Napoli on the Road | Michele Pascarella
Suzy Chase: When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, cookery by the book and decorating by the book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host, Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and home cook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show. My
Michele Pascarella: Name is Michele Pascarella and my cookbook is Napoli on the Road.
Suzy Chase: You kicked off the cookbook with this passage as I lift the world's best Pizza Chef 2023 trophy from 50 Top Pizza having been crowned the world's best pizza maker, it is my hands that remind me I am not dreaming. You said it all started with your sense of touch, so tell me more about that.
Michele Pascarella: Yeah, when I say everything started with my sense of touch. I mean, in our job when you making pizzas, when you work in the kitchen, it's always about touch something. When you touch an ingredients, when you touch the dough, when you touch everything as a utensil like equipment in the kitchen, it's always like we need to see properly what we are doing. And I still remember the day when I first came in the kitchen, I was like 11 years old and I was doing like, okay, I need to touch the flower. I need to touch the door. The way you see the door, how rising during the time and the same things this happened when I won the award as Best Pizza Chef in the world and touching that award was like giving me all the memories back all my life.
Suzy Chase: God, that award. Were you surprised by getting that award? Did you know it was coming? Did you feel it was coming or were you completely surprised?
Michele Pascarella: No, not at all, honestly, because the guy is very famous, is very big called 50 Top Pizza, and they just came secretly in your pizzeria and your restaurant. They just eat your pizza without saying nothing. So I didn't know when they came in Zeria, I never knew about it and they just send you an email and saying, okay, you are part of the 50 best pizzerias in the world. Then they give some awards during the night and the most important award is also the best visa chef in the world. There was pizza chef all around the world, to be honest, really, really big names. When they say Michele Pascarella, I was like, what's going on? These are small video showing me someone pushing me. That's your name.
Suzy Chase: Wow. So I'm thrilled to chat with you because I grew up in Kansas and the only pizza place we had was Pizza Hut and this local place called Minsky's. So I know nothing about pizza for me as a person with limited pizza experience, how would you describe the perfect pizza?
Michele Pascarella: I live in London for the last 15 years and I know the feeling of people that say We never live for pizza. We don't really know about pizza. And of course we grew up with pizza in Italy, in South Italy. Of course it's not always easy to answer this question because pizza for me is not just a dish, it's a deep connection there go with my family, with my roots, everything I do on a pizza, it's all about my past and all about my future. So lots of years ago we just had a pizza, fast food or pizza size for children, but now it's really something very big. We can really create any memories, anything we like on the pizza.
Suzy Chase: When you arrived in London, you had no money, but you found work at a restaurant called Sartory. What did you learn there that you hadn't learned in Italy?
Michele Pascarella: Yeah, I came in London. I was like 18 years old and just imagine. I come from Maddaloni a little city between Naples and south of Italy. We had 30,000 people in our city. Just came in with 10 million people in Liverpool Street. Half of the world said, what's going on here? And it was quite impressive for me. I had no money. I was like 500 euro with me. I booked a room just running every day, like 15 hours per day to find a job. At that time, there was an exercise staffing like an app to find a job or I didn't even the internet wifi find on my phone. So I found this job in Central London in, and maybe the big piece that I really learned is that when you, coming from Napoli from south of Italy, you are supposed to say, I'm the best pizza chef, what they know about pizza London. But that was no reality because I met lots of people really, really good at that job. I became an humble guy on that time because I learned that we always need to learn something.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, I would've walked in there saying, you don't know pizza. I know pizza. Yeah, yeah. Apparently the idea for Napoli on the Road came about when you were at Sartori. Could you chat about that a little bit?
Michele Pascarella: Again, I had no money at all. It was like you work in a restaurant and lots of people come for eat a pizza. They're sitting at the table, they eat a pizza. They say, oh, pizza is very good. But they didn't really know what's behind the pizza. No, people don't really know what's the secret, what's all the jobs behind making the pizza? And my view was like, okay, I don't have any money to do a restaurant. I don't have any knowledge maybe to do a restaurant because I was like 23, let's do a street food. So I was thinking about let's buy an Ape Piaggio, it's like a three wheeler, a little van with a woodfire oven on it, and let's make a pizza in front of the people. That was my idea.
