Have you ever tasted something so good that your mouth waters every time you think about it? That’s exactly the feeling you’ll get after you try the most famous pizza in the world at L’antica Pizzeria Da Michele, established in Naples in 1870.
Since then, they have expanded their brand through the Michele In the World initiative and now have nine locations around the world, including one in Florence, Italy where I got to experience this famous pizza. The project began in 2012 when the Condurro Family decided that their products and flavors needed to be shared with the world, and they definitely were not wrong about that.
The Condurro family is very proud of the brand that they have established so they take franchising and international partnering very seriously. They want their pizza in locations that will foster and expand their brand and continue to grow their international following.
When the family announced the project, there were many partners around the world anxious to have the famous flavors of Da Michele in their cities. The first location outside of Naples was established in Tokyo. The family made an agreement with the Japanese group Balnibarbi and opened their first international location in the Ebisu District.
The success of the Tokyo location gave the Condurro family the confirmation they needed to continue to expand the project. There are now several locations in Italy in places like Rome and Milan, and locations abroad in places like Barcelona, Spain and London, England.
To give you an idea of just how good this pizza is, I’ve been in Florence for nine days and I have already been there three times. The friendly staff will welcome you in and make you feel just like family, but usually only after a twenty to thirty-minute wait because everyone visiting Florence wants to get their hands on one of their famous margherita pizzas.
When you enter the restaurant, located near the Duomo next to the central market, there is a massive and beautiful tiled oven with pizzas going in and out like clockwork. But don’t let the speed of service make you nervous; each pizza is rolled out by hand and fresh ingredients from Florence are combined to create the perfect pie.
When we sat down to order, our server who spoke English well, greeted us with a smile and an enthusiastic Ciao! He explained to us that this would be the best pizza we had ever had, due to the freshness of the ingredients and the commitment to tradition that has kept the recipe so perfect for the past one hundred and fifty years.
He encouraged us to order the classic margherita pizza with extra mozzarella, and we couldn’t say no. We wanted to try as many things as possible however, so we also ordered another pizza that was folded like a calzone and stuffed to the crust with various meats and plenty of stringy mozzarella cheese.
As we waited for our pizzas, another guest of the restaurant was seated at our table. This is something that doesn’t usually happen back home in the states so at first, we were a little weirded out by the situation. But just as soon as he sat down, he struck up a conversation with us and it felt like we were sitting and having dinner with someone that we had been friends with for the past ten years.
When you arrive in Italy, culture shock is an understatement. If a stranger would have been seated at the same table as us back home, there is no doubt in my mind that the situation would have been awkward, but here it was just the opposite. It’s hard to get used to how friendly the people are here, even to strangers that speak an entirely different language. The city of Florence is such an amazing community filled with such nice people, and it hurts to think we’ll only be in this place for another two weeks.
After a few minutes of getting to know our new friend, our pies arrived, and our jaws dropped at the size of these pizzas. They were huge!
We snapped several pictures for our social media accounts because we just knew we would have to tell all of our friends and families about this place before we even got a chance to taste the pizzas.
I couldn’t wait to taste it. I cut my first bite and there was an explosion of flavors immediately. The pizza was very thin, so it would be difficult to pick up with your hands to eat. The tangy marinara sauce coupled perfectly with the mounds of fresh mozzarella cheese and basil leaves that decorated the pizza. It was absolutely delicious, and it was easy to see why this is the most famous pizza in the world.
It’s incredible that a recipe can be handed down and preserved so well for so long. It was surreal knowing that I was eating pizza that was conceptualized nearly one hundred and fifty years ago in a city that great minds like Michelangelo and Galileo called home.
The first time I ate at the restaurant, I stumbled upon it by accident. I took a taxi with a few friends to the central market where there was another restaurant that we wanted to try, but fortunately for us, that restaurant was closed. About 100 feet away on a perpendicular street we found L’antica Pizzeria Da Michele.
The moment I realized the restaurant was famous was when we went to pay our ticket at the front of the restaurant. I was looking around and taking it all in when I spotted a photograph of Julia Roberts eating the same margherita pizza that I had just devoured. It was then that I realized a scene from her movie Eat, Pray, Love was filmed at their original location in Naples.
I thought that was interesting, but still didn’t realize the magnitude of their fame. It was not until later that night when I went to post a photo of my pizza on my Instagram account that I finally found out what exactly I had come across just by chance. I searched for their Instagram account to tag in my picture and was shocked to see that they have over twenty-five thousand followers.
L’antica Pizzeria Da Michele is a must see if your visiting Florence. The food is absolutely incredible and there are so many different things on the menu to try (like a fried pizza!) that will keep you coming back for more. The restaurant is open daily for lunch and dinner. If you’re looking to beat the crowds and avoid a wait, I would suggest visiting around 6pm. But if you want to get a better experience and meet locals of the city of Florence, make your trip around 8pm when the restaurant gets more crowded. Each of our pizzas ranged from eight to 15 euros.
The Michele in the World project is still expanding, and I have high hopes that the franchise will make its way to the states so I won’t have to book an international flight to get another taste of this world famous pizza.