Review: Book talks about pizza’s relationship with São Paulo in hard work of investigation

In digital times, when emojis say more than a thousand words, it seems tempting to think about which pictogram could define the gastronomic scene of large cities around the world.

If Istanbul could be translated with a doner kebab, Paris would be well represented by croissant and Mexico City in the form of a taco al pastor, how could São Paulo be characterized, after all? Undoubtedly, many would bet on pizza.

In a capital where Italian immigration was so decisive, the recipe that emerged in Naples gained its version of São Paulo and became so popular that it is even difficult to think of another dish so widely consumed and spread, which has defined eating habits and changed so much the culinary panorama.

It is this passionate relationship between the city and pizza that journalist Flávia G. Pinho (a collaborator Sheet) goes into detail in the recently released book “A Slice of Italy – How Pizza Conquered São Paulo and Brazil” (Matrix publisher).

It shows, from a detailed historical basis (and sometimes excessively chronological), how pizza left Italy, was brought by immigrants and, later, gained layers of different influences until it was considered “pizza from São Paulo” – which, curiously, was later taken to other parts of the world, such as Madrid, Lisbon and even the United States.

“What began as a maintenance of food traditions and preservation of the culture itself opened up as a valuable vehicle for communication and integration between Italians and Brazilians”, writes journalist and researcher Silvana Azevedo right in the book’s presentation.

Equipped only with a very limited list of recipes unanimously appreciated and massively consumed around the world (like, perhaps, just the hamburger), pizza has become democratically global.

It gained different versions where it arrived at the hands of Italian immigrants and is still going through very important appreciation movements, such as what is happening now with “neo-Neapolitan” in countries like Japan — where curiously some of the best slices of the world are eaten today. .

But, as in other places, what happened to pizza in São Paulo is something unique, like the cultural and gastronomic movements that defined the largest capital in the country. “The most Italian city in Brazil appropriated the recipe and made it its own”, writes the journalist.

Pinho tells how the restricted access to some ingredients or the difficulty of obtaining them with quality, as in the case of wheat, which arrived “musty and rancid”, after months of travel and waiting in the port — determined the identity of the pizza ” made in Sao Paulo”.

In addition to flour, there were also no cheeses, tomatoes and other ingredients like those used in Italy to make pizza with the same rigor as Neapolitan recipes. These ingredients had to be adapted using what was available, giving rise to a new style — thinner and crispier doughs, (very) more diverse toppings.

To prove her point, the author narrates the profusion of exclusive cultural exchanges in the city, such as the Camelo chain, founded in the 1950s by an Arab immigrant (who originally sold hummus and esfirras) and which became one of the most traditional pizzerias in São Paulo.

Or the popularization of toppings that only exist in these parts: the classic chicken with catupiry (a 100% national cheese spread precisely from São Paulo pizzas) and the Portuguese, made with ham, eggs, onions and peas, a tribute to the taste of the our colonizers, although it never existed in Portugal.

The topic is not much of a novelty, but, with an arduous work of investigation, the journalist manages to give factual traces to the story, gathering accounts of characters who determined it and documents that prove it.

The book also helps to emphasize the pivotal role of pizza in the beginnings of São Paulo’s restaurant sector through Italians, who were among the pioneers to open their businesses in the city in the 1920s and 1930s (Italian descent continues today as the most present in the gastronomy of São Paulo).

As in its Neapolitan origins, pizza began to be spread in São Paulo as street food, also sold by street vendors, who took home-made discs in portable copper drums, with red-hot coals in the background. They were sold at the doors of residences and at the exits of sports games.

It didn’t take long for them to settle in the garages of the houses and then gain more complex structures, like restaurants, which gave rise to the first pizzerias in São Paulo. Some of them, still remaining from that period, are still open today.

This is the case of Castelões, in Brás (a typical neighborhood of Italian immigration), of Babbo Giovanni, now transformed into a chain, and of Jardim de Napoli, which, although it has become more of a “cantina” (another essentially São Paulo institution), began with a Pizza oven.

The book also slips —although it occasionally lacks a bit of depth— in the local eating behaviors that pizza has determined, such as its consumption by São Paulo residents on Sundays (why only at dinner?) and also the common practice of eating it in home, whether purchased “to go” or ordered for delivery.

In a city where delivery was already quite massive even before the pandemic restricted us to restaurant experiences to our own living room, due to the requirement of social distancing, pizza always reigned supreme.

Or rather, it was the “disk pizza” that created in São Paulo the habit of not having to worry about dinner when gathering family or friends on Saturday nights, which invariably ended up in “half pepperoni, half mozzarella” before the profusion of options brought by the applications.

“A Slice of Italy“ it has the character of a didactic and in-depth report, the result of an exhaustive research that is clear in the amount of sources and data that the journalist gathers during the thematic chapters.

Although this sometimes brings a somewhat bureaucratic tone to the text, it is evident the effort that Pinho makes to cover all the coverage of the topic, without leaving even a piece of dough without his detailed eye.

More than a historical account and an important record of a city’s relationship with one of its most affective and iconic dishes, his work can be seen as a passionate declaration of a recipe that is as much ours as the world’s.