Pizza please – more artisanal pizzerias open up
SINGAPORE – When it comes to pizza and Singapore, that’s amore, as the Dean Martin song goes.
How else to explain the mushrooming of pizzerias here, offering artisanal pies in myriad styles: Neapolitan, contemporary Neapolitan, Japanese-Neapolitan or Japolitan, New York, Neapolitan-New York and sourdough, among others?
And now, there are four more places to load up on artisanal pizza.
Opening end April is IL Clay Supper Club, an Italian restaurant in Clarke Quay by Naples-born chef Ciro Sorrentino. The 36-year-old owns pizza restaurants in Italy and Vietnam. Margheri, his pizzeria in Ho Chi Minh City, was No. 48 on the list of 50 Top Pizza Asia-Pacific 2024, a guide to the best pizzerias in the world. It put out its first list in 2018, with rankings determined by anonymous inspectors.
Details are scant, but the Singapore restaurant’s pizza selection includes pies topped with oysters, carpaccio or raw beef slices, duck confit and foie gras. Also on the menu are starters, main courses and pasta. The restaurant seats 80 indoors and outdoors.
Another soon-to-open Italian restaurant offering serious pizza is Fortuna, a brand from Sydney. Its Singapore offshoot debuts in June. Beyond The Dough opened in March, serving Japolitan-style pizza in Arab Street; and L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, the Singapore branch of a 154-year-old pizza brand from Naples, opened on April 15.
Torno Subito, Italian chef Massimo Bottura’s restaurant in Dempsey, opened in March and is serious about its pizza. They are fired in a custom-made MAM pizza oven from Modena, where Bottura is from.
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The 110-seat restaurant’s executive chef Alessio Pirozzi, 33, says the crust is soft, crunchy and airy, with what he calls the “right sourness”.
The restaurant imports Petra flour from Molino Quaglia, a family business that started in 1914 near Padua. The flour is stone-ground Italian wheat and contributes to that airy texture, which chef Bottura says disappears on the tongue. The pizza dough is fermented for 48 hours, and the restaurant uses less water and more salt here because of Singapore’s humidity.
Diners can choose from six pizza variations, ranging in price from $32 for Regina Margherita, topped with San Marzano tomatoes, fior di latte cheese from Latteria Sorrentina in Naples, basil and olive oil; to $58 for Made In Sicily ($58), topped with pistachio, provola, red shrimp tartare, lemon gel and basil.
“Definitely, we are inspired by Pizza Napoletana in a contemporary way,” chef Pirozzi says.
Taste of history
L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele
Where: 01-08 Mercure Icon Singapore City Centre, 8 Club Street
Open: Noon to 3pm, 6 to 11pm (Mondays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays
WhatsApp: 9823-5724
Info: damichele.sg
Made right, a pizza at L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele is, according to the brand’s Italian chief executive Francesco De Luca, “not like chewing gum, not crunchy”.
“It’s soft like a cloud,” the 37-year-old says.
To show just what he means, he takes off his jacket, rolls up his sleeves and gets to work on a ball of dough, stretching and stretching it. This is what distinguishes the brand’s pizza from Neapolitan-style pies, with their puffy cornicione or rim.
It is also what has kept diners hungry for his family’s pizza since the brand was founded in 1870 in Naples by the Condurro family, his mother’s side of the family.
The dough, made with Caputo flour, “sleeps” or ferments for about 24 hours, depending on the weather.
He tops the stretched dough with San Marzano tomatoes, fior di latte cheese from Agerola in Naples, and torn basil leaves, and then, in a single deft move, transfers the ever-so-thin Margherita pizza onto a metal peel.
He stretches the dough some more, so it covers the entire surface of the peel. Into the custom-made Stefano Ferrara pizza oven from Naples it goes. It is ready in 50 seconds, courtesy of the 500 deg C temperature.
What emerges is a large pizza, called “pizza a ruota di carro” because it seems as big as a wagon wheel. At 35 to 37cm in diameter, it is larger than the platter it is served on. And yes, it is soft like a cloud.
The 70-seat Singapore restaurant – brought in by food and beverage entrepreneurs Marcello Mazzotta, 37, and Super Loco Group’s Christian Tan, 54 – opened on April 15.
Mr De Luca was in Singapore with a team that includes Domenico Mosca, 28, the brand’s executive chef, who is here to train the Singapore team. That team is headed by chef Alessandro Di Roberto, 37, a second-generation pizzamaker from Puglia, who has worked on and off in Singapore for about seven years.
Even for him, the learning curve is steep. He says: “I’ve been lucky enough to travel and try different styles of pizza. But managing this dough is not easy. To stretch it properly requires quite a bit of practice.”
The Singapore restaurant is the 53rd one. There are Da Michele restaurants in the United States, Britain, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Japan, among other countries. Mr Mazzotta says he tried for a year to get his foot in the door before Mr De Luca relented.
Mr De Luca says: “There are a lot of choices for Neapolitan pizza in Singapore. It’s an important market, but also very hard. We have to think about the oven, the flour, the fior di latte. After a time, we say, okay, it is a challenge, but we accept it.”
