Archer's BBQ opens Bullseye Pizza: 18 toppings — even figs — to hit any taste target

Hungry customers can now slip around to the backdoor of the new Archer’s BBQ outpost and pick up a pie at Bullseye Pizza. Ever since Archer Bagley parked his BBQ food truck out front of the former bank at 10225 Chapman Highway in March, he has been hard at work dreaming up a new use for the lower level of the building.

Customers can build their own 7-inch or 14-inch pizza or pasta, select pizza, alfredo or pesto sauce and make their selection from 18 toppings including smoked chicken, pulled pork or even figs.

Cheese options range from the traditional cheese blend or fresh mozzarella, as well as goat cheese, feta, shaved parmesan or cheddar.

Bagley said the pizza toppings have been a collaborative effort. “We started throwing stuff on dough and deciding what we liked,” said Bagley, who admits he is not very fancy when it comes to pizza.

There are also seven specialty pizzas on the menu.

“There is a real Memphis BBQ pizza here,” said Bagley. “Other places have pulled pork, but they are missing the final steps. We use half barbecue and half marinara sauce and add traditional mozzarella and cheddar cheese.”

Then there is the T-Rex. “It is your basic meat lover with every meat in the house with a nice balance between acid and spice,” he said.

James Reall, Archer’s BBQ operations manager, was sent to New Orleans for 10 days during Mardi Gras to learn as much as he could when he came across Bry Hensel.

Bagley encouraged her to move from New Orleans to be executive chef for Bagley’s forthcoming Fire and Smoke Steakhouse.

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Hensel has a diverse culinary background working as a sous chef for a French fine dining restaurant, then opting for a change of pace as pitmaster. She admitted that pizza is new to her and a way of “stretching her legs.”

“Bry has been helping us with launching the pizza menu,” said Bagley as the first pizzas rolled out of the oven for customers.

The key, said Hensel, is to make sure the pizza crust is not too thin or thick and that the dough is sturdy enough to stand up to five toppings. “It was finding that balance between the two,” she said.

“We tasted our way through several iterations of the sauce — taking samples to the guys working upstairs and going with the one that everyone seemed to like, being very careful not to go too sweet.”

Hensel admits the Veggie, with artichokes and other “bougie” toppings, and the Chicken Florentine are her favorite pizzas so far.

“The thing that is most special to me, is a sandwich: the BBQ-uban with pulled pork, ham, mustard, pickles, provolone and a Carolina BBQ sauce,” she said.

The rest of the sandwich menu includes a chicken pesto panini, sausage and peppers, Italian and the smoked chicken, bacon and ranch. And they all take a turn through the pizza oven before they are served.

For something sweet, there is a Smores pie and an ice cream sandwich made with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies with a choice of chocolate or vanilla ice cream.

Until recently, Archer’s Backdoor Pizza was the working title. “Bullseye Pizza was a play off the Archer’s brand and logo from one of my commissary guys,” said Bagley. “He gets free pizza for life, regardless of whether he works for me or not.

“We purposely waited to push this stuff,” he continued. “We wanted to make sure we don’t fall on our face straight out of the gate. The opening of Bullseye is on the busiest weekend of the year for any barbecue place. We plan to open on Sundays and Mondays later.”

The menu is up at www.bullseyepizza.com, with online ordering soon to follow.

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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Archer’s BBQ opens Bullseye Pizza in Seymour