For a long time, Milwaukee-style pizza meant one thing: cracker crust, a lightly sweetened sauce, plenty of toppings and cut into squares. Though the moniker of “Milwaukee-style” often draws consternation from pizza purists who correctly argue that this style exists in other places, there’s no doubt that we gravitate to that favorite style and have for a long time. The Caradaro Club, the first pizzeria in the city, started the cracker crust trend, and other restaurants like Maria’s, Hup’s, Lisa’s and Balistreri’s have run with it for decades now.
It seems, though, that Milwaukeeans are craving some variety. Within the last decade, we’ve developed a taste for Neapolitan-style pies. Especially in the last few years, there’s been a flurry of pizza restaurants serving this traditional style that’s hallmarked by a chewy, airy, outer crust that’s nicely charred, thin but not crispy bottom crust and a light hand with toppings.
The most common Neapolitan pizza is the Margherita, which embodies all the key qualities you need in this style: simplicity, restraint and ingredient quality. Almost all restaurants that serve Neapolitan pizza will serve a Margherita, so it’s easy to compare and judge. Anodyne Coffee’s Bay View location serves up a banner rendition where the mozzarella is milky enough that the edges of the cheese blur into the tomato sauce. Anodyne’s pizzas (only available at the Bay View location) have some of the best leopard-like char spotting on the crust, which gives little hints of bitterness, like a good crust on a steak. That’s thanks to the Stefano Ferrara wood-burning oven that was imported from Italy.
You’ll notice similar huge, usually conical ovens in all restaurants that serve Neapolitan pizzas. They’re critical to obtaining the correct heat—usually around 900 degrees—that cooks the pizzas in about two minutes. One of the first in Milwaukee arrived in 2003 at Pizzeria Piccola in Wauwatosa. Their signature pizza, the Piccola, is a take on the Milwaukee favorite sausage-mushroom-onion combo that adds black olives.
Santino’s Little Italy is one of the newer restaurants to serve up Neapolitan pies. Their pizza-making methods are traditional, and, in fact, they tout their ingredients—including Caputo OO flour, an Italian brand that’s the gold standard for pizza crust. Santino’s is a decidedly modern restaurant, though, so pizzas run the gamut from traditional Margherita to versions topped with Italian beef and giardiniera or chicken and potato to match the décor and attitude.
Restaurants that serve Neapolitan pizzas can get certified by an Italian association called Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN). Their entire existence is to ensure the standard of Neapolitan pizzas around the world. Any restaurants that want to be certified must follow their rules exactly, from ingredients to equipment to cooking times. (Members also pay a fee, which critics argue makes this more of a marketing ploy than anything else since any restaurant can follow their rules without becoming certified.)
There are four VPN-certified pizzerias in Wisconsin, and the only one in Milwaukee is San Giorgio downtown. There, you can sit at a bar that surrounds the blue-tiled pizza oven (Stefano Ferrara, again) and watch as your pizza is made and fired. There are two types of Margherita pizza here: one with cow’s-milk-fresh mozzarella, and one with mozzarella di bufala, made with water buffalo milk. The latter is the more traditional of the two, and it’s worth getting both to taste the difference.
Older Italian restaurants have noticed the trend toward Neapolitan pizza and are installing wood-burning ovens as well. Carini’s Southern Italian Restaurant has been on Oakland Avenue since the ’90s, but only recently decided to add pizza to the menu by adding a Acunto Mario oven. Now, they offer about a dozen types, which are served uncut and meant to be eaten with a fork and knife (as most folks do in Italy).
Though the square-cut, cracker-crust pizza will probably never be totally abandoned, Milwaukeeans can’t seem to get enough other styles recently, especially Neapolitan. As long as Italian manufacturers continue to ship their gigantic ovens overseas, pizzerias in the area will utilize them, delivering traditional pizzas faster than you can say “Mangia!”
