On the Wednesday morning following PizzaTuesday Naples, my insider’s tour of the pizza heartland, the group met with the great Franco Pepe on the sunny rooftop of Pepe in Grani, his pizzeria in the town of Caiazzo.

Recalling the prior night’s tasting of 10 exceptional Pepe pizzas I put the third-generation pizzaiolo on the spot:

How, I asked, does your pizza compare to that of your father and grandfather?

Pepe smiled uneasily, took a breath, then delivered the response heard in the video above.

The first takeaway is that Pepe knows how to duck a delicate question. But the larger and lasting lesson is as valid for a chef with three Michelin stars (see: Massimo Bottura Compresses His Grandmother) as it is for a pizza baker, or even a home cook:

We should respect, honour and learn from the past but we mustn’t be bound by it, nor by the nostalgic certainty that everything was much better then than it is now.

Think back, look forward.

The signature Franco Pepe pizza seen at the conclusion of the video is called Il sole nel piatto – “the sun in the plate”.
 

 
Its toppings – mozzarella di bufala, Piennolo del Vesuvio tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, anchovies and basil – are all local, conforming to the “km 0” (kilometre zero) designation created by the Italian Agricultural Union and backed by Pepe. Km 0 is a movement of locavores and is very much about thinking back and looking forward.