‘Da Michele’ pizzeria coming soon to Rome

A typical 'Da Michele' margherita pizza

 NAPLES -- While the pizza lovers in Britain have been licking their lips, longing for the eminent opening of Da Michele in London, Rome unexpectedly becomes the first pizzeria in Europe to inaugurate the delightful Condurro family dish outside of its Neapolitan home.

 Coming Nov. 20th, Rome will boast Da Michele ultimate pizza in the heart of the Eternal City, at 80 via Flaminia. Customers will be welcomed with a 120-seat restaurant, an outside garden and a parking lot with space for one hundred cars all right in the centre of Rome. The antique Neapolitan pizzeria will thus have to change the website headline from “unique Italian branch” in Naples to “two Italian branch” location -- Naples and Rome.

 As home to pizza, Naples sure knows its business. True to its original recipe fit for Queen Margherita of Savoia, the Parthenope capital has satisfied locals and visitors for over a hundred years with the quintessential dish.

 In 1870, the Condurro family started what was to become a long tradition of master pizza makers in the centre of Naples. Michele Condurro, son of Salvatore, improved the family’s art of preparing pizza, whose secrets he had learned from the famous dough-kneading masters in Torre Annunziata (a district outside the city).

 His son Michele opened a pizzeria in 1906, where the current Ascalesi Hospital is and whose construction forced the pizzeria to move. In 1930, the store was transferred to its present location, in Via Cesare Sersale. The historical pizza has often been described by experts and journalists as ‘the sacred temple of pizza.’

 Since then, five generations of master pizza makers have kept on working exactly as the founder did, following the family tradition and being faithful to Grandfather Michele’s instructions -- "There are only two types of Neapolitan Pizza, the "Marinara” and the "Margherita” and no "junk” should be used in preparing the pizza, because it would only alter its famous genuineness and taste."

 The secret of Da Michele’s never-ending success is using natural ingredients and an old, traditional, time-tested method of leavening the pizza dough.

 Widespread belief has it that in June of 1889 the first margherita pizza was made to honour the queen of Italy, Margherita of Savoia. The pizza, made with tomato sauce mozzarella cheese and basil was said to represent the newly united nation and its flag.

 According to a recent study, it seems the pizza was born much before the queen’s visit to Naples a decade before the turn of the 20th century. Philogist Emuanuele Rocco apparently spoke about the various condiments that made up the unique pizza already in 1849. As a matter of fact, the mozzarella was cut in thin slices and placed on the tomato sauce, adding basil leaves, thus forming a daisy which probably gave the dish its Italian equivalent name: margherita.

 In 2003, a study conducted by the Mario Negri Institute of Milan even concluded that pizza prevented cancer. With very genuine and fresh ingredients, the news came as a pleasant surprise to the pizzeria owner but wasn’t necessary to attract the long queues and international fascination for the ultimate pizza.

 Anyone who knows pizza knows there is pizza and then there is pizza. The pizza experts in Forcella rightly pride themselves on their characteristically hot ‘dischi a ruota di carro’ (wheel barrel disks) that are rushed to the tables on huge flat white plates where eager customers cut them into large wedges, fold the triangles in half to form a sandwich and eat them with their bare hands. The barely yeasted and ever-so-slightly-charred and crust is rigorously thin and crisp but with an undeniable elasticity towards the centre and the mozzarella gets creamy as it melts together beautifully into the red sauce: nothing short of pizza perfection.

 While it might be hard for Neapolitans to get used to sharing their most symbolic recipe with others on the planet, the older members of the Condurro family have given their benediction for the franchise project “Michele in the World” where restaurants like the soon to open one in Rome can use the irreproducible dish that has stayed unique to the Condurro family for over 140 years.

 And everyone has been expecting the new Stoke Newington location in Church Street. Rome, lucky you!

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