Budapest pizzeria presents time-travel twist with historic Rome-inspired pie

BUDAPEST, Hungary — In Hungary’s capital, a metropolis finest recognized for its goulash, a pizzeria is inviting diners to journey again two millennia to a time earlier than tomatoes, mozzarella and even the phrase “pizza” have been recognized in Europe.

At Neverland Pizzeria in central Budapest, founder Josep Zara and his workforce have created a limited-edition pie utilizing solely substances that may have been obtainable in historic Rome, lengthy earlier than what we all know in the present day as pizza ever existed.

“Curiosity drove us to ask what pizza might have been like long ago,” Zara mentioned. “We went all the way back to the Roman Empire and wondered whether they even ate pizza at the time.”

Strictly talking, they didn’t. Tomatoes arrived in Europe centuries later from the Americas, and mozzarella was as but unknown. Some histories have it that the invention of mozzarella led on to the invention of pizza in Naples within the 1700s.

But Romans did eat oven-baked flatbreads topped with herbs, cheeses and sauces, the direct ancestors of contemporary pizza, which have been typically offered in historic Roman snack bars referred to as thermopolia.

In 2023, archaeologists uncovered a fresco in Pompeii depicting a focaccia-like flatbread topped with what look like pomegranate seeds, dates, spices and a pesto-like unfold. The picture made headlines all over the world, and sparked Zara’s creativeness.

“That made me very curious about what kind of flavor this food might have had,” he mentioned. “That’s where we got the idea to create a pizza that people might have eaten in the Roman Empire, using only ingredients that were in wide use at the time.”

Zara started researching Roman culinary historical past, consulting a historian in Germany in addition to the traditional cookbook De re coquinaria, thought to have been authored across the fifth century. Following his analysis, he compiled a listing of traditionally documented substances to current to the pizzeria’s head chef.

“We sat down to imagine what we might be able to make using these ingredients, and without using things like tomatoes and mozzarella,” Zara said. “We had to exclude all ingredients that originated from America.”

Head chef László Bárdossy mentioned the constraints pressured the workforce into months of experimentation, and some false begins.

“We had to discard a couple ideas,” Bárdossy mentioned. “The fact that there wasn’t infrastructure like a water system at the time of the Romans made things difficult for us, since more than 80% of pizza dough is water. We had to come up with something that would have worked before running water.”

The answer: serving to the dough rise utilizing fermented spinach juice. Ancient grains corresponding to einkorn and spelt, broadly cultivated in Roman occasions, shaped the bottom, and the dough ended up barely extra dense than that of most trendy pizzas.

The completed pie is topped with substances related to Roman aristocratic delicacies, together with epityrum, an olive paste, garum, a fermented fish sauce ubiquitous in Roman cooking, confit duck leg, toasted pine nuts, ricotta and a grape discount.

“Our creation can be called a modern pizza from the perspective that we tried to make it comprehensible for everyone,” Bárdossy mentioned. “Although we wouldn’t use all its ingredients for everyday dishes. There is a narrow niche that thinks this is delicious and is curious about it, while most people want more conventional pizza, so it’s not for everyday eating. It’s something special.”

For Zara, the challenge displays Neverland Pizzeria’s broader philosophy.

“We’ve always liked coming up with new and interesting things, but tradition is also very important for us, and we thought that these two things together suit us,” he mentioned.

However, he added, there’s a modern boundary the restaurant is not going to cross.

“We do a lot of experimentation with our pizzas. But of course, we definitely do not use pineapple,” he mentioned.

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Béla Szandelszky contributed reporting.