THESE DAYS, MANY TRENDY PIZZA-MAKERS WILL USE EXOTIC TOPPINGS AND PAY LITTLE ATTENTION TO THE PIZZA ITSELF.

A SLICE OF ROME BREAD OF LIFE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Chef Ritu Dalmia makes conventional Chef Alex's is a chef-intensive Pavitra (above) is self-taught and runs a small Roman-style pizzas process that is artisanal operation, but her pizzas (right) are wonderful

Americano, he wanted something more personal. So his pizzas owe Vikram does both thin crust and thicker pizzas, but the early a lot to Naples but have thinner crusts. Alex is an accomplished response has been ecstatic mainly because of the imagination he bread maker, so I guess he approached pizzas from that prism, has demonstrated with his toppings. There is a terrific chilli chicken working through various methods till he got it right. He uses maida, topping. And along with the not-uncommon chicken tikka topping, he but he has it milled himself and says that because the characteristics offers seekh kabab. There is a North East Chicken pizza with bamboo of the flour can vary from batch to batch, he fine-tunes the recipes shoots and a bhut jolokia sauce. each time a new batch of flour comes in. Vikramjeet is a top chef but the great thing about the pizza boom is

Alex’s Americano is a full-fledged restaurant, but pizzas have that even beginners can get it right. I have ordered twice from Delhi’s become its most popular dish (he makes around 150 a day), which Soho Pizzeria and both times the Naples-inspired pizzas were good has taken him by surprise. His pizza station is not huge and his with terrific, crusty edges. pizzas need massive attention to detail in the cooking. In the case of some pizzas, he adds the fresh basil after they are cooked. In some, he adds the basil to the dough. Some pizzas need to the pulled out of the oven half way through for the cheese to be added. The various toppings also go in at different times.

It is a chef-intensive process that is artisanal rather than mechanical but it is worth it because the pizzas that emerge are easily the best I have ever eaten in Mumbai and you can tell that they were made by a chef at the height of his powers.

The popularity of pizza, especially during the pandemic (it is one of the most ordered dishes), has caused other chefs to take it seriously. Vikramjeet Roy, one of the most talented Indian chefs of his generation, has set up the Woke Pizza brand to join his successful Hello Panda and Park Street Rolls & Biryani brands. Vikram is geeky about research, so he spent months researching pizza ingredients. He got TWF Flours, a specialist Indian flour company, to customise unbleached flour with a coarser grain for his pizzas. He believed that Delhi water was often too hard, so he reduced the PH level of the water he used and experimented with dough fermentation timings till he got the pizza he wanted. NOT ALL DRESSED For Chef Ritu (above), it is about the pizza flavour than the toppings

The partners behind Soho Pizzeria have very little kitchen experience. Pavitra Arora, whom I spoke to, took one or two pizza courses, but she is basically self-taught. (Her partner is Surbhi Chugh.) She uses Caputo pizza flour (Caputo is an Italian company that sells flour all over the world) and as far as I can tell, has the standard pizza oven.

Despite that, the pizzas are wonderful and satisfying. And it’s good to see a small operation with no money to waste on PR companies (I found them on Instagram) do something of this quality.

There have been pizzerias in India since the 1980s at least, but the boom only began when the Delhi Hyatt Regency opened La Piazza in 1994 with a wood-fired oven and world-class pizzas.

Who could have predicted then that, a pizza craze would sweep India and that far away from the space colonized by the global pizza chains, we would have our own artisanal operations run by passionate chefs who were driven by their obsession with excellence?

The views expressed by the columnist are personal

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