The Great Pizza Epiphany!

I know two great truths about pizza, both of which I thought were eternal:

1) The best pizza in the world is in Naples, Italy; and

2) You simply cannot find Naples-style pizza anywhere else in the world, including the rest of Italy.

After my recent two weeks on the delicious boot, the first perception still stands. But at the tail end of the trip, I found a pizza in Sicily (where I’ve gone Napoli-hunting many times)…that is absolutely Naples quality!!! It was a shock!!!

The importance of this discovery is fundamental: it means that Naples-style pizza outside of Naples is possible! The right pizzaiolo, in the right restaurant, with the right owner…can do this!

And this gives hope to us all! Even us Americanos living stateside!

Let’s start at the top. What is Naples-style pizza?

It is not what Americans always imagine about pizza in Italy. “Thin, thin, thin” is the way we think, the mantra we employ…but in Naples pizza is not thin. The most distinguishing feature is the rim, or the crust—what they call the cornizione—which is thick and puffy. The thing that makes it so wonderful is that the puffy rim is light, fabulously crunchy on the outside, a lighter-than-air pillow inside, with gaping air holes. Not to mention the fact that the dough has great, grainy, slowly-risen flavor.

At the center of the Naples pie, true, the dough is much thinner. But the center has its own particularity: moisture! Pooling on top! The uneducated have criticized this molten center; one of our least discriminating American food writers came back from Naples hating the pizza, referring to the wet center as a “swamp.” Me, I want to drown in this so-called “swamp!” This Neapolitan pizza “juice” is just about the most flavorful liquid in the world, with its intense combo of olive oil, herbs and ripe tomatoes.

Above all, Naples pizza breathes—it lives. Anchored by the charred bottom that the wood fire creates (after only two minutes in a crazy hot oven!), the pie has give, lightness, lambency. It is a million miles from the “thin” pizza Americans think they want—which is technically thin, but loaded down with way too much cheese and too many toppings. Thin and goopy. You will never find goopy in Naples!

Now, in recent years, “Naples pizza” has become something of a thing in America’s big cities, with their teeming foodie populations. I know the New York scene best, where, I’m happy to say, it is possible to find decent approximations today of Naples pizza. That big pie always called “Neapolitan” in New York was never Neapolitan at all, of course; it just yielded “New York” slices. But the smaller rounds now being made at places like Starita (especially!), and Forcella, and Motorino, are respectable surrogates.

And yet, they don’t quite capture the magic—the very capture that I thought was impossible until just the other day. My sentiment before was backed up by scores and scores of failed attempts in Italy, outside of Naples, to find a “Naples” pie. There are many places from north to south that proclaim their pie to be “Neapolitan,” even carry the name “Naples” in their pizzeria names. But for me, not a single one—ever!—has captured the magic.

Until last Sunday night in Catania, Sicily.

You see it: the place is called Fud. In fact, at this bubbling-over hipster spot, much of the language of the menu seems like a playful imagining of English names with phonetic spellings that sound like Italian-accented American.

It is working. On a Sunday night at 9:30, the wait in line was 30 minutes to get in…

Once in, you find a kind of grocery store, its walls lined with Sicilian products.

In fact, even if the pizza here was not a Neapolitan home run, I would run back to Fud on my next visit to Catania to sample the goods from this “museum” of all things Siciliano. In addition to the wonderful condiments in jars, and olive oils, there is fabulous Sicilian cheese, not to mention the best collection of Sicilian salumi that I’ve ever seen.

Three brilliant dried salsiccie headline the selection—all different textures and flavors—but my fave, by far, was the local mortadella. No, NOT made in Bologna! But even more exciting—made from donkey, a Sicilian specialty!!!!! It has a much tighter, closer-grained texture than any other mortadella I’ve had, with a wonderful garlicky flavor, almost like old-fashioned Jewish bologna. I would have asked for a lot more…but I didn’t want to make an ass of myself!

The salumi board also carried wonderful local jellies (the red chile jelly is outstanding), and a scattering of Sicilian nuts (the island is famous for pistachios, but there’s an abundance of almonds and hazelnuts, too). This board cannot be missed, while you wait for your pizza. And if pizza ain’t gonna be enough for you…you might indulge the American obsession of Andrea, the long-haired owner, by ordering one of the best burgers in Italy…

…or one of the many variations on the “Oddog,” served on enormous, outsized “oddog” buns.

But best of all at Fud, aside from its epiphanal bang, is, of course, the pizza. Having been warned what deliciousness to expect, I ordered the Margherita—the purest of all Naples pizzas, adorned only with cheese, tomato and basil.

You might think that Sicily ain’t too far from Campania, and that finding real Naples-style pizza on the island should be easy. But I have tried, many times, even on this trip, and always struck out. One place, last week in Ortigia, was boasting about its “Naples” pizza, going so far as to boast about its “pizza-maker from Naples.” You would never know it from the cakey, cookie-like crust.

But Andrea boasts too. He says that when he opened Fud, three years ago, he hired “the best” pizzaiolo in Naples to teach his Catania chef how to make pizza in Fud’s wood oven. And the chef keeps experimenting with the god-like details of Naples pizza. “Currently,” Andrea said, “we are allowing the dough to rise for 12 hours.” Andrea also owns Il Sole, down the food-mad alley that is Via S. Filomena, where pizza is also served. “But we’re allowing the Il Sole dough to rise for 24 hours, just to have a difference,” he told me. “We’re all convinced that 12 hours is better.”

So what I’m saying is this. If you really, really want great Naples pizza…you must go to the crazy city itself under the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius! However, my Sunday night in Catania showed me two important things:

1) Catania, the main entry point for fabulous eastern Sicily, a city where I never had outstanding food before, has now got a MUST-visit restaurant…for pizza plus; and

2) Take hope, lovers of Naples pizza…it is now demonstrably possible to have great Naples-style pizza outside of Naples. Could the U.S. be next?

FUD
Via S. Filomena 35
Catania, Sicilia