An American in Lima

It’s been more than a year since I had pizza at El Italiano, a classic pizzeria/trattoria in Lima’s rough-and-tumble La Victoria neighborhood.

In that time I had forgotten that El Italiano makes better pizza than almost any other place in Lima, a city that should have lots of excellent pizza joints but for some reason doesn’t.

What  might have induced my temporary amnesia is that I always seem to crave El Italiano when it’s closed. Several times El Fotografo and I have driven to El Italiano on a Monday night, only to arrive at a darkened restaurant. It took three abortive outings for the restaurant’s schedule (open Tuesdays-Sundays) to sink into my brain and, in the process, I stopped drooling whenever I thought of El Italiano, something that used to happen automatically.

I’m happy to report that, after last Friday’s visit, my salivary glands have regained their former El Italiano groove.

El Italiano makes pasta dishes but I’ve never ordered any, so I can’t comment.  What I do know is that they make a rustic thin-crust pizza that is crisp, flavorful and satisfying. They have a round pizza oven in the back and a baker standing guard who does nothing but slide the pies in and out on a flat shovel and time them. The photo below shows one of the pizza chefs and owner Giuseppe Natalini raising a toast:

Eat our food! Drink our wine! Okay, drink your own wine! (photo courtesy Peru.com)

The pizza crust is homemade and firm, crisp underneath but not brittle. It can stand up to plenty of toppings, unlike the pizza crust at Antica which, although tasty, sags under the weight of chorizos and seafood.

I lived from ages 3 to 13 in central Jersey, so I know thin-crust pizza. El Italiano’s crust isn’t great — I reserve that superlative for John’s, in New York City and for a little pizza place in a strip mall where I used to eat as a kid– but it’s very good.  ‘Very good’  is way better than the pizza served at Papa Johns, Dominos, Little Caesar’s, D’Innos or any of the chains that have spread throughout Lima like creeping vines.  And those chains, in turn, are better than the awful, undercooked pizzas served in La Calle de los Pizzas, in Miraflores. Given the ubiquitousness of inferior pizza in Lima, places like El Italiano are a godsend.

El Italiano serves two sizes of pizza: Personal (S/.23.50 – .25.00 each) and Grande (S/.28.50 — S/.43.00 each). There isn’t a great difference between them. If I were the owner of El Italiano, I’d call them “Small” and “Medium” and add an additional “Large” size. But who’s asking the gringa?

Check out El Italiano’s pizza menu here and the entire menu here. I’m sorry I don’t have photos. I don’t photograph the food I eat (unless someone is paying me), and El Italiano’s website has miniscule photos at like 10 dpi, so it wasn’t any use trying to use those.

In addition to making really good pizza, El Italiano has other merits won’t find in the average Lima pizza shop.

You can choose from three types of salads (S/17.00 – S/35.00) in Personal and Grande portions.  (A Personal was more than enough as an appetizer for me and El Fotografo.) And before our pizzas arrived, the waiter scooted a free basket of melted-cheese/garlic bread onto the table.

The wine list favors Italian and South American wines as well as low-budget servings by the glass and the half jarra. But if you’re picky and frugal, do as the locals do and BYOB. The restaurant doesn’t blink an eye at uncorking your bottle of Altos or Noble; an eight-soles corking fee will show up on your cuenta.

Just be sure to ask for your cork back when the waiter opens the bottle if you plan to take any wine home with you. Otherwise, you’ll have to ride home with your thumb in the bottle.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.