In the heart of Novi Sad, Serbia's second city and capital of Vojvodina, Trizza on Narodnog Fronta street serves a pizza openly inspired by the Neapolitan tradition. The name of the restaurant itself comes from a play on words, explained by the claim that welcomes visitors to the official website: in Serbian, the term izgovor means both excuse and pronunciation, and so Trizza presents itself at once as a perfect excuse to enjoy a good pizza and as an affectionate distortion of the word itself. Behind the oven is Ivana, a Serbian pizza chef with nearly ten years of experience, who delivers a proposal faithful to the classic Neapolitan canon.
Ensuring consistency of cooking is the Neapolis oven by Moretti Forni, capable of working with precision up to 510°C. It's a key technological partner in a venue of significant size: the restaurant develops over two floors, has an outdoor garden and can host up to two hundred guests. «For me, it's one of the best ovens I've ever used», says Ivana. «I like it because it's simple. Among the things I appreciate most are the automatic cleaning programme, the low energy consumption and above all the possibility of regulating the temperature of the deck and the dome separately. When I need it, I have total control».
Ivana's journey into pizza began almost by chance, starting from basic preparations. «At the beginning I took care of the
mise en place for the pizza station, then I was given the chance to try cooking and from there everything started. I learned by observing and working alongside other pizza chefs». Before joining
Trizza, she worked at two other venues in Novi Sad,
Tramontana, also equipped with a
Neapolis oven, and
Garden Pizza, where she had her only experience with a wood-fired oven. «A great school, but definitely less straightforward to manage than the
Neapolis. With a wood-fired oven, controlling the temperature during service hours is a different craft altogether».
Over the years, Ivana has experimented with different styles, from thin Roman to Chicago deep dish, but her choice has been clear: «My favourite remains the classic Neapolitan, it's the one that convinces me the most». At Trizza she works with biga, a forty-eight-hour fermentation and cooking in the Neapolis at 430-440°C for one minute, one minute and a half. An almost traditional approach, declared without ambiguity, which translates into a well-developed cornicione and a soft disc, faithful to the Neapolitan model.
In a venue working with these kinds of numbers, and with such a small team, the reliability of the oven becomes a decisive factor. The technology of
Neapolis by
Moretti Forni is designed precisely to ensure consistency of cooking in the heat of service, when pressure rises and the pizza chef's concentration must remain on the dough, on the toppings and on the result of each individual disc. «I can't describe how much I love being able to count on the oven when we are in the middle of the work: I can set the temperature as I want, and in the
Neapolis the pizzas are ready in just a few minutes. Often a single rotation is enough, sometimes not even that». A freedom of operation that is also reflected in lower physical strain, evident in the comparison with working at a wood-fired oven.
The menu alternates great classics like
Margherita and
Capricciosa with signature creations, including a
Gorgonzola and pear and a
Bolognese. But the symbolic pizza that
Ivana chooses to talk about has a precise construction: it starts from a
Margherita and is completed at the end of cooking with cured ham, burrata and grilled peaches, in a balance between sweetness, milky freshness and savouriness. «After the
Margherita, which remains the best-seller, the most requested are the
Capricciosa and our signature». Alongside pizza there are focaccias, homemade pastas and risottos. And since the venue opens at seven, in the morning there is also a breakfast offer with sandwiches, which makes
Trizza a point of reference throughout the entire day.
The audience is largely made up of local clientele, but the restaurant fills up especially during the festivals that regularly animate Novi Sad, one of the most vibrant cities on the Balkan cultural scene. The pizza team is small,
Ivana and one colleague, and handles an average of one hundred pizzas a day, with significantly higher peaks between Friday and Sunday. A gradual growth, in which the arrival of the pizza chef coincided with a rise in the quality of the proposal: «Today I think we are the best pizzeria in the area».
Never having been to Italy to train, «if I had the chance, I would love to spend some time in the kitchen of a true Italian pizzeria», Ivana has built her idea of pizza as a self-taught chef, in the venues of Novi Sad, choosing the classic Neapolitan as her reference and relying on Neapolis by Moretti Forni to make it credible, consistent and replicable, evening after evening, behind the counter of Trizza.
