Pizza. Fast food? How about when you have a Hilton-based pizzaiolo — Mark Mattinson — who spends 72 hours prepping each batch of dough? When each day, on starting the process, he consults a weather app, checks the anticipated humidity, and adjusts the water content for his canotto-style pizzas accordingly.
Then you hear that after a careful trial-and-error process, he gave up on the idea of using locally available flour and accepted he would have to import “the real thing” — three brands, from which he makes his own blend — from Italy. Along with the San Marzano tomatoes — these being key to the as-authentic-as-possible Italian-style pizzas, crispy with puffy, blistered, deliciously charred cornicione, which are his focus. Pizza de résistance…
Long before Durban got lucky, back in the late 1980s, Adam Robinson, who opened the Glenwood Bakery in January 2013 with his wife, Carin Robinson, was one of London’s legendary chefs. “Adam Robinson is one of the defining spirits of his age, a leading player who has shaped the gastronomy of the nineties,” to quote from Kit Chapman’s classic tome of the time, Great British Chefs. Google his name and “London chef” and see what pops up.
Are you a pizza lover or a pizzaphobe weirdough? What (or who) makes the difference? We talk pizza with Mark Mattinson at Napoli Fifteen in Hilton. And in Durban, Glenwood Bakery’s Adam Robinson and Pizza My Heart’s Kevin Fry. Read the full article Romancing the Pizza article in The Daily Maverick here.
