In Linz, the tobacco factory designed by Peter Behrens and built between 1925 and 1939 is one of the monuments of Austrian industrial architecture, the country's first building with a steel skeleton structure. Today it houses offices, workshops and venues, and in one of its blocks, in fifty square metres turned black from top to bottom, there is a pizzeria called 22k. It is run by Sebastian Rossbach and Marco Barth, two cooks who also have a one-Michelin-star restaurant in Linz.
«If we talk about our pizzeria we also have to talk about our restaurant», premises Chris Teufel, executive manager of the group. «Sebastian and Marco have been cooking for a very long time, and in 2017 they opened their own place, called Rossbarth, a crossing of their two surnames. For two years now we have held our first star». It is from that kitchen that the pizzeria project was born, and with it a technical problem that would shape every choice that followed: inside a building rightly considered a historic monument, open flames could not be used.
«At the beginning we had thought of a wood-fired oven, as is often done in Italy»,
Teufel recounts. «But we are inside the Tabakfabrik, the old Linz tobacco factory, and there a wood-fired oven was not permitted. We had to find a solution and we told ourselves that what we needed was the Ferrari of electric ovens. So we decided to talk to
Moretti Forni, the leader in the sector». Today, at the centre of the room, there is a
serieS, the modular electric oven made by the Marche-based company, which arrived only a few days after the opening.
The idea, on the other hand, comes from further back, and more precisely from the months when restaurants were closed. «During the pandemic lockdowns the idea came up of offering something for takeaway», Teufel explains. «So we began, spontaneously, to bake pizzas and sell them right at the door of the Rossbarth. Of course, back then we did not have an oven in the restaurant specifically for pizza, but apparently that first experiment worked well, because our customers kept telling us about it: they said it was the best pizza in the city and that we should open a pizzeria. The idea never left us and so we started looking for a suitable place».
There was no commercial calculation behind it. «I would really say that what drives us is a true passion for pizza. Marco and Sebastian have loved pizza for a very long time and the idea was never "let's open a pizzeria because it's easy". Quite the opposite. They are passionate cooks, they know what the pursuit of excellence means in every aspect, and they wanted to share that passion with the people of Linz. They also wanted to understand what makes pizza so fascinating and, above all, what really counts. And, as often happens in Italy, the answer was simple: the ingredients, the ingredients and again the ingredients. And the baking is part of the ingredients too».
Before opening, the two went to check for themselves. «They left on a research trip, a real study trip», says Teufel. «They went to Naples with a friend and in three days they tasted forty pizzas in many different places, ordering almost only Marinara, Margherita and now and then a Bufala, because they wanted to assess the tomato and they wanted to assess the dough. After that trip they began to build their recipe». A recipe nobody wrote for them: the 22k dough starts from the most classic ingredients and from a blend that is the project's distinctive element, ninety per cent Italian type 00 soft wheat flour and ten per cent wholewheat, with a process that unfolds over seventy-two hours. The result does not seek philological quotation: «I think most people would call it a Neapolitan-style pizza», Teufel observes. «But it does not have the wet centre: it is a soft dough».
The same starting idea applies to the pantry. Almost all the products come from Italy through a single supplier, and the exceptions are stated: the mushrooms and the beer are Austrian, the olive oil is produced by friends, and the seasonal produce comes from the Linz region: chanterelles, tomatoes, salads, herbs, fruit. «Everything else, from the flour to the mozzarella, from the oregano to all the cured meats, comes from various places in Italy known for generations for their quality and their know-how».
The context in which this product landed was not the easiest. «Most pizzerias in Linz, and I would say in Austria in general, with a few exceptions in the main cities, have low quality standards», Teufel states without mincing words. «Our idea was to have the highest quality standard in the city, and perhaps in Upper Austria, and beyond as well». The positioning that followed was clear: «We are known for our high quality, but our pursuit of excellence also brings a higher price range. We are known as the best pizza in the city, but it is probably fair to say that we are a niche pizzeria».
The menu, too, works by subtraction: six to eight pizzas, of which only three to five remain fixed, such as the
Marinara, the
Bufala or the
Tartufo with a white base, truffle and pancetta; all the others change every month. «We do not have twenty-five or thirty-five pizzas on the menu like a classic pizzeria»,
Teufel points out. Among the best sellers are the
Bufala, the
Marinara and the
Salame, which at
22k means tomato, onion and Naples salami.
The same attention went into the making of the room, which looks nothing like a classic neighbourhood pizzeria. The interior design is by the studio destilat, the same one that had designed the Rossbarth, and it comes from a precise constraint: since the building is listed, the floor plan could not be modified. The solution was to work on colour and material. The room is black from floor to ceiling, the wood has been burnt on the surface following the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique, which makes it water-resistant and leaves it a range of dark shades never identical to one another, and at the centre the counter is built from reclaimed red bricks, stacked in full view in a honeycomb pattern and lit from behind.
In a room conceived this way, the oven is no exception. «It is in this balance between tight spaces and ambition that the oven becomes decisive, precisely because first of all it is a beautiful product to look at, and then it gives us everything we want»,
Teufel says of the
Moretti Forni serieS. «So it is perfect not only from an aesthetic point of view, but also from a technical one. With serieS we have two separate chambers and for a business like ours it is the perfect solution: we can bake six to eight pizzas at the same time». It is a modular electric oven that makes it possible to set and precisely maintain the baking parameters, ensuring an even result even when the pace of service becomes intense, and which in a kitchen of a few square metres allows a production capacity that would otherwise be unthinkable.
From here on, growth will not come through new openings. «For now we are happy where we are, we are not looking to expand»,
Teufel clarifies. A frozen pizza is under consideration, as customers are asking for it, but the two concrete directions are others: catering, already stable at around two events a month, and the pizza courses started in 2024, one a month, which they would like to double.
One last question remains, the one everyone asks as soon as they walk into that black room inside Peter Behrens's building: what does 22k mean. But here we too have to stop, because we will not get this answer: as it is written plainly on the takeaway boxes... "you'll never understand".
