Photo Slideshow: A Peek into Pizza A Casa. (Be sure to view the captions for the slideshow, or else you won’t know what’s going on!) Photos by Rachel Wharton.

Those of you who read Thrillist may have seen their write-up today on our friend Mark Bello, the master pizzaiolo and Chinatown resident we profiled last year for his penchant for Thanksgiving turkeys done Peking duck style. (He’s also our favorite guide to delicious dim sum.) For the past year or so, Bello’s been at work on creating a real retail space for his pizza school and “self-sufficiency center” called Pizza A Casa, which opens on the 15th.

Bello’s focus is on teaching home pizza-making and selling the goods to make them at home. Until now, he basically taught the classes in his teeny Chinatown kitchen, whose kitschy clutter, 1970s pizza parlor style and day-glow fetish have been remarkably recreated at the shop.

We’ve been lucky enough to watch him go over the basics enough times–most recently at a Saturday afternoon pre-grand opening class hosted in honor of Mark’s birthday, as captured in the slideshow above–that we’ve been suitably impressed with his attention to detail: How to proof your yeast, how to weigh out your flour, how to touch the dough as you start to knead, how to loosely top your cheese with sauce to protect its flavor, how to pull your pie out of the oven with a wooden peel, how to cut basil into chiffonade. (The best part: How to eat Bello’s own amazing pies with abandon while you learn the ropes.)

We’re gonna stop before we say too much, because we really think you should take one of his classes–there are also walking tours where you shop the Lower East Side and Little Italy for goods before making pies–after which your life will inevitably change for the pizza-eating better.

Peking-style turkey with soy sauce gravy might not have graced the table in Norman Rockwell’s famous rendition of the archetypal American repast, but for Mark Bello—the pizzaiolo behind Pizza a Casa, which runs cooking classes and Little Italy walking tours centered around the pie—it makes perfect sense. Raised in Jersey by an Italian dad and a Jewish mom, Bello eats the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, then goes out for Chinese on the 25th, often in Chinatown near his apartment on Catherine Street. And, for the past two years, Thanksgiving has been in Chinatown, too: It’s a potluck at Bello’s place, complete with a soy-roasted bird prepared by Noodle King, the Chinese barbecue joint around the corner at 19 Henry Street.

Bello has always had a soft spot for soy sauce. Growing up, he recalls, “every Sunday we used to drive into the city and eat dinner in Chinatown.” And when he visited his grandfather, Hyman Brechner, who grew up on Hester Street and ran a printing shop at Lafayette and Bowery, they’d go out for dim sum. Grandpa Brechner even made homemade Peking duck for Christmas dinner, inflating the bird’s skin (which helps make it so crispy) with his mouth.

For his own first holiday potluck three years ago, Bello made his bird the traditional way. But it eventually occurred to the cook—who already sources pizza ingredients like cheese and sausage from shops in Little Italy—to ask the waiter he’d befriended at Noodle King if they could prepare the turkey for him, Pekingstyle. The answer was yes: In fact, a sign in the window—sadly, only in Chinese—advertised their ability do just that 364 days a year. (They close one day annually, just after the Chinese New Year.)

It took two days to prepare, says Bello, and resulted in a bird with “beautifully lacquered skin,” the dark meat perfectly done, the white meat super-juicy, the cavity fragrant with five-spice powder. Ever since, Bello has included Noodle King on his walking tour (pizzaacasa.com) and insisted on a Peking-style T-day turkey, serving it with the sweet dipping sauce the restaurant provides as well as his own traditional gravy, which he makes using the outstanding chicken stock he buys from Noodle King, too. Although it’s decidedly un-kosher, says Bello, since the stock’s flavor is boosted with pork bones and dried squid, we’re sure his grandfather would approve of the tradition.