This week it opened in São Paulo, and I went to visit a new pizzeria and forneria called Foglia, in the neighborhood of Vila Nova Conceição. It is located in the renovated and now warmer space of the former Kurah (which, in turn, was transferred to Pinheiros), owned by the same owners.
The pizzaiola expertise is in the hands of chef Franco Ravioli (who has been famous for years with his Pizza Bros. chain) and his son Lorenzo, who also focuses on other Italian items on the menu.
I was curious to know if the beautiful wood oven would also be in action during the day, since the information was that the house would also work for lunch. The answer is no”. During lunch there will be a salad buffet, daily options of hot Italian dishes, light suggestions and desserts that are far from the portentous oven.
It occurred to me, once again, how curious is the idiosyncrasy that repels certain foods at certain times of the day, without much logic, or even against the most ordinary logic. São Paulo is proud of its close relationship with Italy, and the excellence of so many pizzerias. But if there is so much connection between food cultures, why not eat pizza for lunch too, like there?
The images of so many people come to my mind –starting with my children– who are thrilled with the idea of having slices of pizza (even cold ones!) in the morning… so, if you go for breakfast, why? not face the steaming pizza, coming out of the oven, at lunch?
Is it because no restaurant offers it? Is it because those eager for morning pizza wouldn’t flock to pizzerias open at noon, even if there were? Perhaps both reasons fuel this food taboo (but don’t explain it).
It is certainly not an imperious choice of human nature, so much so that, in Italy, not only can you find pizza for lunch, but it is also common to see people who eat them at any time – I remember well the image of children, in school uniform, walking through the streets with their rectangular slices in hand.
Also in the southern hemisphere, and right here in the neighborhood, we have another city that, like São Paulo, is very marked by Italian migration, and where pizza is also very welcome at lunch: Buenos Aires. So it’s hard to understand why, so close we are to the Porteños, we inherit the same gastronomic tradition in a different way.
It’s quite curious to see people leaving the gyms and eating a “light lunch”, a salad with a grill (actually, a frying on a pretend grill), and saving the pizza for… for dinner.
When physiologically (for those who want to keep the form of a Greek statue), the best thing would be the opposite – stuff yourself with carbohydrates during the day, and leave that salad for the night, because pizza, pasta, rice and the like, consumed at the end of the day. of the day, is that they sabotage all the sweat left in the pockets of gym owners.
I talk a lot about the pizza phenomenon, but it’s not the only one in the world that intrigues me. I will never understand, for example, why in Peru, in an inverted taboo, ceviche is only eaten for lunch.
Yes, the dish is a national glory, it is even a tourist attraction in the country; however, tourists insist on arriving in the country in the middle of the afternoon, and prepare to find all the cevicherias with their doors down.
If you want to console yourself with a raw fish (or almost), the visitor can go to Japanese restaurants, known there as nikkey; but for the glorious ceviche, you’ll have to wait for lunch the next day.
At night, if you want typical cuisine, even if you are an athlete zealous of the balance of your body mass, you will have dishes like, for example, the cause, delicious stuffed mashed potatoes, a carbohydrate bomb to flood your palate and invade your night. with nightmares of guilt.
Go figure.
