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Valerio Braschi, chef at 1978 Restaurant in Rome, and winner of Masterchef Italy 6, has conceived his latest creation. It's called 'Pizza alla Marinara', but resembles the famous leavened product only in flavour: it comes in the form of a transparent sachet, with a completely edible 'paper' wrapper.
It's not the first time that the Italian chef from Romagna has given us personal, playful and provocative interpretations of symbolic and traditional Italian specialties. Many will remember the resounding effect that his Lasagna in a tube had on his social networks last year: a signature dish that still brushes guests' teeth at the 1978 restaurant table. Or, again, his liquid Carbonara, to drink. The imaginative young chef, and one of the winners of the Future Tradition award assigned by the Gambero Rosso 2022 Guide, is now confronting another 'Made in Italy' gastronomic icon.
So, after pineapple on pizza - one of the most offensive 'crimes' against Italian cuisine - here is an unusual proposal that touches on a food considered 'sacred' by every inhabitant of the peninsula: a creation that doesn't actually alter the flavour and ingredients of a classic, but acts exclusively on its shape.
Pizza in a sachet by Valerio Braschi: a new marinara
Amuse bouche selection from 1978 Restaurant
“You can't mess with pizza,” comments someone on social media, along with (many) approvals such as, “You are a genius,” under the photo posted by Braschi on Instagram.
In fact, the idea is to concentrate the taste of your favourite pizza in a transparent bag, made with edible rice paper.
An edible sachet?
"I thought about closing these particular edible rice sheets with heat sealers: you have to be careful, because they are much thinner and more delicate than the rice paper that's commonly used to make spring rolls, and they must be kept in a dry environment," explains the chef.
What's inside a pizza sachet?
"Three ingredients transformed into powder: the classic toasted edge of pizza, that is, a dough that we prepare at home and that we bake in a wood oven making it toasted, so that on the palate it gives the burnt aroma typical of this cooking; a very tasty tomato cream with garlic, which is dried and blended and fresh oregano, which we dehydrate before pulverising it."
The result is an unprecedented form of 'pizza alla marinara', which can be found among the selection of amuse-bouches served at 1978 Restaurant. "We serve it together with five other tastings, to anyone who takes a seat at the table: it's not necessary to order the tasting menu to savour it, it is a gift that we want to give to all guests as a welcome, a way to make them start well and have fun. Furthermore, an amuse-bouche of this type allows the customer to get into the mood of a restaurant like mine, where you experiment a lot: it's special, but it has a traditional taste, its flavours transport you back home," says the chef.
The original pizza alla marinara in a sachet is an intensely flavoured amuse-bouche that the chef introduced last year, and which he recently removed for a couple of weeks. “I tried, but then I decided to put it back in the entrées, because all the customers kept asking for it.”
Are there other 'provocations' on the horizon? "No, for now I am concentrating on the design of the new menu, which will be ready by the end of March, with many unusual combinations, as per our style," says Braschi.
We are a long way from the 'Future of Marinara' pizza invented a few years ago by top pizzaiolo Francesco Martucci from I Masanielli in Caserta, number one in the 50 Top Pizza 2021 ranking: an iconic creation that reinterprets the historic recipe by subjecting the dough to three different ways of cooking (steamed, fried and baked). "Without tradition there is no innovation," he told us in 2020, when his recipe was named Pizza of the Year. Now the marinara comes in a sachet: could this be the future?
