Ciro Salvo’s pizza

Usually, when a historic restaurant closes it always leaves a bitter taste, especially when its place is destined to be occupied by a supermarket, a cheap pizzeria or any kind of fast food capable of yielding a larger revenue out of the same surface, what with poor quality products and underpaid employees.

Sarago, a historic establishment frequented by high class Neapolitans and Napoli’s football players, had a decisively better destiny. Since a few weeks ago, its old rooms overlooking Piazza Sannazzaro – a strategic crossroad, uniting Mergellina’s sea boulevard, the initial part of Posillipo’s hill and the gallery leading to the Fuorigrotta neighbourhood – now host 50 Kalò. A pizzeria, indeed, but hardly a low quality one since oven and dough are managed by Ciro Salvo, among the best interpreters of traditional Neapolitan pizza, despite being re-interpreted in his own way, with mind and hands looking at the future.

Coming from a family in the business, the median-son to be born among the Salvo brothers from San Giorgio a Cremano, after beginning his career as a soloist at Massè in Torre Annunziata, transforming it into a gastronomic pilgrimage destination, Ciro now arrives in one of the most beautiful areas in Naples to satisfy the previously unmet desire for a super pizza in this area. Beside him, in this adventure, there are Maurizio Cortese – gourmet, food expert and entrepreneur – and Alessandro Guglielmini, successful entrepreneur with previous experience in the pizza sector. He was the one to buy the establishment out and to ask the collaboration of his once classmate Cortese, who in turn called Salvo.

Modern decor and grey walls on which photos depicting the ingredients and Ciro’s floured hands stand out, a sparkling oven, an attentive and competent dining room staff – something that cannot be taken for granted in a pizzeria – a small yet interesting list of wines from Campania and Italian and foreign beers, a few fried recipes (including the delicious “100% potato” crocché) and cakes supplied by Mennella, a renowned Vesuvian pastry-shop which exclusively supplies this pizzeria, are the frame around the true protagonist: the dough. Fine tuned by Salvo during his long professional journey made of study and research, it is based on a mix of selected flours, with a very high hydration and a long leavening. The result is a thin, soft, extremely light disk, so much so that one would almost wish not to stop at the first pizza.

It’s not by chance that the restaurant is in fact named after the dough, as Ciro himself explained during Identità Milano 2014, which comes from the ancient jargon of Neapolitan pizza-makers who used these words to call a well made dough - 50 in the Neapolitan “Smorfia” indicates 'o ppane (the bread), while kalò comes from the Greek and means beautiful or good. The menu, which currently states “Winter 2014” is a constant work in progress, based on the seasons and on the tastings of Ciro&Co. Without being unfaithful to his minimalist philosophy – he rarely uses more than three ingredients for each pizza, not to overshadow the dough – this pizzaiolo offers a list among which it is hard to choose.

Among the novelties, with reference to Massè, for instance, on top of the fried pizzas there’s the one with Apulian artichokes and capocollo from Martina Franca, because Ciro – who does not hide a passion for cured meats, from 'nduja to Val di Non mortadella – goes beyond regional borders. And in these very days he’s making experiments with truffle from Bagnoli Irpino and with the delicious cured meats produced in Benevento by Sabatino Cillo. These and other ingredients – including extra virgin olive oil POD Le Peracciole by the Iaccarino family, fiordilatte cheese from Monti Lattari, garlic from the Ufita valley, San Marzano POD tomatoes from Agro Nocerino Sarnese – fully justify the prices which are slightly over the Neapolitan average (in this case, they range from 5 to 9.50 euros), according to which pizza is the cheapest and most popular available food.

This has created a few complaints, to which Ciro thus replies: «On top of the products we use, of course the cost of the location, in one of the best areas in Naples, also has a bearing, not to mention the staff: we’re open at lunchtime and dinnertime and we need two teams, to which we have tried to transmit our philosophy and the knowledge of the ingredients. The time for saving on everything has passed, we need to be serious entrepreneurs, to offer the best and balance the books». In other words, enough thinking of pizza as something cheap.

The fact you need to pay for quality (here less than in many other towns in Italy, at least when it comes to pizza) is well known. Even the very many clients who have crowded the pizzeria during the first weeks after the opening and who, after tasting Ciro’s pizza, had nothing to complain about it, know it well.‎

50 Kalò
piazza Sannazzaro 201b
Naples
+39.081.19204667
Pizzas from 5 to 9 euros
Closed on Tuesdays