Pepe in Grani: what if the best restaurant in the world is a pizzeria?
A t Caiazzo, a small hamlet in the province of Caserta, an hour’s journey by car from Naples, there is the pizzeria called Pepe in Grani which has been awarded as best pizzeria in Italy from 2017 to 2019 by Top50Pizza. It was also voted as the best Neapolitan pizzeria in 2020 and 2022 by the prestigious Italian restaurant guide “Gambero Rosso”. The Pepe in Grani’s awards drew my attention. My curiosity got the better of me as to why this place was so special that I decide to reserve a room at Pepe in Grani in order to have a chance of trying their famous pizzas.
Indeed, at Pepe in Grani is not possible to reserve a table*, but if you book, for at least a night, one of the two rooms on the top of the pizzeria, you have guaranteed a table for the dinner. You may consider this choice a little bit too excessive for having a table in a pizzeria, but you will immediately discover that it was not the case.
Arrived at Caiazzo, you could immediately feel the cosy magic atmosphere surrounding Caiazzo and most of the Italian hamlets, and you can get a sense of the pain of losing most of their inhabitants as these areas have been suffering from depopulation over the last twenty years.
Once in Caiazzo center, it is easy to look for Pepe in Grani. In fact, all the streets are quire deserted with few people wandering around, but only one street is overcrowded as if there is a rock concert taking place. That is the one where Pepe in Grani is located. Indeed, that evening there were so many people in queue that we had to call the staff of Pepe in Grani to come out to get us as we couldn’t get through the crowd!
Consequently, I strongly advise everyone to reach Pepe in Grani before the pizzeria opens.
T he pizzeria Pepe in Grani is located inside an ancient palace of 18th century, bought by the chef Franco Pepe. The place has been renovated and smartly redesigned in order to be a small temple of food. There are various dining rooms, a terrace and a garden. During the spring and the summer is also possible to eat in the terrace or in the garden. A peculiarity of Pepe in Grani is the opportunity for some of the diners to be able to watch the pizza chefs in action, as there is a design feature windows made for this purpose.
Furthermore, in the Pepe in Grani pizzeria there is a special room called Authentica. Actually, Authentica is a small pizzeria inside the main pizzeria. Indeed, in that room there is a wood-oven for pizzas, and before the oven there is a stand with 8 seats. It is possible only to book the whole room, and if you do it, you will have the opportunity to have the chef Franco Pepe making his famous pizzas before you. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a unique experience that I would like to have as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic will be over.
All the different areas are simply but pleasantly furnished. In this aspect, Pepe in Grani, looks like a typical pizzeria.
R elated to the service, I cannot fault it. In fact, that evening I was so lucky that the chef Franco Pepe decided to come to our table in order to explain us the different pizzas, the story of his career and pizzeria and other interesting details about the ingredients. A matter of fact is that for us the service was beyond the perfection, but it was not the standard service that every client was experiencing. Having a lesson about food by one of the most awarded chefs in the world while you are dining is absolutely unique.
R egarding the food, at the pizzeria Pepe in Grani I had the best culinary experience in my life at the same level of the one had at Mirazur few months later. The tasting menu represents the state of art of what it can be realized in the field of pizza. The menu from the appetizers until the desserts was made up of pizzas: fried, sweet, with different shapes and with a wide range of ingredients. The overall experience was simply perfect.
The most iconic pizzas of the menu were:
- The fried pizzas Viandante and Sensazioni di Costiera at the beginning of the dinner. The former one had mortadella and bufala cheese cream as a topping whereas the latter had some slices of fresh tomato, Cetara’s anchovies and lemon zest.
2. Straccetti: a dessert made of strips of fried pizza with sugar served with a cream of “ricotta of bufala” cheese. I would have never imaged that it was possible to create an outstanding dessert with a pizza.
3. Crisommola: another fried pizza served as a desert. In this case, the main topping is some jam of “Crisommola”, which is a species of apricot cultivated on the land surrounding the Vesuvio volcano. The characteristic taste of Crisommola derives from its cultivation on the volcanic land.
Although the fried pizzas were the ones that impressed me more, probably because I rarely eat them, also the traditional ones such as the Marinara were beyond any possible imagination.
T o conclude, the pizzeria Pepe in Grani represents the best qualities of Italian cuisine: tasty recipes with high quality ingredients locally produced, rooted in the tradition but extremely innovative, and all of that at an affordable price. In fact, the price of the tasting menu is between 35–50 euros and a single pizza Margherita is between 6–8 euros. Consequently, if you are interested in tasting what the state of art of the modern cuisine can express, you must pay a visit to Pepe in Grani.
*At the time of my visit it was not possible to book a table, but now it is possible to reserve a table.
