15-02-2016
Gennaro Nasti fell in love with pizza as a child, visiting historic pizzerias such as Da Michele and Trianon and, when he was little more than a scugnizzo, he began his career as pizzaiolo, first in Naples and then abroad. Born in 1975, he opened a restaurant in Barcelona, then flew to the United States where for 4 years he moved from Portland, to Seattle, Miami, New York, California, Boston, Chicago… One year and a half ago he arrived in Paris, where he found curious clients and a great respect for the pizza-chef profession. At the end of the month he’ll change location in Paris while he’s always looking for a place in town where he can open a restaurant of his own. And early in the summer he plans to open a new restaurant-pizzeria in Polignano a Mare to be called Sua Eccellenza.
It wasn’t easy – he explains – because knowledge of real pizza is (was) missing in Paris: «They are used to supermarket pizzas. Even the pizzerias in town have never worked seriously. So at first we had to fight a wall of diffidence. Yet today my best clients are true Parisians: people to whom I’ve explained how things work and keep coming back, and bring their friends too». It’s a fertile land, in France there’s food culture, «it was us, Italians, who were still, now we need to get our great tradition known».
Gennaro Nasti
For sure, working abroad brings some difficulties too: in Paris, for instance, using wood ovens is prohibited due to soot. What should you do? «Doing without it is not a problem: I always say a good artist can also draw using earth. In the same way, a good pizza chef must know how to work even under different conditions. We need to do the best possible job with what we have. You don’t always need a Ferrari to win the race».
According to Nasti there mustn’t be any competition between pizza-chefs: «Instead of quarrelling over wood ovens, we should learn to collaborate with designers and engineers so as to conceive new ovens together». And we should also study, a lot: «Just like chefs, pizza-chefs also need to train, not only through field study but by reading books too, so the choices on dough, maturation, cooking can be informed and not a thoughtless, mechanical process».
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Mathematician by chance, gourmand by passion, she loves to travel around the world – what with conferences on mathematics and chefs’ congresses – and tell stories about food and their passionate and fascinating protagonists