US JOURNAL
Thursday, January 2,
2014
New Year’s
Resolution: More Gelato and Pizza!
I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. It’s sort of like
wishing for a pony until I was 12, then realizing that I will never get a pony,
so I wished for a tennis racket and got it! We all know what I did with that
tennis racket! Terrific decision! Reality jerked me up, and I made a much
better choice of wishes.
There’s something different about this New Year, though…2
things, actually. This year a new restaurant is being opened by our absolutely
most favorite ever pizza maker Luca, and we have found 2 authentic gelato shops
that are not too close to our house, but sometimes we pass those areas going
somewhere else!
When we first found Antico Pizza Napoletana, we thought we
had died and gone to heaven! We took many of our friends there, and we told
anyone else we knew about it. Their pizza was REAL ITALIAN PIZZA made by REAL
ITALIANS. The owner actually hired a certified Italian pizza maker Luca from
Naples to train everyone and be in charge of the pizza making. They ordered all
of their ingredients, even the water, from Italy; and they made their pizzas
there in the restaurant. Even the brick ovens were built in Naples and shipped
to Atlanta…you can’t buy those ovens without going to Naples and taking a
course on how to use them correctly and safely! There were only 5 of that
maker’s brick ovens in the US when they opened, and Antico had 3 of those!
The stories that go along with the opening of Antico were
great! It started out as a take-out place. Within 3 days, they started letting
people stand at ledges around the ordering area if they wanted to eat
there. A week later, customers took over
the farm table where ingredients had been cut and prepared. I remember eating
our pizza in that room; but the table was full, so we put our pizza on the air
conditioning unit and stood up to eat. Soon after that, flimsy tables and
folding chairs were added in the front of the kitchen (very large…had been a
warehouse); and within 2 weeks, the tables were replaced with 8 farm tables
with benches. All this time, people would wait along the walls with their
pizzas, watching what was going on in the kitchen and waiting for someone to
get up so they could sit down. It was a definite experience.
But then, the unthinkable happened. Luca Varuni the Italian
manager was FIRED, and now it’s just not the same! However, the news is good.
We have discovered that Luca is opening his own pizza place in Atlanta in about
2 weeks, so we are looking forward to enjoying his pizzas again. We’re with
you, Luca! We’re watching for Varuni
Napoli Pizza to open on 1540 Monroe Dr. VERY
SOON!
Colleen
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