Why Every Spelling of Pizza Leads You to the Same Question: What Makes It Neapolitan
How the word is written changes nothing. What the word Neapolitan means changes quite a lot, and it takes only a few lines to explain.
Pizza, Piza, Pitza: The Spelling Moves, the Question Stays
Some people write it with two z. Some with one. Some slip a t in the middle. Italian dictionaries record a single form, pizza, and the Vocabolario Treccani is easy enough to check if you want to see it for yourself. Everything else is a thumb landing slightly off target, and nobody at a table has ever minded.
Underneath the typo there is usually a different question waiting. Not how the word is spelled, but what sort of pizza is about to arrive at the table. That question has real answers. None of them depend on how you typed it.
So here is the answer to the question you probably meant to ask.
Neapolitan Is a Method, Not a Topping
Neapolitan does not name an ingredient. It names how the dough is treated and how the pizza is baked. The craft is written down in more than one place: the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana publishes a specification for it, and UNESCO added the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Both are public and both are readable.
Knowing those documents exist is enough. Reading them is optional. The short version is four things: dough that is given time, an oven that is very hot, a bake that is short, and a result with a soft base and a puffed rim.
At Filomena the dough is a biga, fermented 48 hours at 77 percent hydration. The tomatoes are San Marzano and the mozzarella is fior di latte, both from Italy. The oven is copper, gas fired, and works at 400 degrees. Daniele, who makes the pizza, was born in Naples in 1989. That paragraph describes our kitchen. It is not a certificate and it is not meant to sound like one.
What You Can See Without Knowing Anything
You do not need vocabulary to read a Neapolitan pizza. Look at the rim: it rises and stays airy. Look at the middle: it stays tender, and it is supposed to. If a knife and fork help, use them. If you would rather fold a slice and pick it up, do that. Neither one is a mistake, and nobody in the room is grading you.
The same goes for the questions. Asking what fior di latte is, or why the base is soft, or what the word biga means, costs nothing. Daniele works a few steps from the tables. Asking is faster than reading.
Not knowing something is the normal starting point. It is the reason this page exists at all.
The Wine List Is Not an Exam Either
Alongside the pizza there is a natural wine list, and it changes. Because it changes, we do not print what is open. What we do instead is give each bottle or grape variety on the list its own page, so that a name you have never met has somewhere to be explained.
You can read one of those pages before you come, or you can arrive knowing nothing and ask at the table. Both routes end in the same place. Nobody needs to perform expertise to order a glass of wine with dinner.
Spell It However You Like, Then Come and Eat
Filomena is at 1 Aristotelous in Larnaca. We are open Tuesday to Sunday, 18:00 to 22:00, and closed on Monday. The site is in English, Italian and Greek, so read it in whichever language sits easiest. What comes out of the oven usually ends up on Instagram at @filomena.pizzeria.napoletana.
Questions People Type Before They Book
Q.Is it pizza or piza?
In Italian it is pizza, with two z. Piza is a typo, and it changes nothing about what arrives on the plate.
Q.Does Neapolitan mean a particular topping?
No. It describes the dough and the bake, not what goes on top. A margherita and a marinara are both Neapolitan when they are made that way.
Q.Why is the middle of the pizza soft?
A short bake in a very hot oven leaves the centre tender while the rim puffs up. Fold the slice or use a knife. Both are perfectly normal.
Q.Do I need to know about natural wine before I visit?
No. Bottles and grape varieties on our list have their own pages on this site, and you can also just ask once you are sitting down.