Pizza: the emblem of Identità 2018

In mid-October we announced the theme for Identità Golose 2018, to take place on 3rd-5th March: Il Fattore Umano – The Human Factor. We now announce the emblem-dish, a choice that is particularly rich in meaning. Indeed, we have chosen pizza. Not just one pizza, though, but two, so as to join all of Italy in the same image. In the photo opening this article seven slices stand out. Franco Pepe is the author of the three to the left, Renato Bosco of the four to the right. Campania, where pizza was born, and Veneto, the region where, during the last decade, it was reborn thanks to Simone Padoan and Bosco himself. Utmost conviviality, innovation of an ancient product, man and his knowledge preceding every possible dough making and baking technique.

We chose La Scarpetta, by the master from Caiazzo, and Aria di Pane from the Veronese pizzaiolo. The choice was easy. It was harder to find the right moment for the picture, a shooting curated by Brambilla-Serrani. In Milan, edition after edition, we chose dishes presented by Carlo Cracco, Alfonso Caputo, Moreno Cedroni, Massimo Bottura, Davide Scabin, Paolo Lopriore, Massimiliano Alajmo, Pino Cuttaia, Bottura again in 2015, Cristina Bowerman and Enrico Crippa last March.

Recipes with seafood or meat, vegetables and fruit, always characterising the author of that recipe. It’s different this time: indeed we chose two exceptional professionals, Franco Pepe and Renato Bosco, but also the greatest Italian delicacy, the one we have bestowed to the world more than any other: pizza. We had to create a contact, invite them to the same location, with the same background, same lights, same oven. That is to say the one at Bosco’s Saporè in San Martino Buonalbergo, a short drive from Verona.

The meeting took place on Monday 23rd November. Pepe's pizza was already awarded as dish of the year at Identità Milano 2017 together with a pizza by Sarah Minnick of Lovely Fifty Fifty in Portland. It has Mozzarella di bufala campana PDO, Grana Padano, a compote of three different tomatoes and lyophilised basil powder. Aria di pane, on the contrary, has a base of burrata with a cream of Gialet beans on top, which are typical of Val Belluna in Veneto, plus pancetta La Giovanna from Capitelli in Borgonovo Val Tidone (Piacenza) and caramelised onion from Tropea.

After the photos, we moved to Bosco’s pizzeria in the heart of Verona. Saporè Downtown, tel. +39.045.8032221 opened a few months ago in Via Amanti 6. A table for six and an excellent tasting of five different pizzas. Bosco said about Pepe: «He makes pizza. I prefer to say I make a “doppio [double] crunch” and not everyone gets it, because it has its own features. However, once they taste it, people like it and come back. Everyone thinks pizza has to be round, or else it’s not pizza, however». The pizzaiolo from Caserta replied: «People want unproblematic food that they know. There’s little food culture, so I speak through my pizzas. I educate people, so that they return to a place that’s in an alley, in a village in the countryside. It’s not easy».

The world of pizza, however, is getting brighter each day. Pepe recalls: «As I kid, I would wait on tables in the family pizzeria, obeying my father, Stefano. In Caiazzo they focused on quantity, and we would have never expected reviews or a visit from a critic. Nobody wrote about pizza. Then one day Gino Veronelli wrote about a calzone with scarola and it was like entering a brand-new world. But the road is still long. I get cross, when I think I graduated in Physical Education from Isef, while I have no certificates as a pizzaiolo. It’s ridiculous: you need a diploma to make people practice a sport, but not to cater food».

The choice of pizza as the emblem-dish for Identità Milano 2018 is also a result of this serious cultural and training delay.
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso