This year, Auckland restaurant Dante's Pizzeria Napoletana was named the 65th-best pizzeria in the world.
Co-owners Kevin Morris and Enis Bacova tell Kathryn Ryan about what makes a great pizza and their plans for expansion.
'Shocking' is how Kevin Morris describes the quality of New Zealand pizza when he moved here from the UK 26 years ago,
In 2003, he opened Dante's – named after his Italian grandfather – with the goal of making exceptional pizza in the traditional Napoletana style.
After a lot of long-distance communication, Dante's became the first New Zealand pizzeria to receive accreditation by Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (aka The True Neapolitan Pizza Association).
Enis, who joined Dante's in 2013, grew up in Albania where the cuisine is heavily influenced by Italian pizza and pasta.
He says pizza made in the traditional style of Napoli must be made with superfine '00' Italian flour and cow mozzarella and sweet tomato from the Naples region.
It must also be baked in a woodfired oven for not more than 90 seconds.
Done well, sourdough-based Pizza Napoletana is light, tasty and so easy to digest that it's safe for some gluten-intolerant people, Enis says.
Careful preparation of the pre-fermented dough – made from flour, water, salt and yeast – is key.
"You need to be careful in the flour that you use, the levels of protein in the flour, the amount of water you put in the flour, the speed of mixing and the time of mixing. Afterwards, you need to be careful in maturing your dough."
As well as having a "crunchy-spongy" crust – as one young customer recently described it – Napoletana pizza must be simple, Kevin says.
"When you take a bite of pizza you don't want a hundred flavours at once. You'll get a bit of cheese, a little sauce, a little bit of basil. Your tongue can only handle four or five flavours at once so when it recognises those flavours the brain explodes with pleasure. If you have too many ingredients it's confusion and that's what we don't want. That's the beauty of Italian food. 'Less is more' is in a nutshell what it's all about, especially with pizza."
This year, the New York restaurant Una Pizza Napoletana was the joint winner for World's Best Pizzeria, and Kevin and Enis are hopeful Dante's could take New Zealand-made pizza to the top of the list one day.
In the meantime, they have plans to get Dante's pizza dough and some other components on New Zealand supermarket shelves.
Dante's has three restaurants, in Takapuna, Ponsonby Central and Mission Bay.