The restaurant in Naples was famous for serving only two kinds of pizza – Marinara, topped with tomato sauce, garlic and oregano; and Margherita, topped with tomato sauce, Pecorino Romano cheese, fior di latte, and fresh basil.
Mr De Luca says that in 2020, during Covid-19, he added two more – Cosacca, topped with tomato sauce and Pecorino Romano; and Marita, a pie that is half-marinara, half-Margherita – to get onto delivery platforms. He did it with the blessing of his grandfather Antonio Condurro, who died in 2021 at age 89.
In Singapore, as in the restaurants around the world, the menu is larger. Aside from Marinara ($22), Margherita ($28), Cosacca ($25) and Marita ($28), diners can also order seven pizzas with a tomato base, and six with a fior di latte base. Prices range from $29 to $42. Also on the menu are starters, salads, Neapolitan fried food, pasta and desserts.
The busy Mr De Luca is not stopping at 53 restaurants. With partners, he is opening restaurants in Madrid and Marbella in Spain, and Tripoli in Libya.
Tripoli? “We love to be challenged,” he says. “When people say it’s not possible, we want to try. That’s our spirit.”
Tokyo Neapolitan style
Beyond The Dough
Where: 150 Arab Street
Open: 5 to 11pm (Mondays), 11.45am to 3pm, 5 to 11pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays
Info: @beyondthedough_pizza on Instagram
The pizza frenzy going on in Singapore has been happening in Japan for some two decades.
There, pizzamakers – or obsessives – have evolved their own takes on Neapolitan pizza.
Pizzaiolo Eddie Murakami worked at two highly regarded pizzerias in Tokyo – Pizza Strada and Pizza Studio Tamaki, both founded by Tsubasa Tamaki, who left the former to set up the latter.
Murakami, 36, who ran his own pizzeria in Kanagawa for five years, opened the 28-seat Beyond The Dough in March with partners, including Mr Shinji Yokota, 38, his former colleague at Pizza Strada. Mr Yokota, who has a business importing Japanese ingredients to Singapore, is a restaurant consultant and also runs Makuake, an izakaya restaurant in Hamilton Road.
The pizzaiolo says he relocated to Singapore in part because of all the Singaporeans he met at Pizza Studio Tamaki in Tokyo.
He says: “I would always ask where the foreign diners were from, and 50 to 60 per cent of them said they were from Singapore. If I’m good at making pizza, but you don’t understand my ability, then it’s nothing. But Singaporeans know the taste.”
Diners choose from 16 pizza variations, ranging from $30 for a Margherita to $42 for a Beyond Bianca, topped with mascarpone cheese, buffalo mozzarella, burrata and truffle oil. The most popular ones are the Margherita and 5 Formaggi ($39), topped with mascarpone, smoked mozzarella, gorgonzola, taleggio and parmigiana cheeses.
So popular is the pizzeria that it is fully booked until the end of May. Diners might be responding to Murakami’s technique with the cornicione or pizza rim. The way he stretches and folds it results in two textures – chewy in parts, crunchy in parts. They are then placed in a Stefano Ferrara pizza oven to cook for one minute at 500 deg C.
He says the texture of his pizza is a cross between the chewy crust at Pizza Studio Tamaki and the crisp one at Oyamadai Yamada, an eight-seat pizza omakase restaurant in Setagaya City in Tokyo. He makes the dough with Japanese flour and filtered water and ferments it for more than 30 hours.
He says: “If Singapore thinks our pizza is Japolitan, I’m glad.”
Naples and Sicily united
Fortuna
Where: 7 Craig Road
Open: June 1
Info: fortunasg.com
When Fortuna opens in June, diners here will get yet another take on artisanal pizza. This time, it will be Neapolitan-style pizza made with ingredients from Sicily.
This style is inspired by history – when in the 1200s, Naples, a city on the west coast of Italy, and Sicily, the island off the southern tip of Italy, were joined as the Kingdom of Sicily.
Chef Egon Marzaioli, 31, who started Fortuna in Sydney, was born in Naples. He worked all over Italy and, in 2019, was working in Sydney at a hospitality company. He opened the restaurant in 2021 with his wife Alessandra Gulino, 30.
The trattoria and pizzeria in Darlinghurst is known for its fun vibe, with games like dice and roulette and karaoke sessions. The couple are co-owners of the Singapore branch with Mr Lukas Teo, who is in his 40s and owns an F&B investment company.
Diners at the Singapore restaurant will be able to choose from three kinds of pizza dough: Pizza Contemporanea or contemporary pizza, the dough fermented 50 hours; Roman-style pizza, the dough made with rice flour in addition to wheat flour, so it is lighter and crunchier; or fried and baked pizza, deep-fried at 180 deg C, then baked in the oven with toppings. The pizzas are fired in an oven from Valoriani in Tuscany.
Prices range from $25 to $55, and pizza options include Sitari, topped with fior di latte, wagyu tartare, caper mayonnaise, lemon zest and cured egg yolk; and Regina, topped with walnut whipped butter, anchovies, truffle and lime zest.
Also on the menu are antipasti, pasta, main courses and desserts. The average spend a person for dinner is expected to be $70 without alcohol, and there will be lunch deals from about $40 a person.
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