Cooks at Pizzeria Orso in Falls Church Used to High Stress

There are thousands of restaurants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with some unique and highly trained cooking staffs.

In one Falls Church restaurant, they too have a unique cooking staff but with talents uncommon to the kitchen. On the cooking line at Pizzeria Orso, they have a Washington, D.C. firefighter, a Muay Thai fighter and a security supervisor at a D.C. nightclub. Not your typical kitchen staff, but chef Will Artley likes it that way.

“They’re hungry,” Artley said about his protégé’s. “They haven’t cooked a lot and I can teach them how to cook the way I want to. They want to learn.”

Outside of feeding the masses, Artley said he likes to pass on his cooking abilities to others. With a staff used to dealing with high levels of stress, Artley said he has found it easy to teach his cooks the art of cooking in any condition without any pushback. Artley has been at Pizzeria Orso since February.

Chris Howard has long wanted to be a firefighter and about five years ago, he left his New Hampshire home to join the D.C. fire department. While he found his adrenaline rush kicking in doors and running into burning buildings, Howard, 27, finds his calm in cooking.

Working in Artley’s kitchen does that for the veteran firefighter. When Howard isn’t working a 48-hour shift at the firehouse, he’s firing up the grill and pizza oven at Orso.

Howard said Artley hired him at another restaurant in November and when the chef left to join Pizzeria Orso in February, the firefighter followed.

“He’s a great teacher,” Howard said. “His cooking style is what I love.”

Andrew Hodges, too, came to learn cooking from Artley. With some professional cooking under his belt, Hodges, 22, wanted more experience. A former student at Art Institute of Washington, Hodges found himself out of cooking for some time before friend and colleague at Town Danceboutique, Tommy Edwards, a Muay Thai fighter, told him about Artley.

The floor security supervisor said he has learned a lot in his two months working with Artley.

“I like the fast pace of it,” said Hodges. “I’ve been doing this my whole life and it’s just fun. I like learning new things.”