Suzy Chase: Wait, so it had a wood-fired oven in the little van.
Michele Pascarella: I just bought this little truck. Then I change everything along.
Suzy Chase: Oh,
Michele Pascarella: You did it? Yeah, yeah, I did everything. Yeah, yeah. I was making the pizza and then after one minute pizza was already cooked in the oven and people was like, wow, what's going on here? That's was maybe the key of the success.
Suzy Chase: So you used to get up at 5:00 AM and then you would load up this van and drive around selling pizzas, and you also worked at night in pizzerias and then came a turning point in your life. Can you talk about that?
Michele Pascarella: It was quite hard because the truck was very, very small. It wasn't very fast. It was like 15 miles per hour. So just imagine my little truck going from North London to South London, one hour and a half driving for making just 20 pizzas. And of course I didn't have much money to maintain the business and I had to pay the rent. My expenses had to go every night to work in a different restaurant because I didn't want to let people know that I was going to open a business, but I still had to go and working every night to make some extra shifts.
Suzy Chase: So then you found a farmer's market and then everything changed?
Michele Pascarella: Yeah. Farmer's market maybe is the most important part of my business because when I found Farmer's Market, I was like, oh, you can use lots of Italian product because we are English farmer's market, so if you want to come here and making pizza, you need to use some local product. There was a little bit like, oh, Italian, I need to do Italian pizza. Why that? But then I've been there and I sold lots of lovely product from farmers, lots of lovely people that was working very, very hard early morning to pick it up the fresh fruit and veggie bring to the market. So it was like, let's try to do in this way. Let's try to work in a seasonal way to do that. All the product and all the menu, and that was the key because we've been very, very busy in the farmer's market until 2019. We've been very successful and we had no choice but open proper restaurant in London.
Suzy Chase: So how was that launch in 2019? Because that was right before 2020.
Michele Pascarella: Yeah, and Covid happens. Yeah. Yeah. It was end of September. We opened on 23rd of September, 2019 and it was good. It was quite busy because we had the name already. We were quite famous. We was busy hired already 15 people working with me in my zeria. And then at the end of January, COVID happens. What happens with Covid is that everyone wasn't at home and I never stopped from the day after I've been alone in the Zeria, making a small menu of pizza and making the delivery, waiting for the driver pick up a phone call from customers. I was doing something like two, 300 pieces per day alone and that was the key. I kept all my guy work with me, didn't fire anyone. It is been good for us. I worked a lot, but the end, lots of people that was work calling us and order from us, they just came to eat pizza. Then when we open again,
Suzy Chase: That's a crazy timeline between 2019 when you opened and then you won world's best pizza maker in 2023, that's like no time at all. What a whirlwind.
Michele Pascarella: Yeah, yeah. It looks like it's a usual word to say, but it's been a long, long journey because you don't know what you're going to achieve, but you know that you need to keep consistency. You need to work every day. That was the key for me, for my team to working hard every day because it's true that lots of people say you don't care about the awards, you just need to get people inside the restaurant and you happy with that. It's real, but the end some satisfaction are very important too. And if you working hard, your team for yourself, for the people, it's good to receive some achievement at the end.
Suzy Chase: I'm dying to know why you use scissors and not a pizza cutter.
Michele Pascarella: Our pizza is not the most traditional one because we got a little bit of high crust, and when you go high crust, you go also lots of humidity inside because our pizza contains lots of water is hydration, and if you cut with just pizza cutter, you just destroy the crust. But if you use the scissor, you can see properly what's inside the crust and you can see all the jobs behind all the work behind that dough. Of course, if you do a Roman style pizza or a traditional style without any grass, you can cut with pizza cutter.
