliflower bites, so seeing it make an appearance on a pizza felt like a special twist. (Keep an eye out, Lane’s Island BBQ pizza may make its way onto the summer features menu.)

During our visit, we watched Lane skillfully shuffle pizzas around the oven with ease. When asked how he learned to move so confidently, he laughed and gave the most honest answer a cook can give: you mess up again and again until you figure it out. At one point, he even demonstrated a perfect dough toss for us. Lane admitted he usually only does that when kids are watching. Since the pizza corner is the first thing guests see when they walk in, he likes to turn longer waits or busy moments into something fun, a small bit of entertainment that makes people smile

Joining us during the interview was head chef Skyler, who listened with clear pride as Lane talked about his work. Like many chefs, Skyler has created his own menu items over the years, and he believes that spirit of experimentation is part of what makes the kitchen special.

“The beauty of this company,” Skyler said, “is that everyone is encouraged and given the freedom to try new things. If they have an idea, the only way to know if it works is to try it, and they do. It boosts morale here.” That sense of freedom and creativity is part of what keeps the kitchen exciting, not just for the cooks, but for the guests who get to enjoy the results.

So the next time you walk into Tomato Bros and see the pizza oven glowing, take a moment to watch the corner in action. You might catch a dough toss, a new pizza being tested, or Lane sliding another masterpiece into that back corner of the oven. And if you happen to see the Island BBQ on the menu this summer, you’ll know exactly where it came from.