“Our pizza is generous, it’s a popular dish that has to feed everyone.
It’s the evolution of the “pizza portafoglio”: small crust, soft, plenty and tasty.
By the way I’m sure that it will never be out.”
This is the Sorbillo’s explanation of his pizza in the autobiographic book “Pizzaman”, published by Dissapore.
When we say “A’ PIZZA ‘E NAPULE”, we say Gino Sorbillo.
To understand this syllogism, we have to start from Luigi’s story, Gino’s grandfather.
We are in the 1935, via dei Tribunali, Naples, when Gino’s family opened a small tavern to welcome friends, parents and old people with humble takeaway’s pizzas.
This place was in a poor and infamous district and he still calls it: the “buco”.
Luigi and Carolina give birth to 21 children and let them orphans a few time later.
Auntie Esterina, the firstborn, suddenly takes under management the pizzeria and Gino, the favorite nephew, starts to go there after school with his friends to help her with the service.
“I still hadn’t 10 years old when I started to work in the pizzeria.
The costumers came visit us not only to eat, but also to chat or to congratulate with Esterina.
Without my family and my district, my story would be similar to all the other ones.”
Actually his story is a sequence of difficulties and victories:
the modernization of his restaurant, its expansion, then the fire, until the arrive of some tourists, the fame, the first tv program, the opening of the second location in the Vomero’s area, then Milan and New York.
His favorite pizza?
“I love simplicity – he writes – I’ll always suggest to my customers the margherita or the anchovies’s one.”
We met Gino Sorbillo during the presentation of his book at Dissapore café of Identità Golose and we ask him a few questions about his activities.
“You opened in Italy and now in New York. How can you manage to have a standard quality? Do you adapt the taste according to the costumers?”
“I have a team of Neapolitan’s pizza men who know the techniques and can reply them everywhere, in America I have my trusted suppliers but I don’t have a quality standard – he answers – each storage has its spirit, is shaped with the location, the staff, the costumer’s desires.”
“How did you adapt your simple and traditional pizza with the modern trend of a perfect, colorful and light pizza?”
“My desire to unify past and present attract people from all over the world. In Milan, for example, I opened “Sorbillo Gourmand” where we offer regional pizzas cooked in a gas oven. The shape and the preparation are the traditional ones, the ingredients are typical products from Italy. The intention is to decline Neapolitan’s pizza into Italian different regions.”
This is only the beginning of a successful story that surely will keep on with the next generations, innovating without forgetting the past.
