Guglielmo Vuolo takes flight

Acknowledged among the great masters of Neapolitan pizza, but also as a great innovator and experimenter always ready to take a new challenge and offer something original while paying attention to contemporary needs – including the tomato menu, the pizza with sea water, limiting the use of salt in the dough, and the “pizze della salute” which he finetuned in 2016 in collaboration with an expert of Nutritional Biotherapy –, Guglielmo Vuolo has recently at work with many new projects. After bringing his pizza to Verona, as part of Marco Dolci’s format Assaporito – a showcase of delicacies from Campania, in Veneto – the pizzaiolo has recently returned to Naples, on the most famous promenade of Italy, with a new project called 4A Pizzeria, in Via Mergellina, where once was restaurant Don Salvatore.

Vuolo's Quattro formaggi 

Guglielmo with his son Enrico, named after his father 

Opened in partnership with Stefano Ferrara, a master craftsman who builds Neapolitan craft ovens all around the world, the restaurant sums up the work of the past few years adding some new elements: from the wine list, which includes sulphite-free wines, as well as the sections dedicated to metropolitan vineyards and traditional wines from Naples, to the pairings created specifically for champagne Laurent Perrier. But most of all the new pizzas, like the 4A (with roasted cherry tomatoes, semi-dry Pachino tomatoes, baked black olives, organic orange zest and extra virgin olive oil) or the Zi’ Enrico fried pizza, with ricotta, smoked pancetta, organic lemon zest, black pepper and extra virgin olive oil.

On the 16th of April 2019, Vuolo – together with his son Enrico, fifth generation of the family of pizzaioli – also arrived in Florence, in the renovated Caffè Italiano, a historicestablishment near Santa Croce which Umberto Montano bought in the Eighties. The retro charm of the rooms now welcomes a modern and casual setting which – except for the room dedicated to Arà è SUD, Carmelo Pannocchietti’s Sicilian restaurant – includes a café, a restaurant, a bar and a pizzeria, all under the same roof, creating a journey of flavours that can be mixed freely thanks to the skill of the people hired to interpret the various facets of the place: Gionata D’Alessi for the meat (which has a main role, what with the fantastically matured steaks, and the incredible raw meat from Martini’s butcher in Boves), Sandro Soltani for the wines and Vuolo for pizza.

Enrico and Guglielmo thus take a piece of Neapolitan culture and flavours to Florence. «Caffè italiano is for me a chance to present our pizza to the multifaceted and expert clientele of Florence, a beautiful town I love dearly» Guglielmo says. Indeed, in Florence his father Enrico Vuolo, a decan of true Neapolitan pizza worked for a while. In the pizza menu at Caffè Italiano – the pizzas being slightly crunchier than usual, made with a blend of Petra flour, so as to offer a true Neapolitan pizza while meeting the taste of the Florentines – there are classic pizzas and some of Vuolo fortes: Assoluto di Marinara, Quattro Pomodori, the delicious Lazzarella with cow’s milk ricotta, provola di Agerola, courgette flowers, salt and pepper.

Pizza Lazzarella from Guglielmo Vuolo in Florence, with cow’s milk ricotta, provola di Agerola, courgette flowers, salt and pepper