Discover Pizza di Casabona, an award-winning restaurant in Santos

Santos, on the coast of São Paulo, has been gaining some success in gaining a reputation, albeit still rather timid, as a gastronomic destination by the sea. If about ten years ago, few restaurants in the city attracted attention, today, establishments are successful, such as Madê, by former MasterChef Dario Costa, and the most recently decorated Pizza di Casabona, which was recently ranked among the 50 best pizzerias in Latin America in the 50 Top Pizza. It is the first and so far the only one on the coast of São Paulo to win this title.

“The ‘start’ to open Casabona was after I lived in Italy and worked in a pizzeria there”, says owner Eduardo Casabona, about the period that also served as a learning experience for his future business.

Casabona, who lends his last name to the pizzeria, started cooking at parties and events in customers’ homes five years ago. In less than a year, he opened his own production facility, offering only delivery services, and in 2020, he opened a space measuring approximately 30 square meters in the Boqueirão neighborhood of Santos. The establishment has just a counter with five chairs in front of the oven and a few tables outside, on the sidewalk.

Space doesn’t seem to be a problem for its clientele, and Casabona’s success is inversely proportional to the size of the pizzeria. One Friday, around nine o’clock at night, the hostess told the owner, who was also preparing the pizzas, that the waiting line was about an hour and a half long.

The key to the success of the restaurant is the selection of ingredients, according to the owner. Casabona uses imported double-refined flour that allows the dough to be made through a longer fermentation, imported tomato sauce and the so-called fior di latte mozzarella, less fatty than the cheese used in traditional pizzerias.

The combination of ingredients can be seen in a very limited menu of Neapolitan pizzas, which in theory would be individual, but at Casabona can easily be shared by two people. The pizzas are excellent. It is worth trying the reinterpretation of the traditional margherita (R$55), with burrata, tomato, basil and parmesan shavings.

The pizzas without sauce are also a highlight. Casabona’s dough is really tasty and goes great with just the cheese and other toppings. It’s worth ordering the Al Capone (R$61), which combines gorgonzola and caramelized onion, and also the Parma (R$55), which is topped with mozzarella, burrata, Parma ham and Sicilian lemon zest. All of them can be accompanied by glasses of the house wine—both red and white cost R$25 each.