FOOD NEWS
The Delicious Neapolitan Pizza That Embarrassed Nancy Silverton
By Chandler Phillips
Hailed as one of the great culinary innovators of the restaurant industry, author and chef Nancy Silverton has articulated the authenticity and soul of Italian cooking in American cuisine. After one trip to Naples, during which she visited the towns and farms of the region, Silverton discovered a Neapolitan pizza that would shatter her prior opinion of the classic Italian staple.
"I've never had pizza in Naples that I've liked,” Silverton admitted to Food and Wine writer Jonathan Gold. However, in the city of Caiazzo, Italy, a Neapolitan pizza would make her eat her words with a slice of Chef Franco Pepe's reinterpretations of traditional Neapolitan-style pizzas, which has been deemed the best pizza in the world.
The chef sources virtually all of his ingredients from local suppliers, mixes all his dough by hand, and refuses to have any machinery in his kitchen beside a thermometer. Silverton praised Pepe, saying, "It feels almost as if Franco [Pepe] invented pizza, and everyone else is just copying him [...] His is probably the best pizza in the world."