Pizza Czar: Recipes and Know-How from a World-Traveling Pizza Chef by Anthony Falco

Author:Anthony Falco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2021-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

BRAZIL

I thank Brazil for making me an international pizza consultant.

I knew little about Brazil before visiting but can’t imagine life without the friends and experiences I’ve made there.

My first visit was in 2015 to make pizza for Roberta’s. We were hosted by the restaurant group Cia Tradicional do Comércio, kind of as ambassadors of Brooklyn. The first stop was Rio de Janeiro, the city and culture most Americans think of when they think of Brazil. But Brazil is huge ( just 13 percent smaller than America), and the next stop, São Paulo, was reminiscent of New York City (it even has its own Empire State Building). It’s immediately apparent that there’s a large Italian community and strong pizza culture. Paulistanos call their city the “pizza capital of the world” (they can fight over that title with Old Forge, Pennsylvania). But considering only New York City has more pizzerias by total number, it’s a valid claim.

I had no expectations. I heard stories about ketchup-topped pizza, like some bizarre alternative pizza universe. But when I hit the ground it all became clear.

Rio and São Paulo are completely different. Rio is older. São Paulo was nothing more than a village until the eighteenth century. Rio was the capital of the Portuguese empire from 1807 until 1822, with the royal court moving there briefly, and its food reflects this Portuguese influence. It’s delicious, and Rio is amazing, but judging Brazil’s pizza game by Rio would be like judging America’s by Miami.

São Paulo’s first population expansion began with the discovery of gold in the nearby southeastern state of Minas Gerais in the seventeenth century. São Paulo became a jumping-off point for bandeirantes, fortune hunters seeking their fortune in the jungle. It was then that the first significant populations of enslaved people were brought from Africa to São Paulo. After that, mining and coffee plantations became the driving force of its economy. By the time slavery was abolished in 1888, the use of enslaved people's labor was already on the decline, and large populations of European, Arab, and Japanese immigrants were sought to do that plantation work.

The largest number of immigrants to São Paulo were Italians. Today there are more people of Italian ancestry in São Paulo than in Rome, Italy’s most populous city. Many of these Italians came from Campania and brought pizza with them, including to Castelões Cantina & Pizzaria, São Paulo’s oldest.

There’s a lot of pizza in São Paulo. They even do pizza rodizio, which, if you’ve ever been to a churrascaria, you’ll infer as all-youcan-eat pizza where they come by with pies covered in crazy toppings until you can’t think about another slice. In addition to all the pizza places I visited, I had a ton of pizzas delivered to my hotel late at night just to try them. They ranged from terrible to satisfyingly terrible. But Castelões was amazing.

With its red-checked tablecloths and Chianti bottles hanging from the ceiling, it’s like discovering a long-lost, old-school pizzeria in the Bronx. It’s a wood-fired pizza that’s like a mix of Roman and Neapolitan styles.

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