The tiny shop that sells the ‘best pizza in the world’ – and it only costs £6
IT should come as no surprise that the ‘best pizza in the world’ is in Italy.
But what is surprising is its price – a Margherita pizza from the best pizza restaurant in the world only costs £6 (€7).
The restaurant, ‘I Masanielli‘, has been voted number one on ‘Top 50 Pizza‘ for four consecutive years.
I Masanielli is a concept from pizza chef Francesco Martucci, who was forced to work from the age of 10 due to financial difficulties at home.
He started working at ‘Solito Posto’, one of Caserta’s oldest pizzerias and by the time he was 14, he was working solo in the kitchen, crafting the perfect dough recipe and creating new flavours and opened.
In 2001, he opened his first ‘I Masanielli’ pizzeria with his brother, and the shop was so tiny it would only allow for takeaway.
In 2017, the I Masanielli opened its new – and much bigger – restaurant, which can be found in the city centre of Caserta, which is approximately a 25-minute drive from Naples.
The pizzeria is also just a stone’s throw away from the spectacular 18th-century Royal Palace of Caserta – which happens to be the biggest palace on the planet.
The classic Margherita pizza only costs £6, while a Bufala – a Margherita with mozzarella made of buffalo milk – costs £8.
However, Francesco Martucci has become known for his pizzas cooked at three temperatures.
The pizzas are cooked in vapour at 100°, fried at 180°, and then cooked in the oven at 400°.
The three-temperature method is available on three signature pizzas.
One is the ‘Futuro di Marinara’ (£10.50), with a cream of roasted tomatoes, olives, anchovies, wild garlic pesto, capers and oregano.
The ‘DOC’ is also £10.50 and is a take on the original Margherita, with tomato, buffalo mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese and cherry tomatoes.
The last pizza is the ‘Genovese secondo Martucci’ – the ‘Genovese according to Martucci’, costing £11.50.
This one is special, with a white base and fior di latte (semi-soft, fresh cheese made from mozzarella), onion, pork cheek and ‘conciato romano’, which is the oldest cheese in the world.
Martucci told Italian magazine, ‘Identità Golose’, that the pizza served at his restaurants ‘is, indeed, very “mine”.
He said: “It has a personal identity which I developed over these years, the result of the many notions I’ve acquired by studying and going around questioning myself day after day.”
The restaurant has 4.5/5 stars on TripAdvisor, with more than 3,800 reviews.
Customers called it ‘simply the greatest of all time’, ‘flawless’, and ‘a pizza to die for’.
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