Sue de Groot looks for a slice of nostalgia and finds gluten-free instead

I remember my first Col’Cacchio pizza. I remember it because it was at the first Col’Cacchio — back when there was only one. The restaurant was in a rickety building on Cape Town’s foreshore, where the southeaster rattled the walls as though begging for a slice and stole takeaway boxes if you didn’t clutch them tightly on your way out.

I remember the pizza because I went back time and again and always ordered the same one. Tricolore, it was called. Three colours. These were not the colours of the Italian flag. They were the tints of marble and granite. Pink whorls of smoked salmon, white pools of sour cream and black towers of caviar balanced on a wafer-thin pizza base.

When I moved back to Joburg, I missed Col’Cacchio intensely. Then I heard about a branch that had opened in Bryanston, so I went there. It couldn’t have been more different from the one on the Foreshore — all shiny steel, delicate chairs and glossy shoes — but tricolore was on the menu. So I had it. And it was good.

Col’Cacchio has come a long way since then. There are now two dozen stores around the country — 12 in Gauteng, 11 in the Western Cape and one in Durban. The franchise has become famous for its Celebrity Chef series, in which four famous chefs invent a topping and R5 from the price of each special pizza sold goes to charity. This year the series has raised close to R200 000 for the Children’s Hospital Trust. The fifth month of this series features the winning pizza from a competition open to the public. When my colleagues and I visited Col’Cacchio in the Bluebird Centre in Atholl, Joburg, the promotion was in its final month, so we ordered the Pizza Challenge winner, created by Jade Fairbrother. It was called Hollywood Scene (pictured) — a tomato base with mozzarella, bacon, roasted red onion and garlic, topped with avocado, fresh thyme and crispy onion, with the option to add banana. We didn’t take the option. Banana does not belong on a pizza.

Jade’s pizza was good, if a little oniony. It will be on the menu until the end of August. The Atholl Col’Cacchio is temporarily closed for renovations, but you can try the Hollywood Scene at another branch.

When I went to the first Col’Cacchio, there was no such thing as a glutenfree pizza. Now you can order any pizza with this base, and there’s a range of “slimmer’s” pizzas, called “foro”, which means hole in Italian. These are doughnut-shaped and the middle is filled with salad. We tried ortigiano foro (R85, plus R15 if you want a gluten-free base) with olives, artichokes, asparagus, green pepper and mushrooms, all of which belong on a pizza. The topping was good, the base a little dry, but that’s gluten-free for you.

We shared two pasta dishes as well, penne montanara (R65) with artichokes, spring onion, thyme, cream, garlic and parmesan, and linguine funghi bianco (R85) with exotic mushrooms, cream, herbs and parmesan. A bottle of Pierre Jourdan Tranquille made a pretty pink side dish. Col’Cacchio’s wine list has won gold at the annual Diners Club Winelist Awards since 2009 and is superb, with almost all wines available by the glass. The pasta was properly al dente and the sauces were properly packed with what the menu promised, but it is pizza that has made the franchise’s name and that’s what one should order. The tricolore, sadly, is no longer on the menu. There is a drago (R98) with smoked salmon, wasabi sour cream, wasabi soy balsamic glaze, seven spice and spring onion on a tomato-free base. I’m sure it is good. Times must change, and food fashions along with them. But banana still has no place on a pizza.