Why Everyone Names a Pizzeria After a Person
Look for pizza anywhere and sooner or later you land on somebody's first name. Here is where that habit comes from.
Alfredo's, and everyone looking for it
"Alfredo's pizza" is one of the phrases people type into a search box without thinking about it. Almost nobody doing that is looking for a man called Alfredo. They are looking for pizza, and a first name is simply how pizzerias have been labelled for a long time.
The habit is so fixed that it works as a joke. In the American sitcom The Office there are two rival pizza places with nearly the same name, Alfredo's Pizza Cafe and Pizza by Alfredo, and the whole gag rests on the fact that a first name over a door tells you almost nothing on its own.
So if you are reading this because a search engine sent you here, you are in the right place to ask the better question: what is the name supposed to stand for?
Da Michele, da Gennaro: the name used to be the address
In Italian, a place is often introduced with the preposition "da" followed by a person. The Vocabolario Treccani lists this use of "da" for the place where somebody is or works, which is why "da Gennaro" reads as "at Gennaro's" (treccani.it, voce "da"). Before street numbers and signage mattered, that was the whole address. You went to the person, and the person happened to have an oven.
The same logic travelled with Italian cooking. In Rome, the restaurant on Via della Scrofa still carries the first name of Alfredo di Lelio, the man who made the pasta the place is known for (alfredoallascrofa.com). The name stayed on the door after the man had stopped standing behind it, which is exactly how these names usually age.
Once the pattern existed, it spread far past Italy. A first name signalled a kitchen rather than a company. That signal was useful, so it was copied, and then copied by places with no person in them at all.
A name is a claim that somebody answers for the food
A first name over a door makes one promise, and it is a modest one: somebody decided how this is made, and that somebody can be asked. It does not promise that you will like it. No name can do that.
At our oven that somebody is Daniele, born in Naples in 1989. The decisions he makes are the kind you can check against the plate rather than against a slogan. The dough is a biga, left to ferment for 48 hours at 77% hydration. The tomatoes are San Marzano and the mozzarella is fior di latte, both from Italy. The oven is copper, gas fired, and runs at 400 degrees.
None of that is interesting as a list. It is interesting because each item is a point where a shortcut was available and not taken. That, and not the name, is what you are actually being told.
Filomena is a Neapolitan first name
Filomena is a given name you hear in Naples. Eduardo De Filippo gave the Neapolitan form of it to the title character of his play Filumena Marturano, which is probably why the name sounds familiar to people who have never been to Campania. We will not read more into our own sign than that.
What we can hand you instead is the rest of the site. It exists in English, Italian and Greek, and the wine list has a page for each bottle or grape variety, because natural wine is the part of the menu people most often feel they should already understand. You do not have to. Reading first is allowed, and asking at the table is allowed too.
The list changes, so we do not say here what is open tonight. That is a question for the person who brings it to you, which brings us back to the point of naming a place after a person at all.
Come and ask the person, not the sign
We are at 1 Aristotelous in Larnaca, open Tuesday to Sunday from 18:00 to 22:00, closed on Monday. Come in without knowing anything about dough or wine. That is the normal condition of a guest, not a gap you need to fix before arriving.
Questions people actually ask
Q.Is there someone called Filomena at the pizzeria?
We do not claim that. Filomena is a Neapolitan first name and it is the name of the pizzeria. The pizzaiolo is Daniele, born in Naples in 1989.
Q.Why are so many pizzerias called Alfredo's or Gennaro's?
Because in Italian a place is often named with "da" plus a first name, meaning "at so and so's". The name worked as an address and as a guarantee, and the pattern was copied far beyond Italy.
Q.Does a first name mean the pizza is made by hand?
Not by itself. A name is only a claim that somebody is responsible. What you can check is the method: in our case a biga fermented for 48 hours at 77% hydration, baked in a gas fired copper oven at 400 degrees.
Q.When are you open?
Tuesday to Sunday, 18:00 to 22:00. Monday we are closed. The address is 1 Aristotelous, Larnaca, and we are on Instagram as @filomena.pizzeria.napoletana.