INDULGE IN ITALIAN
Pizza, cannoli at Spacca Napoli
Port Moody’s cool quotient is rising, what with Murray Street lined with craft breweries and the picturesque setting.
And now, there’s a BFF for the breweries. Spacca Napoli arrived with a bear hug from Napoli and its famous Neapolitan pizzas. Chef Marco Cresciullo is from Naples, trained in pizzerias there. Owners, brothers Danny and Paolo Pero and friend Davide Di Giovanni, all have Neapolitan parental roots and have been so passionate about this matter of Neapolitan pizzas, they’ve been making pizzas in backyard wood ovens for years.
“We could talk about pizza all day long. Danny and I wanted to open a pizzeria for years,” says Di Giovanni, a dentist in Port Moody. “We got so sick and tired of the food we were getting in Vancouver.”
When Cresciullo appeared straight from Naples, that was it. But when Di Giovanni told his mother about plans for a pizzeria during a vacation in Hawaii, she wasn’t thrilled.
“She said I ruined her life and she’s never going to step foot in it,” he laughs boisterously, adding that she’s totally on board now. “Her wedding photo is on the wall. She has no choice.” That’s along with other family photos from the “old country.”
Di Giovanni’s dental patients do double takes, seeing their dentist in a chef ’s jacket. Danny’s alter ego is a financial analyst and Paolo’s is as a third-generation baker who operates The Pastry Box.
Danny and Paolo’s parents, too, are food obsessed and operate Casa del Pane Bakery and Deli in Port Moody. Another brother operates Italia Bakery on Hastings and Renfrew and the Cannoli King food truck at events.
Spacca Napoli put his cannoli on the dessert menu. While I’m not a huge cannoli fan, these I liked, especially the pistachio-flavoured one. (Dessert is not one, but three cannolis.)
I catch Danny and Davide on the phone while they are in the Okanagan, picking tomatoes, a time-honoured tradition. “My parents have been doing this for 40 years,” says
Danny. “My only vacation used to be to go and stay in the dumpiest motels and pick tomatoes with my parents. Now we’ve bought a place. We’ll pick a thousand pounds of tomatoes and take ’em back. My parents jar them every year.”
Spacca Napoli means “Naples splitter,” referencing a street that actually does that in the historic part of Naples. I’ve had Neapolitan pizza at ground zero (in Naples), but I gotta say, I liked Spacca’s better. The rustic crusts, nicely singed, has chew and great flavour. Sometimes Neapolitan pizzas can be too limp (good for folding and eating on the run); Spacca’s is foldable, but has enough body for holding without folding — and without the toppings sliding off.
Spacca’s classic Margherita has a bright red, fresh-looking tomato sauce and delicious fior di latte mozzarella. The only pizza on the menu not typical of Naples is the Alla Facciazza (loose translation: “In your face”) which was created for a competition (it won, handily). It’s topped with arugula pesto, truffle cream, porcini mushroom, garlic, 18-month-cured Parma prosciutto crudo, shaved Parmigiano cheese, toasted pistachios and fior di latte mozzarella. If this is adrift from the Naples dictate, please, drift, drift away! I loved the umami bombs going off.
Should you think the Americana pizza, with hotdogs, french fries, and fior di latte mozzarella atop is an impostor, it is, but it is Neapolitan.
Of the side dishes, I tried fritella, a Neapolitan snack of deep-fried dough with seaweed crumbled into it. That got a heart and a like from me. Truffle fries were even better, with buttery potatoes, and it did taste of truffle.
I’ve already mentioned the cannoli from the Cannoli King. A yes to this dessert, if there’s any stomach real estate for it.
I was especially sold on this place after my last pizza experience, popular for its choose-as-manytoppings-as-you-want offer. The dough was machine pressed and it arrived largely uncooked under the toppings, creating a lava flow off the slimy base. It fed my green bin.
The partners buy Italian and pay for quality. The prosciutto cotto (cooked) and crudo (uncooked), the salamis, the coffee (from Naples), the canned San Marzano tomatoes (drives them crazy that other tomato products dare to be called by that name), the cheeses, the techniques, the pizza oven (a hand-built Stefano Ferrara) are all Italian, and the staff all speak Italian.
They don’t have the Associazion Verace Pizza Napoletana blessing, certifying they are following traditional Neapolitan methods.
“We don’t have it and don’t have plans to apply for it. Our guy is, by default, as authentic as you can get,” says Danny.
“We look at it as an art. Working with a wood-burning oven is definitely an art. It depends on the time of day, weather, temperature outside, how many pizzas you’ve got in. I could look at a pizza and tell which of us has made it. Everyone has their own fingerprints, their own style.”
The pizzas, in keeping with Neapolitan tradition, is 30 centimetres, cooked for 90 seconds in a 900-degree oven. The San Marzano tomatoes are D.O.P. (protected designation of origin, in English) labelled and numbered.
The pizzeria is licensed and you’ll find Port Moody and Italian beers and mostly Italian wines on the beverage list.
CLAP, CLAP, CLAP
Let’s hear it for Kaitlyn Stewart. The Royal Dinette bartender was crowned 2017 World Class Bartender of the Year in Mexico City recently. She competed for Canada against more than 10,000 bartenders from 57 countries. After winning the regionals, she was up against 55 of the best. “Every finalist was incredible, but for me, Kaitlyn really stood out,” said one of the judges, Lauren Mote. “By the time it came to the final challenge, we wanted to find someone bursting with skill, knowledge and charisma, with unbelievable creativity and an incredible mastery of the classic and signature serves. Kaitlyn well and truly delivered.” mia.stainsby@shaw.ca twitter.com/miastainsby instagram.com/miastainsby