In lust with pizza
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Oh. My. God. I used those words a lot yesterday, for various reasons, the last of which was pizza.
Nearly ten years ago, I visited Naples. Clearly, I had to eat pizza. What I ate was the Platonic ideal of pizza, the essence of pizza, a pizza so perfect I thought I would never be able to eat regular, mortal, layman’s pizza again.
Over time, of course, I got over my feelings about the Neapolitan pizza, and managed to bring myself to have its non-Italian sibling – and even enjoy it. But I never quite believed I would fall in love with pizza again – not the way I had the first time…
That is, until I went to La Perla. With its large wood-fired brick oven, Jordanian Little-Italy location and genuine-article Mozzarella di Bufala Campana made by the Chiari family (yep, that’s right – they know exactly who made it) in the Naples area, La Perla looked more than promising. I ordered the pizza carciofo, and impatiently awaited the bubbling bread oozing with tomatoes and mozzarella, scattered with artichokes, capers and olives.
Pizza Carciofo
It came. And then I did. The mozzarella is making me weep just thinking about it. La Perla’s website (porn for foodies) tells me that the tomatoes were imported from Italy too, which explains their sweet-yet-fleshy appeal. The artichokes were still firm and bite-y, not like their jar-preserved counterparts. The capers and olives were salty and smoky and grown up.
My pizza cost me precisely €11.50, which is possibly the best spent tenner-and-a-bit that I’ve shelled out this year.
And now I have to stop writing. Forget mouth watering. This is all getting a little intense.
Pizza Puttanesca ('whore's pizza' - nice...)