Suzy Chase: Could you talk about your Neapolitan ragu and that was your grandmother's recipe, right?
Michele Pascarella: Yeah. Ragu was one of the first pizza there I did when I opened my first restaurant in Chi. I dunno if you've never been in south of Italy any sand, if you've never been, you must go because we used to have a big tables with all family seat on Sunday and the most bigger plates on Sunday is the ragu. In South Italy we do the beef, we slow cook with summer San tomato for something like eight 14 hours. And I remember that my mom was wake up at 4:00 AM in the morning and I was coming back from work very late like 2:00 AM because when you work in Naples restaurant are opens still late. And of course I wake up always like a midday and when I wake up I just go slowly, slowly to the kitchen with all this smell of ragu around, take a piece of bread, dip in the ragu, put a little bit of par and just secretly eat it because otherwise my mom was upset with me and so I just tried to put these kind of things on my pizza. So we do tomato ragu with meat and then a cream of parmigiano.
Suzy Chase: So I recently had my first taste of anchovy pizza. It was a delightful fusion of tomato sauce, crispy crust, and the salty essence of the sea. Can you talk about your La Romana pizza?
Michele Pascarella: Anchovy is one of the ingredients I really like because it's very salty. If you buy nice anchovies from, I dunno, for example, in South Italy in Amalfi Coast, we go a lovely anchovy from Ada, but ha put on the Pella Roman because I remember that when I first working in my first pizzeria 20 years ago, that guy was not making the usual marinara without mozzarella because marinara is without cheese, but was doing a margarita that with tomato mozzarella then put just oregano and anchovy just when the pizza come out from the oven. So never cook the anchovies and the oregano because otherwise you're going to burn and change the taste of the or ingredient.
Suzy Chase: So your menu is seasonal. What are you looking forward to add to your routine?
Michele Pascarella: For the spring we get lots of new pizzas. We got the new asparagus pizzas. They're going to do some asparagus in full consistency. I will do, for example, a cream of asparagus and then I will do with asparagus slow cooked for like six hour and then I do a powder. Then I do a fried asparagus crisp and then I do a chips of asparagus on it. So we go with the simple ingredients like an asparagus, a really, really technical pizza. That's what I want to do in my menu, use a traditional ingredients, but bring in a modern way.
Suzy Chase: So now to my segment called The Perfect Bite, where I ask you to describe the perfect bite of your favorite pizza.
Michele Pascare...: Oh, my point of view. Margarita is the best one ever.
Suzy Chase: Really
Michele Pascare...: Because yeah, because if you want to try the dough, if you want to try the real pizza, you should try the dough with just tomato fior di latte cheese, a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and basic. That's it. That's the best pizza for me.
Suzy Chase: Now one last question. In New York City, you are not a New Yorker if you don't fold the pizza to eat it. Do you fold the pizza to eat it in Italy?
Michele Pascarella: Yeah, yeah. We just take the pizza, we fold it in Italy like this. We also do a pizza portfolio and I used to do, when I start street food, it's like a small pizza. Then you just fold us a wallet and eat it like this.
Suzy Chase: Like a calzone?
Michele Pascarella: Calzone is another things because calzone is like half moon and just folded the pizza, but it's just like a pizza, a portafoglio. It's like a little pizza.
Suzy Chase: You just fold it
Michele Pascarella: Folding two times and then just eat like this in a street.
Suzy Chase: So where can we find you on the web and social media?
Michele Pascarella: Of course we go our social media. My personal one is IamMichelePascarella on Instagram as a business. We are Napoli on the Road on Instagram as well. You can find us on Facebook. This our website, Napoli on the road.co uk.
Suzy Chase: Well, this has been so much fun. I'm so thrilled to talk to the world's best pizza maker. Thanks for coming on the show.
Michele Pascarella: Thank you so much, Suzy. It's been like a pleasure for me. Anytime.
Suzy Chase: Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzy chase.substack.com. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the Book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.
