SLOWLY DOES IT
Pomodoro & Basilico, San Mauro Torinese, Turin
As a proponent of Slow Food in the movement’s heartland, owner Patrick Ricci holds farmers, producers and craftsmen in the highest esteem. His respect for the land and the seasons is boundless. His regard for some of the more demanding diners at Pomodoro & Basilico, however, is not quite so strong — he is renowned for saying no to all requests for pizza modifications. But look at it from his point of view: who would want to change the slightest detail of his ciociara pizza, topped with San Marzano tomato sauce, Castelpoto sausage, Tropea red onion, garlic, oregano and olive oil? And who could object to his reserving all his patience for new materials, new recipes and great pizza?
http://www.pomodoroebasilico.org
FLOUR POWER
Pizzeria Montegrigna Tric Trac, Legnano, Milan
The stretched round of raw dough is widely accepted as the white canvas of pizza — the colour comes from the toppings applied to it. In Legnano, northwest of Milan, Bruno De Rosa, a master of Neapolitan pizza, sees it differently. His canvases are imbued with an assortment of fragrant wheat and grain flours (rye, buckwheat, spelt, otto file corn, rye, enkir) and sometimes tastes (walnut, saffron, basil, lemon grass). His pizzeria has a wider assortment of doughs than some gelato shops have flavours. All the mixing and matching is done with purpose: the multi-cereal dough is the novel, but fitting, platform for the salsiccia e friarielli, the Naples classic of crumbled sausage, broccoli raab and smoked scamorza (Italian cow’s-milk cheese).
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IT’S ONLY NATURAL
Berbere, Bologna
Brothers Matteo and Salvatore Aloe brought different experiences to bear when launching their first Berbere restaurant, in Castel Maggiore, in 2010. Matteo had worked as a chef in Bologna and Milan, interned at Noma in Copenhagen, then studied pizza-making for a year with maestro pizzaiolo Beniamino Bilali, in Rimini. Salvatore had studied business at the University of Bologna, during which time he ate far too much bad street pizza. His motivation to surround himself with lighter, healthier, naturally leavened pizza made with prized ingredients (San Marzano tomatoes, Mora Romagnola sausage) was nearly as strong as Matteo’s, so they decided to work in partnership with Alce Nero, a consortium of organic farmers and producers. Incoming students in Bologna can eat better pizza, now that the Aloes have opened a Berbere there, too.
MARKET PLACE
Sud, Florence
Considering its spectacular, if somewhat commercialised, setting in Florence’s soaring Mercato Centrale, you would expect Sud, the food market’s polished pizzeria, to have more of a gourmet edge, more flash. But pizzaiolo Romualdo Rizzuti, a native of the south, specifically Camerota, in Campania, keeps to the basics of his home region. As for his low profile, Florence just isn’t that into the pizzaiolo-mania thing yet. The selection is limited to four classics: margherita, marinara, napoli (with anchovies added at the last moment) and salsiccia e friarielli. The margherita bears all the true Neapolitan trademarks, most notably the rounded, airy, black-speckled border, hugging unblemished, soft ponds of tomato and mozzarella.
TOP CAT
La Gatta Mangiona, Rome
Pizza master Giancarlo Casa responded to the Roman preference for crisp pizza by giving more firmness and less droop to his Naples-styled pizzas. But when it came to the ingredients that went into and atop his long-leavened dough, there was no bending. La Gatta Mangiona (the gluttonous cat) puts sensational pizza in a cozy dining room with paintings and statuettes of cats, thus appealing to two groups of social-media obsessives. Casa and his wife Cecilia Capitani are not ones for brevity: they offer nearly 200 wines, 60 beers, and 30-plus pizzas, from seasonal originals, such as the aromatica, with Asiago cheese, asparagus, duck speck and pink peppercorns, to classics paired with wines — a white riesling kabinett for the margherita and a red Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Cerasuolo for the marinara.