At 1550 North Cahuenga Boulevard, in the heart of Hollywood, Romanaccia opened this spring, the project through which Luca Tartaglia has chosen to bring the pizza of his city to Los Angeles. Roman by birth, an actor and filmmaker turned entrepreneur, Tartaglia conceived the place first of all as a bond with the place he comes from. «For me it is above all an anchor to the past, to the nostalgia for a place I left and that I love, that is Rome, where I grew up and where I have my roots», he says. «There I absorbed my values, passed on to me also through an extraordinary relationship with my grandparents, who worked for many years in the food sector. Pizza, for me, is a combination of things: first of all, Roman pizza is one of my favourite things to eat, it's a personal taste, and then it represents much of what I left behind in my city and wanted to bring back here».
Tartaglia links the reason for that return to his origins to a specific gap in the American market. «In America, Neapolitan pizza dominated for very many years, while there was always very little Roman pizza around, and the kind people tried to make wasn't truly authentic», he explains. «The aim was precisely to bring a piece of my city to a place where it was missing». For him, whose profession is telling stories, food too is narrative material: «Being a storyteller, a writer, a producer, and having worked and continuing to work in cinema, it comes naturally to me to see it this way: every pizza we serve, every flavour tells a story. There is always a story behind food, and telling it is inevitable». A story that, in his words, begins not exactly in Rome: «Many people don't know that Roman pizza
al taglio was born in Anzio. There was a woman who came up with this idea and started selling square pizza on the beaches of Anzio. From there they opened a little shop, then the same idea was replicated in Rome, and from there a whole saga was born».
Alessandro Scuderi e Luca Tartaglia
That piece of the city has a precise shape: the
pala romana, the product around which the pizzeria's entire offering revolves. Its technical identity was defined by
Alessandro Scuderi, a pizzaiolo and entrepreneur from Piedmont, born in 1987, called on by
Tartaglia to set up the doughs, the recipes and the training of the team, together with
Camillo Caddeo. The collaboration between the two was born some time ago, and out of admiration. «I was a fan of
Alessandro: for years I had been watching his videos and his recipes, and I really liked what he was doing»,
Tartaglia recalls. It was precisely in those videos that he had noticed a detail destined to weigh on his future choices: the oven. «Inevitably, in his videos, I saw that he used
Moretti Forni. I told myself that, once I decided to open
Romanaccia, I would certainly use
Moretti Forni».
«At Romanaccia we make only and exclusively the pala romana, because I consider it one of the best pizzas you can make, first of all for how good it is, but also for its reproducibility», Scuderi explains. «We're talking about a format that has to be reproducible, because this is the beginning of what we hope will be a great thing, with several openings. We were looking for a product that was easy to reproduce, and there is nothing better than the pala romana». At its foundation is the work on the dough that the pizzaiolo has been pursuing for some time: «We have a dough made with a biga, the classic doughs I show in all my videos. With this work we managed to bring a thoroughly Italian product, and a very good one, more than 10,000 kilometres away: having it in Hollywood was a fine victory».
For
Tartaglia, the dough is the true distinguishing mark of the place, the point on which he chose to invest without compromise. «For us the main thing was to build a strong identity precisely in terms of the dough, because good ingredients can be found, but if the dough isn't good the project doesn't hold up», he observes. «It's the first thing people notice: when they take the first bite they are struck by it, because they had never tasted a dough like this. This choice involves higher costs, because we import everything from Italy, but for us quality comes before profit. When you maintain it, you know the customer will come back, satisfied, trusting, and can count on you».
The oven chosen is the serieS by the sector's leading company, an eclectic, versatile tool, designed to ensure control and constancy of temperature and an even bake even under continuous production. It is a field Scuderi knows well, as a long-standing user of the company's ovens, and his recommendation was clear-cut. «We chose the serieS, because we needed stability and a perfect bake, the things that Moretti Forni guarantees you. It's an oven that lets you set and adjust the cooking parameters precisely and at any moment, with a consistent result, reliable in any situation», he says. «For that type of pizza, in my opinion, the serieS is the best there is».
For
Tartaglia, who came to the oven by way of excellence, the confirmation came in the field. «Talking with
Alessandro, he told me that he doesn't use it as a matter of image, but because for bread-making and pizza it's the best there is. And since I aim only for excellence, I decided to go for excellence», he says. The decision was sealed in a single day: «I went to the authorised dealer, did a demo here in Los Angeles, saw the oven and decided to buy it the same day as the demo. I was pleasantly surprised, because I expected a product capable of baking at a high level, but the result was extraordinary, also thanks to
Moretti Forni; with another oven it wouldn't turn out like this». The constancy of the temperature and the even distribution of the heat do, after all, bear directly on the quality of the
pala, from the crispness of the base to the regularity of the bake, and they help make the product recognisable.
On the menu, alongside the classics, the signature product is a recipe by
Scuderi that went viral online and was then turned into a flagship dish: the
Lasagna pizza. «As a Roman from Rome, I had never seen anything like it, and when
Alessandro proposed it to me I was a little hesitant at first»,
Tartaglia admits. «Instead it became the product we're becoming known for in the city: people find exactly the flavours of a lasagna, with the same ingredients, except that in place of the pasta there's the pizza». «It was one of the first recipes we put on the menu»,
Scuderi confirms. «Especially in America, where lasagna is a great Italian classic». The offering is completed by the
Cacio e pepe, also created by
Scuderi and
Caddeo, and the
Baciate, including the one with Nutella, which in the United States surprises customers used to crêpes and has established itself as a dessert.
The horizon, meanwhile, already lies beyond Hollywood. «
Romanaccia wasn't born to remain a single location: Hollywood is the right base to create brand awareness, to make the brand known»,
Tartaglia clarifies. «But I'm already planning to open in Beverly Hills, and in August I'm going to Scottsdale, in Arizona, an incredibly fast-developing place, where there are excellent opportunities. The aim is to bring Rome across the whole of the United States, and we are building the foundations of a solid brand, one that will inevitably expand, because there is a lot of interest and buzz around it». Yet it is a growth the founder wants to govern calmly: «I recently got back from the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, the largest convention dedicated to pizza in the world, where many entrepreneurs in the sector put proposals and ideas to me. But I take it slowly, I like the idea of building solid foundations, I'm in no hurry, I want to proceed one step at a time».
In the end, the thought always returns to the starting point. «Sooner or later a location in Rome will come too, because you never forget your origins», Tartaglia concludes. «How could I be present in the world and in the United States without being in Rome as well? It would be impossible. And it would also be a way to honour the roots I carry with me».
