The straccetti fritti, twists of dough coated in cinnamon and sugar, were irresistible Italian-style churros sprinkled with rosemary and orange rind, then dipped in a vanilla-scented buffalo-ricotta sauce. Who can possibly eat more? Reader, I’ll tell you who: I can. It was electric - an artfully calibrated soliloquy of regional ingredients that I devoured. But the Crisommola del Vesuvio is the finger-licking embodiment of the Pepe in Grani kitchen: a delicately crisped slice topped with Vesuvian apricot jam, toasted hazelnuts, mint, a lattice of buffalo mozzarella cream and dried Caiazzo olives. In theory, dessert pizza is a terrible idea after so many courses of dough. Over three life-affirming days of gluttony and bliss, I toured Campania’s most hallowed outposts offering pizza tasting menus to see how the area is ennobling its signature fare. Oliva and other high-flying restaurant owners in Naples and nearby have adopted the tasting menu, that haute-cuisine marker of five-star dining, and applied it to the most common and commonly adored food: pizza.
One of those innovators is Concettina’s Ciro Oliva, 29, who commandeered his family’s delivery joint with dreams of grandeur when he was just 19. I was on the first stop of a pizza pilgrimage through Campania, the Italian region where pizza was born - and where some of today’s pizzaioli are elevating it to sterling new heights. After tying a gingham napkin around my neck, he topped the composition with a deep-fried puff of dough: a classic montanara pizza turned upside-down, the sauce on the bottom, to sustain its quintessential crisp-outside, pillowy-inside texture. Later he returned and layered a plate with tomato sauce as dark as sumac and redolent of Sunday family lunches in this southern Italian city, a handful of basil leaves, and a hand-grated snowstorm of Parmesan cheese.
Seated in the courtyard of the famed Naples pizzeria Concettina ai Tre Santi, I watched my waiter with wide eyes as my evening pizza marathon commenced with an intoxicating bang. White ones, from Alba, shaved over a butter-daubed wedge of dough, then ditto with a heady black variety from Irpinia.
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