The award-winning pizza maker of Pepe in Grani honed his craft in Naples. Here are his Neapolitan culinary favourites, from Chalet Ciro to Mimì alla Ferrovia. Italy's seaside city of Naples is the birthplace of pizza , with proto versions of the tomato and mozzarella-smothered flatbread hitting the cobblestoned streets as early as 1738.
But in the 1990s, long before he created what has been voted the world's best pizza , chef Franco Pepe was pounding the city's pavements to learn the great Neapolitan pizza making arts. "I have a wonderful personal relationship with Naples," says Pepe, now the eponymous owner of the global sensation Pepe in Grani pizzeria in his hometown of Caiazzo, 50km outside the city; famed for his mastery and innovation. "My time there was crucial to my pizza making career.
Spending time with Neapolitan pizza masters...
soaking up the pizza-making culture...
witnessing the birth of the disciplinare (the official AVPN regulations defining "True Neapolitan Pizza"). That experience helped me develop my own pizza. For me, Naples symbolises my youth.
" Though iconic among Italian cities, Naples is often overlooked by overseas tourists in favour of Rome, Florence and Venice. But Pepe loves returning to his old stomping grounds. "You experience colours, music, and, yes, okay, confusion," he admits, alluding to the city's notoriously chaotic traffic and jumbled lasagna layers of Ancient Greco-Roman, Spanish, Norman, Bourbon and Baroque architecture.
"But also, a.