Piccolo Pizzeria

*Disclaimer*

This post is likely to cause a heart attack in Italian readers, a disbelief amongst food professionals who think they’d seen it all, grumbling in your stomach and an unexpected knowledge.

Pizza!

The little fattie friend, always wearing cheesy outfits and still being hot.

We all think we know it. Traditional Italian on a thin crust. Chicago style round perfection. Argentine thick triangles. Calzone. Late night Domino’s. Morning-after cold leftovers. All of them.

And yet.

There is one you have never had before.

There is one missing spot on your pizza map.

And there is only one place in the whole world that makes it.

Source

It will shock you to the point of crying ‘whaaaaaaaaaaaat?! ’

Just look a this:

it is small, barely for one person,

it is always served with a beetroot soup barszcz in a mug,

it is always with mushrooms,

it is thick,

it is served with a homemade ketchup on top.

Somebody please call the Ambulance for Fabrizio….

I know, many words come to mind. Bizzare. Weird. Odd. Maybe even fascinating.

Many questions. Including why?

To wrap your head around it. (figuratively) You have to know something about the place where this little champ was born. And go back to 1990s.

Torun, Poland 1990

Communist era just ended, you woke up in a totally different world. The world you’d always wanted to belong to. For the first time in your life you can start something new. On your own. Without the politburo nagging you for any new idea. Without a propaganda that forces you to worship USSR instead of cherishing Europe. You can do something that earlier you’d only seen in Hollywood films.

Now it is the time. You decide to open a pizza place. Probably there is no other restaurant serving pizza in a 50 mile radius. Imagine it. You’re one of the first in the country. There is only one problem. Nobody you know has been to Italy or US. For last 50 years if someone miraculously made it there, they would not come back. More than that! You’ve heard of only few people who had their passports. You want a pizza place, but you only know it from few films and maybe two recipes that you hardly managed to find. And your imagination.

You make a fluffy dough, you add mushrooms and onions, cause they work in the most popular Polish street food zapiekanka. You remember ketchup from the films. You have no idea how to make it, so you let yourself improvise with tomatoes. You add it on top. Everybody likes on top. You serve it with barszcz. Because in Poland everybody loves barszcz.

You open the place. You’re an instant hit.

Source

Sounds like science-fiction? Probably. But it was Poland 20 years ago. A place that just found its freedom, for the first time in generations. And nothing was to stop them from enjoying their liberty. Nothing. Not poverty. Not inflation. Not lack of experience. Sky was the limit.

Now it might seem a joke. Poland is a pretty normal country, quite far from what it used to be. But I admire this uninhibited will to be part of Europe from 1990s. Those were beautiful people and this is a beautiful pizza story.

You get a portion of creativity, history and ‘90s nostalgia on a plate each time you eat at Piccolo restaurant in Toruń, Poland. Something not many places can offer.

Restaurant website

Glossary

Toruń - a charming town in the Centre-North of Poland one of the capitals of Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship, famous for gingerbread products Toruńskie Pierniki, and for being the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus (the astronomer, not the copper inventor…)

Piccolo - the pizza place that inspired this text, a small independent restaurant in Torun, Poland, that offers one of the most original pizzas in the world, always incredibly popular amongst locals and tourists.

Zapiekanka - probably the most popular polish street food snack, a half of a baguette baked with cheese and different topics, but traditionally should be served with mushrooms and onions. Of course served with ketchup, mayonnaise, or garlic sauce on top.

Barszcz - a traditional Polish soup, sort of a beetroot stock. Served in many different ways, also as a form of a hot drink.