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They've been turning out pizzas
at the Antica Pizzeria Brandi, just off the trendy Via Chiaia, for
more than a century; it was here that pizza got its modern look in
1889 when a treat was prepared for Queen Margherita and taken to the
nearby royal palace. It was also the first known pizza delivery. To
give the pizza a patriotic appearance, Rafaele Esposito used the
colors of the new Italian flag: tomato sauce for the red; basil for
the green; and for the white, a key ingredient - mozzarella di
bufala. The Queen loved the pizza, and an international delicacy was
born.
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The restaurant was founded in
1780 by Pietro Colicchio, who had neither sons nor daughters, so he
left it to Enrico Brandi, who left it to Maria Brandi, who married
Rafaele Esposito, who sold it to Vincenzo Pagnani, who turned it over
to his son, Eduardo Pagnani.
The Italian-American Historical
Society once stated that pizza was brought back to Rome by
legionnaires stationed in Palestine in the first century B.C. The
soldiers had grown tired of the local, unleavened bread and spiced it
up with cheese and olive oil. So goes the argument that pizza's true
ancestor is the matzoh.
The world's first pizzeria was
the Port'Alba, which opened in Naples in 1830. It cooked its pizzas
in an oven lined with Vesuvian lava. The Port'Alba became a haunt for
artists and writers, and the poet Salvatore di Giacomo wrote several
poems about pizza from one of its tables. |
Alexandre Dumas mentioned pizza
in several travel essays, but he erred about pizza a otto giorni -
instead of being baked eight days before it was eaten, the pizza was
eaten right out of the oven and paid for eight days later.
Even as Rafaele Esposito was
concocting a pizza fit for a queen, his countrymen were flocking to
America, and they took pizza with them. In 1905, Gennaro Lombardi
opened the first American pizzeria at 531/2 Spring St. in New York.
But pizza was considered foreign food and could be found only in
Italian neighborhoods.
When World War II sent great
waves of Americans to Italy, GIs with names such as Kelly and
Schwartz got their first taste of pizza. It was love at first bite,
and, when they returned, pizza became a national obsession.
website: http://www.brandi.it/inglese/index3.html
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