Pier Daniele Seu’s vegetarian pizzas

Lucky for us, whether we’re vegetarian or not, gone are the days when the meat-free options in a pizzeria, or those that had no animal proteins at all, offered very few alternatives on top of the still delicious Marinara – perfect in its balance of tomato, garlic, oregano and extra virgin olive oil – or Ortolana, often seasoned with sad grilled vegetables, out of season and lacking in flavour. In order to find other vegetables on a pizza, you had to choose some much richer and demanding options, like parmigiana di melanzaneor the yummy Salsiccia e friarielli from the Neapolitan tradition; in any case, these were pizzas in which vegetables always were little more than a side, an extra.

Today this is no longer the case thanks to the more and more common meeting of pizza and cooking and to the great attention that pizzaioli are paying to the way they season their dough, making creativity and balance meet, and working on unusual flavours and lightness. This is, for instance, what Pier Daniele Seu of Seu Pizza Illuminati (Via Bargoni 10-18, Roma. Tel. +39 06 5883384, https://seu-pizza-illuminati.business.site/) is doing. In his menu – which changes every season – there are always various pizzas clearly defined as vegetarian or even vegan, but which are worth tasting even for omnivores.

«This is a response to the many requests I’ve received from clients, but it’s also been very stimulating and fine for me – Seu says – After all, almost everything has already been said, when it comes to cured meat and cheese, while the vegetal world is still largely unexplored». His “green” pizzas are indeed not banal and truly delicious. In the spring menu, for instance, there’s the Veggie Reef in which he adds homely recipe to the dough, with coral beans cooked in tomato sauce and a mirepoix and fresh basil, finished with a pesto of dried tomatoes and some nicely balanced grated Provolone del Monaco.

On his Basilicata Coast to Coast pizza,instead, he adds a cream of fresh fava beans, fried chicory, peperoni cruschi and the intense Gran Käse della Valcamonica as a well-thought component of proteins from other areas. What about Pesto? It’s a great provocation which – just like Seu’s other pizzas – adds a traditional recipe to the dough, recreating the flavours in an exemplary way, with the right proportions of each ingredient; in this case, the typical Ligurian pesto, with a cream of French beans on the base, plus grilled French beans, cream of potatoes with extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, parmigiano reggiano both grated and in crispy chips, basil leaves and a sweet garlic cream.

Assoluto di tuberi is completely vegan: on the base, there’s a cream of beetroot, plus sweet potatoes, yellow, orange and purple carrots from Polignano cut very thin, toasted peanuts – to add sapidity – a cream of parsnip and, on top, a mix of “South Africa” spices. It’s vegan, but most of all it’s good. Like a great dish.