Pizza. Invented in Italy or China? Don’t know. Don’t care.

Imitated in America and throughout the world. Perfected in Italy.

There really is little that measures up to a pizza in Italy. A “personal” sized pizza, served for one, not for sharing, filling and likely overhanging a standard dinner plate. After a few days of overeating, of stuffing not just our bodies but also our minds with a parade of antipasti, all manner of pasta sauces and shapes and various members of the animal kingdom it is ironic to look forward to a “light” meal of pizza. But even with the dozens of choices that are typically present on a pizza menu in Italy it is indeed a “light” meal – a single course that is absolutely and undeniably straightforward. Easy to get your mind and your hands around, literally.

Served on a plate and placed not in the middle of the table, but in front of you, set down between your knife and fork. Such is the dilemma presented by the “personal” pizza. To cut and stab or to tear and pick up? My opinion, developed from hundreds of personal observations of Italians and foreigners alike, is to start the process by cutting the pizza with your utensils, perhaps slicing the first morsel off the larger piece, especially the more interior portions that lack the structural integrity to be able to stand up when handled, instead bending and spilling their contents onto the plate or, even worse, onto your lap. But as you approach the more reinforced, firmer crust toward the perimeter and frustrated by the time and effort required to saw the chewy crust with a kitchen knife, to grab that remaining portion, supporting the softer interior part with a makeshift frame made from your thumbs and forefingers, resting the outside crust on your ring fingers or pinkies and to gently slide the piece into your mouth, processing it in ever increasing staccato bites.

Italian pizza is best when it is cooked in an oven fire and is better yet when that fire is made of wood. Most respectable Italian pizza kitchens have a dome shaped pizza oven with a fire shoved in one corner, for some reason nearly always toward the back left side, leaving a large area in the center and right for two, three or four pizzas to be laid out. The heat in these ovens is intense, as the pizzas typically cook anywhere from two or three to five minutes, just enough time for the crust to inflate somewhat and turn crispy brown, the topping to warm and melt. On the best pizzas the cheese has melted and begun to succumb to gravity, spreading and pooling while retaining some recognition of its original shape and the various meats, mostly from the pork family, begin to render their fat, glistening and gleaming like a body in a sauna. The optimal time for service of a cooked pizza is right after it is finished in the oven. There should be no delay in serving it and it should be eaten right away, regardless of whether your dinner or lunch companions have yet been served.

And it is best and cannot be bested when the crust has a slight char to it and when it has been dappled with a little ash from the fire.

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I tend to start by slicing my pizza into shapes roughly resembling the traditional wedge, alternating between cutting off the softer, interior part of the wedge and serving it with a fork and then picking up the remaining portion. I rotate the plate and repeat the process, cutting off another wedge, the second one a little less precise than the first. Before long, the pieces become irregular and less wedge shaped. And then I go for it. The cuore, or the heart. The softest, moistest and most vulnerable piece of what remains of the center of the pizza. The crust of the heart has no crunch to it and buckles under the weight of its toppings. As it is picked up, its contents gently melt off the sides and the whole Salvador Dali-like oozing mass is shoved into the mouth to prevent a catastrophic spill. The heart is as much a religioius experience as it is a gastronomic experience. It is something I look forward to in the back of mind when I make the first cut.

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We are lucky to have several outstanding pizzerias near us. Our two favorites are Mediterraneo in Perugia, which we have written about before, and Carlo Magno. The advantage of Carlo Magno is that it is located only a five minute walk from our villa. The pizza there is phenomenal.

A brightly lit, mod decorated, hip happening place, Carlo Magno is not your typical Italian pizzeria in terms of atmosphere. But it is traditional where it counts. In the pizza. We have been frequenting Carlo Magno since the day after it opened. We have seen it evolve and win acceptance from the local populace who initially stayed away from it because it was new, different. Italians are not always very comfortable with change.

But over time the pizza has won over the local population, as it did us from our very first visits. You had me at salsiccia.

The pizza menu at Carlo Magno (it is in fact a full restaurant) is ridiculous. It is a small book with dozens of different pizzas. This includes the standards, such margherita, diavolo, wurstel (hot dog), quattro stagione, quattro formaggi. But local favorites too, including the Cannarese, an homage to the local Cannara onion, with thin strips of sweet Cannara goodness, glistening piles on a cheesy bed, bunking down with morsels of tangy, aromatic sausage. It makes a Cannara native, or transplants like ourselves, proud.

My favorite is the Orlando Furioso, named after an Italian renaissance epic poem, a story about the passion of love and the maddening effects it can have. I have this sort of relationship with my beloved Orlando Furioso. It is a meatlover’s pizza that gets under your skin. And how much fun is it to order something called Orlando Furioso? It’s the entire package, baby.

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Part of Carlo Magno’s success in winning over the local population, besides serving damn good pizza, was a result of its owners adopting a little American marketing knowhow. The all-you-can-eat dinner. Each Thursday Carlo Magno offers diners a fixed menu for €10 that includes an antipasto, a small drink and all-you-can-eat pizza (you choose from a limited but very good selection of their entire pizza menu). Indicative of the newness of this American “more is better” philosophy is that that the Italians have not yet developed a good vocabulary for this concept. When we ate there on Thursday our waitress described the evening’s special as “you order a pizza from the menu and when you finish it you order another one and after that another. All for the same price.” Americans are not known for their proficiency with language but I think we nailed it with “all-you-can-eat.”

So we arrived at Carlo Magno after 9pm, having delayed our reservation four times that evening due to a business meeting that ran extremely late (all-you-can-talk?). We were a party of 7 (siamo in 7), including four teenaged boys. When four American boys, aged 18 and 19 arrive at an all-you-can-eat dinner it’s like the bad man walking into the saloon in a Western. The music stops and the conversations freeze in mid sentence as all heads turn to the door to see the stranger who has just ridden into town. But within moments the piano started back and the can can girls picked up where they left off. This town was big enough for the two of us.

And it was a good thing that no one paid too much attention to the Americani, for rather than order off the AYCE menu, our lads each ordered a single pizza from the full menu. And therein lies the genius of Carlo Magno’s all-you-can-eat marketing ploy. In Italy one pizza generally is all you can eat. But given the packed house, the energy, conversations and camaraderie going on in Carlo Magno on Thursday nights, its good to see that a dubious American idea has succeeded in galvanizing a small farming community in Italy. As Michelle Obama might say, for the first time in my adult life, I was really proud of my country.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy