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Naples chefs take sides in the ‘ultra pizza’ wars

Naples chefs take sides in the ‘ultra pizza’ wars

In Naples, the birthplace of the margherita, there is much discussion over the addition of stilton cheese, port and even liquorice

Tom Kington 20 May, 2012

Enzo Coccia seems evangelical while he discusses his spring pizza –with lots of asparagus, buffalo mozzarella, sheep’s cheese, lard and beans. “They may say I am a heretic, but I just want to experiment,” says the controversial maker of what people call gourmet or “ultra pizzas”.

The fashion for ultra pizzas has spread throughout Italy. But as Coccia is constantly reminded, this is Naples, the home of the tomato and mozzarella margherita. Since opening in 2010, Coccia’s restaurant, La Notizia, has led an army of angry traditionalists to express their contempt for Coccia’s strange combination of salt cod and mozzarella, his use of figs and pesto and his €25 truffle oil pizza. His innovative approach has divided a city.

“There is no such thing as gourmet pizza. We are not OK with this,” said Sergio Miccu, head of the Neapolitan Association of Pizza Makers, which has got EU certification for the margherita and another Neapolitan standard, the tomato, garlic and oregano marinara.

“Pizza was born as a food for the poor and any complicated pizza loses its identity,” he added. To prove his point, Miccu listed the elements that make the perfect – and now Brussels-patented – margherita: a 33cm diameter, 2–3cm high crust, San Marzano tomatoes, cow’s milk mozzarella from the region of Campania and olive oil, all cooked in a wood oven after the dough has risen for nine hours.

But a growing number of pizza makers, from all around Italy, are pushing beyond that. They are following the example of a Rome restaurant, La Gatta Mangiona, which has experimented with duck and asparagus, and steamed chestnut and mushroom pizzas.

In a country that normally uses simple ingredients and traditional recipes, pizza makers are now attempting stilton and port pizzas, as well as shrimp, saffron and liquorice pizzas.

What makes Coccia different is that he has dared to open for business in the town where pizza was first made popular. It was in Naples, in 1889, that a pizza maker named his new mozzarella, tomato and basil pizza – which give the white, red and green of the Italian flag – after Margherita of Savoy.

Naples’s pizzas got a further boost from the 1954 Italian comedy, The Gold of Naples, with Sofia Loren. Five decades on, Starita, the local restaurant which prepared her for the role, is still popular.

“I am completely against these gourmet pizzas – a pizza restaurant must be quick and cheap and make at least 400 pizzas a night,” said Antonio Starita, 70, whose grandfather opened the restaurant in 1901.

“I have seen cream being used, and it doesn’t get worse than that,” he added, while making pizza dough.

At Di Matteo on Via Dei Tribunali in the heart of Naples, where 600 pizzas are served a day and a margherita costs €3, the owner, Salvatore di Matteo, rejected the fashion for ultra-pizzas. “For me,” he said, “ gourmet means talking about what you eat.”

A third of Di Matteo’s business is folded and fried pizzas – typically stuffed with ricotta, provola cheese and cicoli, a local type of pancetta. For Neapolitans, he said, it is even more of a tradition than the margherita. “Fried pizza was bigger than oven-baked pizza in Naples until the 1950s. It needs good oil and a pizza maker who can tell the oil’s temperature just by looking at it – it’s such a hard technique that it hasn’t become popular outside Naples,” he said.

For food expert Davide Paolini, the new gourmet pizzas “can be great, but it’s no longer pizza”. He did, however, praise the work of the new pizza chefs in perfecting the dough base. “Gourmet pizza makers are doing serious research on flours and methods of raising the dough, particularly Enzo Coccia,” he said.

While his ingredients may be raising eyebrows in Naples, Coccia’s light, perfectly baked pizza bases are winning praise from his peers. After a long night’s baking, he still has the energy to describe the perfect mix of humidity, volume and temperature for raising dough. “This hasn’t changed much since the Greeks, but we are always looking to improve things,” he said.

At a second restaurant on the same street his menu is strictly traditional. As for the ingredients in his gourmet business, some may be unusual but all are local.

“I did a fried pizza with mussels and pancetta based on my grandmother’s skewers of mussels and pancetta, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs then fried,” he said. “If I am innovating, it is only because I know the traditions.”