No matter how you slice it, this is the golden era of pizza.
The wood-fired dramas of celebrity pizzaiolos like Ann Kim of Minnesota’s Hello Pizza and Gabriele Bonci, the “Michelangelo of pizza,” are chronicled in Netflix's Chef Table: Pizza. In April, 800 chefs will compete in the World Pizza Championship in Parma, Italy. Deep-dish devotees now discuss their top toppings across the internet, sharing pizza pics on Instagram and arguing over the Michelin merits of the names on the global 50 Top Pizza charts with an unwavering loyalty typically reserved for sports teams.
In December, Francesco Martucci, widely-considered the planet’s best pizza chef thanks to the 36-hour fermented dough he uses at his restaurant I Masanielli in Naples, told El Pais, Spain’s leading newspaper, today's "revolutionary" moment means that “pizza can have anything the chef creates.”
Antonio Puzzi, the author of two books, Pizza: A Great Italian Tradition and The World of Pizza, which will be published by the imprint Slow Food in March, agrees. “Pizza is a gastronomic hardware that adapts to the most diverse software,” he says. “More humbly, I believe that pizza, heir to the mensae of ancient Rome, has always been able to accommodate the gastronomy of countries throughout the world. Pizza has never been the same, as we so often want to believe.”
While ancient Roman gourmands likely never would have predicted that their Mediterranean precursors of flatbreads might one day lead to modern marvels like the classic Australian condiment Vegemite’s new line of frozen pizzas, these 11 pizza spots, from neo-Neapolitan pies in Los Angeles to cacao crusts in Rome, offer some of the finest slices in the world and showcase the latest chapter in the Italian's street snack's thrilling evolution on the world stage.
i Tigli — Veneto
Pizzeria: i Tigli in the village of San Bonifacio, between Padova and Verona in the Veneto region of Italy.
Chef: Simone Padoan, Italy's poster boy of new-wave pizza.
Slice: Innovative “pizza gourmet” pies topped with "perfumes of the sea” (such as “swordfish tataki with black sesame and artichokes with orange") and gioco di mano, a type of stuffed pizza meant to be eaten with one's hands. Try Padoan's nostrano, an Italian pizza-inspired spin on the cheeseburger.
