“Pepe is not the usual rustic pizza chef, he’s part of the new generation of Italian gastro-philosophers”.

Praises at the end of a superstar tour: first in London with Identità Golose and Harrods, then in the US, playing solo, nine days between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with six tasting events, all sold out, and certainly not for their moderate price (195 dollars to attend the cooking demo and devour 4 slices of “Pepe style” pizza, including paired wines).

«The result: sold out. And at the end, they’d never want to leave. They were all asking things, shaking my hand... There were people coming especially from Texas, some even from Mexico. And there were many entrepreneurs, they made me staggering offers, too big for me».

Pepe is in fact an honest man and when you ask him what was the compliment he most appreciated, he mentions Jonathan Gold. And not because Gold is a famous American Pulitzer-winning food critic and journalist, rather because of what he told him, after eating his pizza:

«Dear Franco, you know what? It tastes like Caiazzo», that is to say the village in Campania where “Pepe’s granddad opened his pizzeria” – again we mention the Los Angeles Times. And where today "almost every night Pepe’s pizzeria, Pepe in Grani, is open, as many as 400 customers find their way down the narrow alleys to wait in lines that can last two hours".

Lots of praise, enough to get intoxicated, to get stunned, «a great experience for which I must thank Nancy», who’s surname is Silverton, patron of a some very popular places in LA (and Singapore), called Mozza and Spacca, in co-ownership with Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich: «She visited me a few years ago in Caiazzo». She was the one who wanted Pepe in California and at the end her only regret, so to speak, was that «Now my clients have tasted Franco’s pizza, they will no longer want to eat the ones we prepare!».

Carlo Passera
source: http://newsletter.identitagolose.it/email.php?id=568

Leggi il testo integrale nel link FONTE (qui sopra)