Have you ever noticed the creepy guy hanging out in Neapolitan pizzerias? No, not Adam Kuban. I'm talking about Pulcinella. He's always wearing a puffy white getup, matching white hat, and a black mask with a long, pointy nose. Maybe you haven't noticed him, but Pulcinella is usually within ten feet of most wood-fired ovens in the form of paintings and figurines. Who is this guy and why is he associated with pizza? We'll have to go back a few centuries to find out.
"Here's the most significant difference between New York style and Italian-style pizza: You eat it with a knife and fork. At no point is it acceptable, what I've seen with this technique, nationwide, you don't see people picking up the slice. They don't pick it up. Kooky, right?"
[This is] one of the more elaborate and informative videos of Da Michele I've seen. It gets interesting around 1:30, when the tap water is turned on for dough-making. Notice the gentle speed of the fork mixer, the cool "pig trough" metal fermentation bin. This shows that they shape differently here than other VPN-focused Neapolitan places. You can get a bead on the brand of tomatoes they use (looks like the loose purée in the can makes it into the sauce?). Cheese-shredding, pizza-making and then the usual, to-be-expected brew-ha-ha of people saying how good the pizza is.
If you've followed Slice for any length of time, you've met Jason Feirman and Scott Wiener. Jason runs I Dream of Pizza, and Scott runs Scott's New York Pizza Tours. These two friends of Slice went on a spectacular-looking pilgrimage to Naples recently, visiting all the storied pizzerias and some cool pizza-related spots like a water buffalo farm and cheesemaking facility. Jason's got his recaps here: http://www.idreamofpizza.com/search/label/naples/ Go check 'em out. They're phenomenal.
Naples pizzaiolo Antonio Starita with *the original* pizza box. [Photographs: Adam Kuban] Antonio Starita (above) represents the third generation of pizzaioli at Pizzeria Starita a Materdei, a Naples institution. (It was the pizzeria in the Sofia Loren flim L'Oro di Napoli.) Starita mentored Kesté's Roberto Caporuscio in the ways of pizza and was in New York City over the weekend guest-teaching classes at Caporuscio's pizza school. On Friday night, Starita was behind the counter making pizzas for lucky Kesté customers who showed up between 5 and 7 p.m. Slice stopped by to watch the man in action. OK, enough...
With only two pizzas on offer at Pizzeria da Michele, the spartan ambiance was pure Neapolitan. I always thought I would like Da Michele but also had a feeling I would be underwhelmed. I love being wrong. The pizza I ate there was one of the best I have ever had.
[Photograph: Sony Pictures] Famed Naples pizzeria L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele gets a star turn in the book-cum-movie Eat, Pray, Love, when Julia Roberts eats pizza there. Pizzeria Da Michele: Via Cesare Sersale 1, 80139, Naples, Italy (map); 081 5539204; damichele.net. [Photograph courtesy of Robert Sietsema] The scene is inspired from the following passage (after the jump) in Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling feel-good memoir....
It's the episode of Un'Americana in Italia we've all been waiting for. Here, the Americana herself, Sky Dylan-Robbins, visits Naples to talk about the spirituality of la pizza Napoletana.
Wow. From an AFP report on France24.com: "Investigators in Naples are setting their sights on the thousands of small, lower-end pizza shops and bakeries that dot the city on suspicion that patrons may 'use wood from caskets to keep ovens burning.' Naples' graveyard has long been hunting ground for thieves: Last year, 5,000 flower pots were stolen from the cemetery."
[Fotografia: Roberto Sietsema] La prima cosa che voglio parlare di come componente di questo nuovo accordo è pizza della via a Napoli. I residenti di Napoli realmente stanno entrando ultimamente nella pizza della via. Ciò è perché stanno prendendo sulla tendenza dell'alimento della via degli Stati Uniti. È naturale, quindi, che la gente a Napoli ha trasformato la pizza l'alimento della via. Dopo tutto, se vedete qualche cosa di freddo e volete emularli, vi adattate qualunque avete a disposizione. A Napoli, la gente mangia soltanto la pizza. Quello è che cosa ha dovuto lavorare con, in modo da lo...
