Hello HerCampus food lovers! I am so glad to be back and writing for you again. It seems like it has been so long since I have shared my food stories, but I have so many after spending four months in Italy. Assuming my next several posts are going to be about my Italian food experience, I am going to start with the one you will all relate with most… PIZZA! You must know first, that the most shocking thing about Italian pizza is that when you go to a Pizzeria in Italy you will never get a slice of pizza or get to choose what size you want like you do in the US. Instead, you get a “single serving” or what we would compare to an entire small pizza! I mean these babies were huge. Another odd thing is they would never slice the pizza. The waiter either brings you a knife or a pair of scissors to cut each slice on your own. And the worst part is Italians do not follow the practice of a doggy bag, so you have to eat the whole thing! Seeing as it was so good, it wasn’t that hard to accomplish! Here are a few of my favorite pizzas in Italy…
Do you see the size of that thing!? This was my first night in my home city, Perugia, Italy. I had a group dinner with all seventy of the students in my program and we each got our own wood-burning stove pizzas. Unfortunately, they were all cheese, but they were always wonderful. Note: the knife and fork on the side.
I had the wonderful company of my boyfriend at my favorite local pizzeria in Perugia, Mediterranea. This pizza was absolutely to die for, I had it nearly every other week. It was called “Lasagna Pizza” and it was basically that. Replace the noodles with pizza crust and you have a deconstructed pan of lasagna. This pizza had tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, basil, and best of all, dollops of ricotta. The creaminess of the ricotta literally made this pizza melt in your mouth.
This picture is taken from one of the most famous pizzerias in all of Italy because, obviously, we were in Napoli! Napoli, or Naples, is the pizza capital of the world. It is said to be where pizza was invented, and the owners of this restaurant claimed it happened right in their kitchen. That is up for debate. I like to think it is true! This pizza had the same toppings as the lasagna pizza, plus mushrooms. The thing that made this pizza so unique though, was the buttery crust. They say in Napoli that the crust is so delicious because of the salty air; I think it was the oil they mix into the dough, either way…YUM!